Handing Off a Pony Bottle

[dumpsterDiver]

Unless, it is very early in a dive and they swim up signaling OOA. you let them breath on your spare reg and clam down and you find out that the problem was their mouth piece came off and they did not know they could breath it and their spare was not where it had been when they did OW the week before (at the clip). So you find their spare and switch them back on it. Make sure they are fine and you continue the dive. Actual event. Immediately heading skyward would have turned a minor incident into a more serious one.

My plan is to get the guy to the surface ASAP. It is hard for me to envision a diver needing to use my air and then not going up, but I suppose it is possible. It would depend on the situation I guess, but I spend a good bit of time snorkeling and I highly value the big bubble on the top of the water. The closer I get to that, the better I feel. OOA emergencies are so rare, that I would not feel too bad about aborting a dive unnecessarily.

 

[Steve_C]

This was a diver doing their first dive post OW cert. The OW was in a Minnesota lake. The first dive was on a boat off the NC coast in 50 ft of water. All rental gear. I was an instabuddy (my choice). When gearing up she went to put her spare octo on the ring but there was no clip. So captain told her to fold it up and put in her pocket. We descended to 50 ft and were near the bottom of a wreck. She seemed to be doing fine. I glanced in the direction we would be going. She was maybe 10 ft away. Glanced back and she was coming toward me wide eyed but not panicking indicating she needed air. Put her on my spare reg and let her breath for a couple minutes and calm down. She was doing fine. I looked at reg and saw no mouth piece. Followed hose and pulled spare reg out of her pocket. Put her back on that. Since she had a reg and I had three counting my pony we went ahead and did the dive.

What had happaned was that when her mouth piece came off she thought it would no longer work. She then reached for her spare on the chest like in class but it was not there. At that point she swam right to me and got on air. I will give her credit. She was 50 ft down and on her first ocean dive and thought she had no way to get air and handled it well.

You could ask why was this her first dive and without an experienced buddy. That involves a brother who is a marine and experienced diver who was going off with his buddy. That is when I offered to dive with her and her equally new mother.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

This was a diver doing their first dive post OW cert. The OW was in a Minnesota lake. The first dive was on a boat off the NC coast in 50 ft of water. All rental gear. I was an instabuddy (my choice). When gearing up she went to put her spare octo on the ring but there was no clip. So captain told her to fold it up and put in her pocket. We descended to 50 ft and were near the bottom of a wreck. She seemed to be doing fine. I glanced in the direction we would be going. She was maybe 10 ft away. Glanced back and she was coming toward me wide eyed but not panicking indicating she needed air. Put her on my spare reg and let her breath for a couple minutes and calm down. She was doing fine. I looked at reg and saw no mouth piece. Followed hose and pulled spare reg out of her pocket. Put her back on that. Since she had a reg and I had three counting my pony we went ahead and did the dive.

What had happaned was that when her mouth piece came off she thought it would no longer work. She then reached for her spare on the chest like in class but it was not there. At that point she swam right to me and got on air. I will give her credit. She was 50 ft down and on her first ocean dive and thought she had no way to get air and handled it well.

You could ask why was this her first dive and without an experienced buddy. That involves a brother who is a marine and experienced diver who was going off with his buddy. That is when I offered to dive with her and her equally new mother.

Sounds like you saved the day.

free flows, stuck BC inflators and mouth pieces falling off. Seem like the three most common failures of scuba gear we hear about. The mouth piece can be addressed with a piece of safety wire and the training on how to disconnect the inflator needs to be improved..in my opinion.

 

[Omisson]

There is a huge difference between donating a pony in an OOA situation and using a pony in gas primary calculation.

If the premise is that a pony is merely another gas supply then why call it a pony... At that point what does stage, travel, deco, bottom or any other tank designation matter?

Just call it another tank of a different size ...

 

[DaleC]

I agree.

Here's the problem. If you buy a small pony, say 6-13cuft, you really only have an emergency ascent bottle, which is fine. Ideas of extending the dive, figuring it into you dive plan as useable gas etc... don't make sense or apply - you won't get far regardless. So, the discussion is mute in this case.

But many on the board are told to buy an Al 40 when seeking a pony, usually with the motivation that it will serve as a deco bottle later on and you won't have to repurchase gear. Now, 40cuft of gas is a lot of gas.. in fact it is twice what GUE factors for an ascent from 100ft. So for most recreational divers operating in the 100' range they are packing twice the reserve gas in a pony that they need. One can counter that there is no such thing as too much gas but that can easily become ridiculous and is based on a feeling. Factually speaking, it's a lot of gas.

Also take into consideration that not all dives where people want to use a pony are that deep. Sometimes they are a little deeper but often they are more shallow. The needed reserve volume decreases and a diver in the 50' range needs significantly less gas in reserve than that for 100ft, yet they still are carrying the same 40cuft no matter what.

So, what do you do about that gas?
We'll assume we are all thinking divers in the advanced forum here and not beginners taking a self reliant course

• You could act like the people in the movie The Village and simply never stray beyond the wall. No matter the volume of the pony or the parameters of the dive NEVER USE YOUR PONY AS PART OF THE DIVE PLAN... but that seems crazy to me. You will forever pack far more than you need just because you don't trust yourself to act intelligently. Like my mother who would take half the house for a day at the beach... just in case.

• You could only fill your pony to 1500psi so you actually have 20cuft of gas.

• You could pour cement into your pony so that it now only contains 20cuft. This has the benefit of allowing you to take so lead off your belt.

• You could buy a 20cuft bottle as well as a 40cuft bottle. Then you could curse those SB experts because you now have purchased 2 pony bottles.

• Or you could realize you need to keep 20cuft of the 40cuft as reserve and use the other 20cuft as part of your gas plan.

Personally, I have grown to subscribe to the latter two courses of action. I own both a 40 and a 19 and use then as I see fit. I also adjust how I use them depending on the dive parameter. I still call them pony bottles because you have to call them something but to me they are just cylinders of varying volume.