So my uncle and I are looking for lobster off of Bimini. I am dragging him behind the boat while he is looking for coral heads with fish around them. I have been on 20 or so dives, so I am confident in the water and with my equipment which was a hand me down from a different uncle. We spotted some lobster so I went down to catch the critters. <I know it is illegal to catch lobster on SCUBA in the Bahamas, but shhhhhh> Well I was not worried much about buoyancy, I just wanted some lobster. So I descended to about 25ft caught two lobster and started my ascent. I was under for about 2 min, so I wasnt worried about a safety stop. I pushed my inflator button and pushed it again, and again and again while I was swimming upwards, BUT GOT NOTHING. So now I'm thinking, huh this is weird, its pretty hard to swim to the surface. Well back then i was pretty over weighted(14lbs) no wet suit and i weight about 160lbs. I didnt panic, but I wasnt sure how serious the problem was. So I basically swam my *** off to the boat, which was about 15 yards away. I will tell you, that was not an easy swim. I could have ditched my weights and donned my uncles gear to retrieve them, but I didnt deem the situation that imperative. Once back in the boat I inspected the BC to find that the inflator hose was 50% torn off from the flange where it is melted and sealed to the BC. Boy am I glad this did not happen at 80 or 100 ft..... What is the proper technique if this were to happen at a deep depth? If you drop your weights that deep you are shooting to the surface, right? Should you depend on your buddy and his BC to help you swim up? Has anyone else had this problem??? Not a life and death story, but an incident from the normal all the else.
