Well, I went off on a thought with my other story and forgot the one I wanted to share.. the original thought I was working off with my review of my military training is that a large part of flight safety is reviewing flight safety incidents and accidents. Obviously, we like to review the incidents more, because people don't usually die or aircraft don't get destroyed. Accidents, they are BAD.
So, me being me, I thought in my limited experience, I'd share a little 'incident' that I had in the past few weeks as I've been learning to be a better diver.
The setting is this. I'm home in the US. I've purchased a dry suit online (off scubaboard.com) and my luck is amazing, this thing fits like a glove. Seals are awesome. I get to the US and have an instructor set up the day before my declared 'dive day' with my family members at Catalina to start my dry suit training. Prior to leaving China, I get my knowledge development information, watch my videos, talk to my local instructor a lot, and pass the knowledge reviews. On landing in the US, I get my suit out, try it on, and then go see the LDS near my Utah home for some zipper wax. I pack everything up, and next morning, I'm in LA. By afternoon, I'm in the dive shop, and my new instructor gives me a full follow up on the dry suit, care, maintenance, seal care, zipper care, inspection, cleaning, etc. Then we don the monster, get our gear, and spend a little under an hour with me performing various tasks, purposely getting light in the feet, releasing air, adjusting the valve, and learning to balance the buoyancy of the dry suit with the BCD still primary, enough air to be warm and still use my BCD as it is designed. Everything does well, he's pleased at how I pick it up.
Dive day is just as good. We spend the first dive following up on the pool training. Changing depth, adjusting for water temp, relearning a little buoyancy and trim... but the dive goes very well, as do the following two dives.. It's a very successful day diving with my family, and the instructor enjoyed it because he didn't have to do anything more than put me thru a few skills along the way. WIN WIN.
Now, it's two days later, I've got a bug to go dive again, problem is, I haven't got a buddy. But I've spent weeks reading about different sites along the Palos Verde coastline, and I determine to take my gear and head north from San Pedro to at least Redondo (where I'm almost guaranteed to find someone on a flat day like this to get wet with). I end up stopping at Old Marineland, now called Terranea (a very expensive resort) and find a guy dragging gear across the lot... he's waiting for a couple other guys, and calls and asks if I can join them. With me, we make a perfect six. Works for them, so while he waits, I get my stuff and start the march down to the beach.
As it turned out, I waited for nearly 1 1/2 hours, they finally told me they were on their way down, and knowing it takes a little time to get in to my dry suit, I started prepping and donned it, but they were still lagging... so rather than roast in the sun, I slip into the rocky shore with relatively calm surf conditions, and just soak the suit down to stay cool. A few minutes later, the guys arrive and are quick to put their gear on and get in... I get my BCD and fins and walk out, inflating just before I turn to catch the back side of a small set of waves now coming in... as I'm sitting there trying to put my fins on, I realize I am not floating, but sinking. Looking down I see I'm probably 6-10 feet above the rocky bottom. And I inflate again, and again, by the time I can reach down to try putting on a fin, I'm already up to my ears.
So, I have no idea what's happening, I inflate again and test my dump port, my buddy says it's fine, my shoulder port is fine. But everytime I inflate, 30 seconds later I'm over my head in the water. So, I now get to use my drysuit for enough buoyancy to stay with my head above water.
I decide to let them go, and now start a nasty swim to shore as the surf has picked up, and the rocks are a major pain.. it's a lot of work to get back, and even more to get me and my 25# of weight and tank out of the water, and up the rocks... As I rest, the sun takes over and tells me my day is over, I can't troubleshoot my problem in my drysuit, and they are waiting 50meters out to see if I'm coming back.
I wave them off and start carrying my stuff up the beach front to my mat and bags. After I've removed my drysuit, I get back to my BCD and start trying to figure out what is going on. I test it and now it won't leak any air, it just sits there actually expanding as the air heats inside it's black cover. But then what I find is a little chilling.
You see, this is a NEW BCD with one pool session and three dives on it. I'm a little miffed it might be leaking air, and so I'm checking seams, all over. What I finally find is that this nifty little BCD has a 'jet dump' where you don't have to raise the inflator above your head to you can just pull and dump air from your shoulder... what was wrong was that the little cap that screws on the top of the inflator at the shoulder had become loose and was barely held on by a single thread and less than half a twist of the cap. This caused the o-ring at the end of the pull assembly to let air leak past, and of course, in water, with the pressure pushing against the bag, it's pushing air past the valve, and when my buddy looked at it, he thought it was me purging it.
However, the long story was that this could have been a bad day for me, granted I had a drysuit to inflate and maintain buoyancy, but the thought in my mind was what if I'd swam out to 20 feet and the little cap popped off, immediately dumping me with my weights to the bottom (I might have caught it with my drysuit, but that's a scary proposition for a new drysuit diver).
I spent the day at Catalina being bummed about this new BCD supposedly not having the little shoulder dump like many others on the right shoulder, with the little pull handle on the right breast. It actually was making me mad I'd paid so much for it and it lacked that function.
So, what have we learned my friends from our storytime lesson?
1) If you are a new diver, and you have purchased equipment, go over it with someone in the know. Understand how every part of it works.
2) Check your equipment, make sure all seals, o-rings, and valves are working and seal properly (This would probably happen if you follow #1, but an example in a book on dive stories indicates that might not be true. In fact it was this story that finally clued me into the fact that I had a 'jet dump' not just an open cap)
3) Know the procedure you will follow in the event you lose your buoyancy at the surface.
I was lucky, this was a shore dive, I could swim back in... if this had been off the boat the day before in 60 feet of water, and the cap had popped off the inflator when I made my entry, I could have been riding a one way ticket down. Maybe I'd have had my wits about me to inflate my dry suit, but from the boat entry point, I would have been the only one to save me, because my instructor was already in the water and had moved toward the anchor point.
Hope this prevents someone else from a bad day. Cheers
PhatD1ver
So, me being me, I thought in my limited experience, I'd share a little 'incident' that I had in the past few weeks as I've been learning to be a better diver.
The setting is this. I'm home in the US. I've purchased a dry suit online (off scubaboard.com) and my luck is amazing, this thing fits like a glove. Seals are awesome. I get to the US and have an instructor set up the day before my declared 'dive day' with my family members at Catalina to start my dry suit training. Prior to leaving China, I get my knowledge development information, watch my videos, talk to my local instructor a lot, and pass the knowledge reviews. On landing in the US, I get my suit out, try it on, and then go see the LDS near my Utah home for some zipper wax. I pack everything up, and next morning, I'm in LA. By afternoon, I'm in the dive shop, and my new instructor gives me a full follow up on the dry suit, care, maintenance, seal care, zipper care, inspection, cleaning, etc. Then we don the monster, get our gear, and spend a little under an hour with me performing various tasks, purposely getting light in the feet, releasing air, adjusting the valve, and learning to balance the buoyancy of the dry suit with the BCD still primary, enough air to be warm and still use my BCD as it is designed. Everything does well, he's pleased at how I pick it up.
Dive day is just as good. We spend the first dive following up on the pool training. Changing depth, adjusting for water temp, relearning a little buoyancy and trim... but the dive goes very well, as do the following two dives.. It's a very successful day diving with my family, and the instructor enjoyed it because he didn't have to do anything more than put me thru a few skills along the way. WIN WIN.
Now, it's two days later, I've got a bug to go dive again, problem is, I haven't got a buddy. But I've spent weeks reading about different sites along the Palos Verde coastline, and I determine to take my gear and head north from San Pedro to at least Redondo (where I'm almost guaranteed to find someone on a flat day like this to get wet with). I end up stopping at Old Marineland, now called Terranea (a very expensive resort) and find a guy dragging gear across the lot... he's waiting for a couple other guys, and calls and asks if I can join them. With me, we make a perfect six. Works for them, so while he waits, I get my stuff and start the march down to the beach.
As it turned out, I waited for nearly 1 1/2 hours, they finally told me they were on their way down, and knowing it takes a little time to get in to my dry suit, I started prepping and donned it, but they were still lagging... so rather than roast in the sun, I slip into the rocky shore with relatively calm surf conditions, and just soak the suit down to stay cool. A few minutes later, the guys arrive and are quick to put their gear on and get in... I get my BCD and fins and walk out, inflating just before I turn to catch the back side of a small set of waves now coming in... as I'm sitting there trying to put my fins on, I realize I am not floating, but sinking. Looking down I see I'm probably 6-10 feet above the rocky bottom. And I inflate again, and again, by the time I can reach down to try putting on a fin, I'm already up to my ears.
So, I have no idea what's happening, I inflate again and test my dump port, my buddy says it's fine, my shoulder port is fine. But everytime I inflate, 30 seconds later I'm over my head in the water. So, I now get to use my drysuit for enough buoyancy to stay with my head above water.
I decide to let them go, and now start a nasty swim to shore as the surf has picked up, and the rocks are a major pain.. it's a lot of work to get back, and even more to get me and my 25# of weight and tank out of the water, and up the rocks... As I rest, the sun takes over and tells me my day is over, I can't troubleshoot my problem in my drysuit, and they are waiting 50meters out to see if I'm coming back.
I wave them off and start carrying my stuff up the beach front to my mat and bags. After I've removed my drysuit, I get back to my BCD and start trying to figure out what is going on. I test it and now it won't leak any air, it just sits there actually expanding as the air heats inside it's black cover. But then what I find is a little chilling.
You see, this is a NEW BCD with one pool session and three dives on it. I'm a little miffed it might be leaking air, and so I'm checking seams, all over. What I finally find is that this nifty little BCD has a 'jet dump' where you don't have to raise the inflator above your head to you can just pull and dump air from your shoulder... what was wrong was that the little cap that screws on the top of the inflator at the shoulder had become loose and was barely held on by a single thread and less than half a twist of the cap. This caused the o-ring at the end of the pull assembly to let air leak past, and of course, in water, with the pressure pushing against the bag, it's pushing air past the valve, and when my buddy looked at it, he thought it was me purging it.
However, the long story was that this could have been a bad day for me, granted I had a drysuit to inflate and maintain buoyancy, but the thought in my mind was what if I'd swam out to 20 feet and the little cap popped off, immediately dumping me with my weights to the bottom (I might have caught it with my drysuit, but that's a scary proposition for a new drysuit diver).
I spent the day at Catalina being bummed about this new BCD supposedly not having the little shoulder dump like many others on the right shoulder, with the little pull handle on the right breast. It actually was making me mad I'd paid so much for it and it lacked that function.
So, what have we learned my friends from our storytime lesson?
1) If you are a new diver, and you have purchased equipment, go over it with someone in the know. Understand how every part of it works.
2) Check your equipment, make sure all seals, o-rings, and valves are working and seal properly (This would probably happen if you follow #1, but an example in a book on dive stories indicates that might not be true. In fact it was this story that finally clued me into the fact that I had a 'jet dump' not just an open cap)
3) Know the procedure you will follow in the event you lose your buoyancy at the surface.
I was lucky, this was a shore dive, I could swim back in... if this had been off the boat the day before in 60 feet of water, and the cap had popped off the inflator when I made my entry, I could have been riding a one way ticket down. Maybe I'd have had my wits about me to inflate my dry suit, but from the boat entry point, I would have been the only one to save me, because my instructor was already in the water and had moved toward the anchor point.
Hope this prevents someone else from a bad day. Cheers
PhatD1ver