Scuba Lawyer
Contributor
My wife had her drysuit neck seal completely separate from her suit once. The loss of buoyancy from that, especially because she was in an older fleece type undergarment that saturated easy, was extreme. She had to drop her lead at the surface because her BC had some reserve buoyancy but not enough to counter the loss of 10-15 or whatever pounds of lift even a vented drysuit provided. As you can imagine with only her head out of the water and no functional neck seal water pressure completely vented and flooded the suit (and it was crazy cold)
If you only have 5lbs of lead total having little or none be ditchable isn't great but isn't the end of the world.
When you have 20+ lbs of lead you really to have a decent amount of that be ditchable (half-ish would be good)
Same thing happened to me maybe 30 years ago. I had a 36 lb belt on and was diving a drysuit (don't recall brand at this point, may have been an SAS) diving Eagle Rock on the West End of Catalina Island. I had circumnavigated at depth around the base and had a bag full of lobster. Got down to around 500psi (maybe a tad less chasing bugs so 1st mistake) at 90 feet and added some air to my suit (no air in my BIU - yeah, I know) to ascend.
Followed the wall up and got to the surface and all the sudden my neck seal blew out and in a nanosecond (or so it seemed) I was back at 90 feet with a drysuit full of water. I put a few squirts of air into my BIU but the tank was nearly dry. Dropped my 36 lb belt (for the first time ever) and was still way heavy and now completely out of air (yeah, another reason to have a pony bottle). I literally climbed the wall hand over hand while exhaling whenever the air in my lungs expanded enough to be able to do so. It was the longest 90 vertical feet ever. The second I hit the surface and took a breath my first exhalation went into the oral inflator of my BIU. I still hung onto the rocks until the Avon tender from my friend's boat we were on was able to come get me.
It was an all around bad day for diving because when I rounded the stern in the Avon I saw one of my dive buddies laying on the swimstep unconscious. We started working on him and called LA County Baywatch. We upped anchor and headed back around the West End where we met the lifeguard boat and transferred him to their boat who in turn took him to the Isthmus where a helicopter transported him back to a hospital on the mainland. Turned out he had a cardiac event underwater but managed to get to the surface, dumped all his gear, and pulled himself onto the swimstep where he passed out. He survived to dive again, but that was one day I'll never forget.
Amazing how one post can bring back such a flood of memories. Back to the original topic, if my weight was not ditchible I wouldn't be here to write this.
P.S. I forgot all about my bag of lobster and it was still attached to my harness when I got back on board the Avon. The day was not a total loss.