I travel quite a lot on business to exotic places where there are scuba opportunities on hand. Scuba gear in good condition is almost always readily available to hire, which is cool because I dont have to carry the stuff with me. Today I had a close shave and was grateful for the good training I underwent (SSI). My air gauge showed that I still had a good supply of air, when all of a sudden the air supply stopped. We were deep diving (35 meters) and I felt the panic coming on. I consider myself an experienced diver, done the specialty courses, with over 30 logged dives; however, in a real life situation things are somewhat different than in training. Because it was an early morning dive, the dive operator doubled as my dive buddy, and it was only him and me. I was about three four meters away from him, and he was interested in something on the reef, hence his attention was not with me. I knew I was in trouble and as I mentioned, panic waves crept over me, then I remembered what my dive instructor drilled into me, when in trouble THINK and then act. I also remembered not to hold my breath but to slowly exhale. I started to relax, swam to my buddy signaled my distress and we shared air. We made the slow ascent and when we later inspected the gauge, it was clear that it somehow got stuck and showed the wrong amount of air. It was also apparent that somewhere there must have been an air leak in the system.
Out of Air
- Thread starter Pietfer
- Start date
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mattroz:
Concur!
Outstanding grace under pressure! (no pun intended!)
Personally, this is one reason why I prefer to use my own gear. (not sure that is practical given the "travel" described above...)
Regardless, welcome to SB.
Dive safe!
~m
Pietfer:
You did well in handling that situation, but this statement is a red flag.
PerroneFord
Contributor
Pietfer:
Hmmm
PerroneFord
Contributor
dherbman beat me to it...
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Yeah, but we see this a lot. It'll be a long time before I consider myself experienced, if ever, but I did when I was in his stage of development. Perhaps a good thread topic on Basic Scuba.dherbman:
Welcome to the board, glad you handled it the way you were taught.
Sasquatch
Contributor
Nice job under stress!
Actually, travelling with your own regs & gauges & mask/snorkle isn't too tough to do.
Welcome to SB!
Actually, travelling with your own regs & gauges & mask/snorkle isn't too tough to do.
Welcome to SB!
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Good for you for not panicing... I'll leave it at that [and bite my tongue]...Welcome to the board.
Garrett <---- About double your dives and still consider myself fairly inexperienced.
Garrett <---- About double your dives and still consider myself fairly inexperienced.
BrianV
Contributor
WOW, for diving 35m you ran out of air? If the guage was showing a 'decent' amount of air you should've known something was fishy after a certain amount of time. Did the accident happen at 35m? You need ample reserve air for deco at this depths, I assume you were deco diving?
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