UnderSeaBumbleBee
Contributor
By how you ask your question I doubt you would care about my response.
I will take your word for it since I don't know you or recall us chatting in any other threads.
Continue to breath fro freeflowing regulator, why waste the air by switching to octo
Swim to surface, resolve problem.
Situation 2
Same as situation 1 except if tank goes empty than share air with buddy or do CESA.
So you would let the tank go totally empty?
However, I maintain that sharing air and shutting down the free-flowing cylinder is the safest course of action. It eliminates a major source of confusion during the ascent, and allows both divers to concentrate on maintaining an appropriate ascent rate and safety stop. And it doesn't require you to do anything you shouldn't have learned how to do in your OW class.
... Bob (Grateful Diver)
I like your approach Bob. It would seem to calm things down quite a bit.
First off, you don't have a lot of time with a free flow before the tank is empty..so the actions need to be seamless.
How right you are. The tank went from 3000 psi to 1100 psi in under 2 minutes. The dive had just started and we did not get any deeper than 15'
I'm a noob too, but my training (PADI) tells me to either CESA or use the buddy's octo and surface to deal with the problem. I CAN tell you this though, if we've only made it to a dinky 15' I'm just going to surface on my own, CESA
I am not sure why you would do a CESA--controlled emergency swimming ascent. You still have air and your buddy does too. Why would you not use air from your tank for buddy's tank? I would only do a CESA when no air was available.
Also why would you surface on your own? This was listed as a buddy dive not a solo dive.
And if your tank goes totally empty if you decide not to shut down what might happen to your reg and your tank?
FYI once on the surface, I was able to fix the reg. The knobs had been turned and it was too sensitive. I had messed with them underwater, but not enough. I did surface using my own gear and breathing from the freeflow reg. I had to hold my mask on with my other had and the flow was very hard and almost blew my mask off and certainly added a steady stream of water into my mask the whole time. The reg was on a bungie around my neck so even if I had gone to buddy's air, without shutting the tank down I would have had the boiling bubbles around my face the whole time.
Of all the responses, Bob's seems to be the most systemantic as well as the one where things seem to calm down the most and allow for the best controlled effort to get back to the surface.
It was much more stressfull breathing from an actual free flowing reg than it has been to breathe from one where you create a free flow using the purge. The force of a real free flow was much stronger.