Malfunctioning BCD at depth

[boulderjohn]

You never mention a buddy. Was it a solo dive?

If it was a drift dive, there is a good chance you had no chance to do a proper bubble check before descending. If you did have such a chance, you could have rolled backwards in the water while partially inflated so your buddy could see if any bubbles were escaping. The problem could have been caught before you left the surface.

If you truly could not tell you had a problem until you had descended, I would think your buddy could have spotted the bubbles escaping. Once I had that problem and my buddy saw the bubbles escaping from that same dump valve as yours. He checked it and found that I had simply not screwed it on properly after taking it off earlier. He fixed it and I was OK. On another occasion inside a cave, my buddy had a problem and let me know he had a leak somewhere. I saw it was a defect in a shoulder dump, but I could not fix it. Knowing where the problem was allowed him to be reasonably OK simply by adjusting his trim as he swam so air would be trapped in other parts of the wing.

 

[Freewillow]

Thank you bolder John. A buddy was mentionned in my post. In fact we were a trio, all divemasters with 500+ dives.

As I said, it was a negative entry with the goal to descend rapidly, since it was a drift dive. We found out, however that the current was VERY VERY mild.

On another point.

Since the vast majority of contributors on this post have found that I was crazy to not abord the dive, I post EXACTLY the same subject on a french speaking forum. Out of 10 answers, only one diver would have stopped the dive. A very different approach all together .

This reminds me of a book that talked about the influence of culture on the practice of medecine. I think that one could write a book on the influence of culture on the practice of diving.

 

[Storker]

[...] the vast majority of contributors on this post have found that I was crazy to not abord the dive [...]

I'll have another helping of strawman with a bit of hyperbole on the top, please.

You seem very defensive in your argumentation. In your OP, you said:

Would you have done it differently? Opinions are welcome

You got answers. You got opinions. Mostly from people who indeed would have done it differently, which IMO shouldn't have surprised you very much.

 

[Diver0001]

Would you have done it differently? Opinions are welcome

I would have checked to see if my BCD was functioning before the dive.

Your solution was oke, I guess but you might have been able to avoid getting in that situation by inspecting and checking the function of your BCD when you were setting up your gear.

In the OW course we teach a buddy check that should catch this kind of thing. A know a lot of divers forego the buddy check so I won't lecture you about that, but if you do, then it's even more important that you double check everything yourself before putting it on.

R..

 

[Freewillow]

I'll have another helping of strawman with a bit of hyperbole on the top, please.

You seem very defensive in your argumentation. In your OP, you said:

You got answers. You got opinions. Mostly from people who indeed would have done it differently, which IMO shouldn't have surprised you very much.

I am not defensive, I am just flabergasted to see the difference between US and French speaking divers.

Note that I never said that one opinion is better than another.

On the other hand I am pretty defensive about your statement. Read all my answers: there are sveral "thank you", but no criticism of the solution offered.

 

[OldNSalty]

I get the impression that while cordial, the OP isn’t really looking for advice but rather a chance to thumb his nose at all the counter opinions to his style of diving.

 

[CptTightPants21]

I am not defensive, I am just flabergasted to see the difference between US and French speaking divers.

Note that I never said that one opinion is better than another.

On the other hand I am pretty defensive about your statement. Read all my answers: there are sveral "thank you", but no criticism of the solution offered. Your behaviour is nothing new for me. You have been on my "ignore list" for quite awhile. Maybe I should think about this again :cool2:

I am very far from a safety nazi, but you conducted a dive in the open ocean that had no bottom with a buoyancy device that was not working correctly and you had no idea why it wasn't working (where the wife buddy was in all of this I don't know). You talk about dumping lead or using the lift bag, but both of those are emergency procedures and other issues can arise if **** was to hit the fan.
There are two possibilities, either the leak was not as bad has has been described and more like a slowish bleed than the BC not holding any air or you conducted a 100ft dive with no buoyancy control holding onto a string. I tend to think it is the former, but I could be wrong.

I agree with OldNSalty, you knew what the opinions would be and are just looking for some negative attention.

 

[Freewillow]

@oldandsalty and CptTightpants21.

reading you, now I understand why Cousteau could not have been born nor trained on your side of the pound .

I will tell you what I wanted to bring to this forum.

Do not dive overweighted. (TOO MANY DO and are looking like seahorses in the water.)
an large SMB is a good floatability device ( this is why all tech divers wear at least one )
I realised that an closed circuit was better than an open one at the surface.

I felt that these were honnest and useful contribution..............

In terms of learning, I got what I wanted, but mostly from the french speaking forum.

To abort the dive was the favorite modus operandi for the scubaforum, by far not the recommended procedure in the french forum.
FYI, the dive was made along the Daedaleus reef in the middle of the RED sea. A dinghy was flipped over the same morning while trying to recover 3 divers trapped in the surf above the reef. So we were dropped in front of the reef and asked to go below 10 to 15 meters uner because of the possible risk to be swept on the reef at the surface. So to surface, that early in the Dive WAS NOT A SAFE OPTION.

Lets take some answer from the french forum:

For decades people have dived without BCD. Most survived
Give away 1 or 2 kg to your buddy and your problem is solved. Get it back at the end of the dive
You did the right thing. Most drifting dives are done with a float @ the surface, held by the divemaster or another diver.
Use your Closed SMB but keep it with you. Just inflate a bit in order to neutralize your flotability. Dump all air progressively until you reach the safety stop.
Take away your BCD and find out what the problem was and possibly repair.


P.S. About Cousteau being french. I did all my diving education with PADI and IANTD, both US agencies. So I have nothing against the US education, on the contrary .

 

[Storker]

@oldandsalty and CptTightpants21.

reading you, now I understand why Cousteau could not have been born nor trained on your side of the pound .

Wow, I think I just spotted the biggest herring I've ever seen in quite a while. And it's red, too. Why don't you as well suggest that we should go back to dive like they did in the good old days, when people were narked out of their gourd at 70+ meters because trimix wasn't available, when people died in caves and by their deaths taught us how to dive overhead environments in relative safety?

Jacques-Yves Cousteau was a pioneer. Lacking the wealth of experience we draw from today, he did a lot of things that we - and i guess neither he - would do given the knowledge we possess today. He dynamited reefs, he slaughtered marine animals for no good reason, he investigated the limits of underwater viability for humans and his closest colleague perished in an experiment where they experimented with extreme deep diving to learn the limits of narcosis a human could tolerate. Since he was a child of his times, I'm definitely not going to condemn him for what he and his crew did back then, but we don't have to repeat their errors. We, unlike them, live in the 21st century.


Seriously, Freewillow. You asked for opinion, and you got it.

 

[Hatul]

Not sure if I missed it, but one mandatory test to do before jumping in water is to test that your BC holds air.