My first "OH CRAP" Moment

[rfwoodvt]

Had an out of air incident today during a trim and buoyancy practice session.

Not a near out of air, but a pull the last breath from the tank kind.

No question I screwed up and I can trace 4 different opportunities I had could have taken advantage of to prevent it.

I keep my tanks organized By separating the full tanks from the used tanks. The way I do this is when I tank gets filled I put the din plug back into the valve and once a tank has been used, no matter how much air remains, the din plug stays out.

Well we reorganized my storage area and unbeknownst to me a helpful , well meaning person Put the plugs back in all my tanks .

I grabbed 2 for today's dive checked the 1st tank and it was full but didn't check the 2nd tank. That second tank is the one i set up on my bpw first. I also didn't check my spg. Big mistake..huge!

About 20 minutes into my dive I went to check my computer just to see how much air I had used and noticed I had 0 dive time remaining. Also had 0 PSI.

as it was training i was only down 15 feet and 20 yards from the dock.

that fact and providence kept it from being more than a near miss.

 

[BlueTrin]

Thanks for sharing, out of curiosity, I imagine you didn’t check your SPG at the surface?

 

[Lostdiver71]

A tip is to always check your gear and tanks a few days before doing any diving. As an example I am going to be doing a bunch of diving in the next 2 weeks so I checked my gear and found a dead transmitter battery and both of my tanks had lost around 13-1400 psi each. All are easy fixes if caught ahead of time but would be problematic if I was already on the boat or at the dive site gearing up. In case you are wondering the tanks are probably leaking from the neck o-ring as they are stored in a garage without climate control and the constant heat here in South Florida sometimes causes this to happen.

 

[Wibble]

It’s the pre-jump check that was missed.

1) Breathe from both regs and check the gauge.
2j Put some gas in the BCD

Then you know you have gas to breathe and buoyancy so you don’t sink.

Everything else is secondary.

 

[lermontov]

so Im assuming you had a small amount left in the tank from previous dive - lesson learnt - you'll not forget it - it could have been a lot worse

 

[Jafo19D]

I’ve seen this happen before. We were doing a shore entry/exit dive. Halfway to the wreck the DM signaled me that he was going to surface and for me to pair up with the other diver and take him to the wreck and come back.

All went well and when the dive was over I learned that during the surface interval he forgot to switch his tank.

 

[NW Dive Dawg]

So glad to hear that you are OK..... Sometimes these near misses can be a blessing in disguise since the lesson learned....... along with reality that it could have gone differently..... make it very unlikely that you'll ever repeat the same mistake....

I think it's obvious that the primary mistake was not checking PSI pre-dive and then again post splash... Another old school thing you can do to "generally" check stored tanks is to "tone" your tanks if they are all the same tanks. For example, when I'm on Bonaire with a group of four and we have 8 tanks in the truck (all identical AL 80's)...... before we head out for the day I'll take a wrench or my dive knife and tap on each tank to get the "tone". All 8 tanks should basically be the same "tone". If one of them has a noticeably lower tone than the others than I know it has less PSI..

Once again...glad you're OK and thanks for posting a mistake that might help others from making the same mistake....

 

[steinbil]

Glad you got out ok.

It's easy to make mistakes, so I'm a big fan of procedures and habits that catch mistakes before it leads to an incident. You probably have some idea of what you want to do to avoid this mistake in the future, but I thought I would quickly list the procedures I use to avoid this, in case you would like to implement any of them.

1. I check the tank pressure when I analyze the gas
2. I check the SPG as I open the valves when I assemble my gear
3. I look at the SPG while I test breathe the regs
4. I tell my buddy how much gas I have during buddy checks (re-check SPG if I don't remember)
5. I do a full systems check right after descent (flow check, long hose, SPG, computer, buddy etc.)
6. I check my SPG every 10 min as part of a situational awareness check (gas, NDL, navigation etc.)

It might sound like a lot, but it takes no time, and each of these would have caught the mistake, so I effectively have 6 layers of protection against it. At the very least I would recommend checking SPG when test breathing regs on surface and the systems check after descent, along with keeping track of gas/NDL every 10-15min.

 

[rfwoodvt]

Thanks for sharing, out of curiosity, I imagine you didn’t check your SPG at the surface?

Correct. One of several failure points on my part. Thot i did, but clearly didn't

 

[rfwoodvt]

It’s the pre-jump check that was missed.

1) Breathe from both regs and check the gauge.
2j Put some gas in the BCD

Then you know you have gas to breathe and buoyancy so you don’t sink.

Everything else is secondary.

Did all that. Just didn't read the spg