What if...? Equipment Issues

[Cave Diver]

Ok, I'm going to start discussing some of the answers given here so far. I'm going to start with Kathy's because I haven't had much opportunity to pick on her lately.

* What would you do if your buddy kicked your reg out of your mouth?

First of all with proper situational awareness I wouldn't be diving close enough for this to happen. But if for some strange reason it did, I have a back up reg just under my chin on a bungie which is very easy to access - then I can sort the primary out & keep diving.

I agree that good situational awareness will all but negate this problem. However there are times I've found myself close enough to kick or be kicked by a buddy, usually in low viz, tight quarter situations.

First is preventative measures. If I find myself close behind a buddy with few other options, I bring my arms up in front of my mask and reg and cross my forearms to form an X. That pretty well blocks any chance of an errant fin kick til we can find some room to separate.

If I do manage to get my reg kicked out, my first instinct is to go to my bungied backup. Like Kathy, my secondary is on a necklace around my neck and I can normally grab the mouthpiece just by tucking my chin to my chest without even using my hands. I use this setup in both single and double tank configurations and once I have something to breathe, I can take my time recovering my primary reg.

If I'm the lead diver and I feel myself making contact with my buddy, I'll immediately freeze my movement in the leg that made contact and switch kicks. I normally use a frog kick, so switching to a modified frog will usually give me some momentum, without contacting my buddy again til we can gain some separation.

* What would you do if your mask strap broke and you lost your mask?

Well all equipment should be tested and inspected before dives, and I dive a cloth mask strap so can't see it braking. But if it was knocked off and lost, I keep a back-up mask in my right pocket which I have practiced deploying. So just put on the backup, take a look for the primary mask and in most situations keep diving - If we need another mask, my buddy now has another back up mask in their pocket

I don't typically carry a backup mask during openwater dives unless I plan to incur deco. If I lost my mask and it was unrecoverable, I can see reasonably well enough under water to open my eyes and I don't wear contacts to worry about. Ideally my buddy would be there to lend support and possibly recover my mask or help me manage my ascent.

Failing help from my buddy, my next option would be to deploy a SMB. I carry one on all open water dives and have practiced enough to be proficient with it even with my eyes closed. I would seriously caution doing this unless your confident in your skill with impaired vision! Once the SMB is deployed I'd keep myself slightly negative and just slowly reel myself up the line.

I could also do a free ascent and judge my depth and ascent rate by my ears, but it's easy to end up faster than you planned. Also with impaired vision, I don't want to potentially surface into a boat or something. Having a marker on the surface can alert a boat crew that something is wrong and to help them keep an eye on you til you come up.

If you elect to open your eyes in salt water, one trick I've found that helps greatly is not to shut them as you surface. Leaving them open helps the salt flush out of them, and if you close them when you come up it gets trapped and causes increased burning and irritation.

 

[kathydee]

Ok, I'm going to start discussing some of the answers given here so far. I'm going to start with Kathy's because I haven't had much opportunity to pick on her lately.

Ha! I feel special !

I agree there are some situations when personal space is just not much of an option. In those circumstances, much like CD I do protect the mask and face with arms and modify intensity and movement of kicks to reduce potential impact to my partner.

I don't typically carry a backup mask during openwater dives unless I plan to incur deco

.

Nice to hear some options for maskless ascents - but I do carry back-up masks on almost every dive, even when diving shallow. Recently a friend was quite deep in a cave when the primary mask was fogging, so pulled out a backup mask just to find the mask skirt had decomposed and the mask was unfunctional.

If you carry a back up mask, it's wise to alternate the primary and back-up on every dive -- just to make sure either will function when you need it the most.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

If I lost my mask, I would face down, hold my console in one hand, hold my index finger around my eyebrow, make a one-eye "bubble goggle" so I could read my guages and try to come up slow.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

I'm going to let this discussion "percolate" a bit longer before adding my 2 psi.

But for those new divers out there answering, I'd like to toss out something for you to consider ... how might your buddy help you resolve any of the above circumstances?

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[DevonDiver]

Equipment issues
* What would you do if your buddy kicked your reg out of your mouth?

Put it back in & re-adjust my positioning so that it couldn't happen again. It'd be my fault for crowding him and not anticipating that scenario.

* What would you do if your mask strap broke and you lost your mask?

(Assuming no back-up mask).. this would depend on the circumstances at the time. If we were on the bottom, then I would signal my buddy and assist with a search for the mask. Once found, I would hold it in place and ascend with my buddy.

Unlikely scenario for me, because I use a velcro/neoprene mask strap that is threaded directly into the mask frame - nothing to break

* What would you do if a fin strap broke during your dive?

I use Force Fins and these operate sufficiently well without a strap (they stay on your foot when finning). In other scenarios, I would snip 6" of line from my finger reel and tie the fin into position. Ascend and change the strap before the next dive.

* What would you do if your inflator/dump valve pulled out of your BC?

Signal my buddy and begin an ascent. My configuration is balanced, so that I can fin to the surface. I use a BP&W so I would adopt a slightly head-down horizontal trim for the ascent, thus preserving some buoyancy in my wing. During the ascent, I would deploy my DSMB, which would provide some support for the safety stop and I could use it for buoyancy once I reached the surface.

* What would you do if your only light went out on a night dive?[/QUOTE]

(I would switch to back-up). For the sake of the scenario (no back-up), then I would close the distance to my buddy and signal to them (hand signals in their light beam) to ascend. I would maintain close/tactile proximity with my buddy on ascent and use the ambient light from their torch to read my gauges etc.

 

[k ellis]

Hum...okay, I could see these things could come up. So, is this a dive ending thing if your inflator hose won't attach? I'm not trying to be stupid, but there are some things that can happen that will be alright for you to stay down. If you can't reattach it without taking off your BC, then hopefully this is something you've practiced before and you can maintain good buoyancy while doing so, if that's the case, try it out. If you've not practiced it before...hum, I don't know if I would do it.

If you have a dump valve failure, does it mean that water will start getting into your BC? If not, you might have another dump and you can use that. My BC has a rear dump, and you can yank down on the inflator hose to dump at the top of it. But, in this case, I would want my buddy to be really close to me and assist me if I start having an uncontrolled ascent. If that happens that I start floating off, I will swim downward, then if I still have trouble I will grab and bear hug anything around me until my buddy can assist me. I have had to do this before, because I failed to get the air dumped. I think it's the right way, if not then let me know.

Jen if you read my post above the hose deflator hose came completely off from where it was attached at the BCD. There was no way to inwater fix this as even if I were to sit on the bottom and attempt to fix it I would need the replacement plastic ties on my person which most dont carry spares for.

This is a particularly hazardous situation that if a person was to be overweighted could quickly turn into a potentialy dangerous situation in which the only way to get to the surface is to kick like a mule and try to get off the bottom or drop your weights and risk an uncontrolled ascent. This in itself is one very very strong reason a person should never grossly overweight their weights when diving. Luckily by leaning to the left it shifted alot of the remaining air to the right side and caught it in a pocket which also helped greatly. I had not been overweighted on that dive btw.

I'd be very cautious using the corrugated inflater hose pull dump. There have been numerous incidents of a diver trying to "pull" it, and end up yanking it right off. This would cause you to rapidly lose the gas in your BC. And yes, if this happens you can expect water to begin filling the BC. A runaway ascent is a whole different issue and much easier to handle IMO.

Mine was just the plastic tie broke that holds it in place

 

[k ellis]

From the kicker's perspective, the best thing to do is to immediately stop kicking with that one fin. Experienced divers will freeze that one fin and continue to kick with the other, trying to get a little distance between themselves and whatever they had just kicked.

When I feel that I have kicked something I immediately stop and look around to see what it is. Knowing that there are often divers in our group the first thing I want to do is be sure I did not cause an emergency situation in which I kicked a regulator out of a newer divers mouth and then they panick and shoot to the surface. I figure if I turn around fast enough I can catch it before it turns to panick.

Also in solo diving this is paramount because I have accidently bumped coral and dont want to continue to slam it repeatedly so I immediately stop. If it is a situation where I kicked a diver and they are still in my kick path I will use my hands to swim safely away from the diver and continue to distance myself with kicks when safely out of range.

 

[Bubbletrubble]

When I feel that I have kicked something I immediately stop and look around to see what it is. Knowing that there are often divers in our group the first thing I want to do is be sure I did not cause an emergency situation in which I kicked a regulator out of a newer divers mouth and then they panick and shoot to the surface. I figure if I turn around fast enough I can catch it before it turns to panick.

Also in solo diving this is paramount because I have accidently bumped coral and dont want to continue to slam it repeatedly so I immediately stop. If it is a situation where I kicked a diver and they are still in my kick path I will use my hands to swim safely away from the diver and continue to distance myself with kicks when safely out of range.

Each situation is different. I don't typically conduct dives where I'm in front and a bunch of newbie divers are directly behind. I can see why it's entirely appropriate to check on the status of the novice who may have gotten kicked in the chops. That being said, based on the environment and what ground I've covered, if one of my fins happens to touch something, 90% of the time I'll immediately know what it was...even without looking. We've got a bunch of kelp here in SoCal, so there's really no need to look behind every time a fin touches something (probably a kelp stalk).

If I know that I'm clear of kelp, my fin hits something, and I'm not sure what I hit, I'll probably look back. One time I found a seal gumming my left fin with almost a sheepish look on his face. He would hide in the kelp, sneak up on me, nip at my fin, and then hide again. This game continued for several minutes, and I was happy to play along.

It also bears mentioning that, depending on the environment, it might not make a lot of sense to turn around to inspect what was kicked. Doing that can sometimes worsen the entanglement (fishing line, kelp stalk, etc.). Another option is to look back through one's legs. This is my preferred method of looking back since it doesn't entail so much neck-twisting, which can kind of suck in a drysuit.

 

[Cave Diver]

* What would you do if your inflator/dump valve pulled out of your BC?

4) Stuck dump valve. Well, I generally don't use my dump valve. But I have had a BC fail to hold air because of a leak at the hose/bc connection.

* What would you do if your inflator/dump valve pulled out of your BC?
Manually inflate it by blowing into the hose and crimping it when not in use to stop air escaping, blow out any water that had gotten in if neccesary, abort to surface.

Reattach it. I need to practice this, I forgot to last time I went to the pool.

Ok, there seems to be some confusion on this. So I partially took apart one of my wings to give you and idea of the failure types I'm talking about. There are several different ways you could experience this type of failure.

The first way is if the rubber corrugated hose pulls off the plastic elbow where it attached to your BC. The second would be if the plastic elbow either breaks, or unscrews where it attaches to the BC. A third way would be if the entire elbow assembly pulled loose from the BC material.

In the picture I attached you can see examples of the first and second.

I did not remove the assembly from the wing, but basically it is two parts. An inner threaded male nipple that sticks through the wing and then you have an outer cap that screws onto that nipple. The material of the wing or BC is sandwiched between these two plastic parts.

Signal my buddy while stabilizing position. Tip the body in the position that best conserves gas in the wing & buoyancy. I dive a Halcyon BP/W and have heard of friends simply finding the dump valve cover and rescrewing - or in a pinch, the screw dump valve on my Halcyon SMB is said to be interchangeable with the wing. You can also rescrew the inflator hose. If the problem is fixed - then continue the dive.

If my partner and I are unable to fix the problem, terminate the dive and stay close to my partner in case assistance is needed on ascent or at the surface.

If the problem is a dump valve switching with the SMB switch may be viable option. Of course just using the SMB for buoyancy might be a better solution though.

So far we've had several solutions given including shifting the air in your BC to the opposite side, dropping weights and using a SMB or drysuit for buoyancy. There is at least one more not so obvious answer that no one has given yet.

 

[k ellis]

Each situation is different. I don't typically conduct dives where I'm in front and a bunch of newbie divers are directly behind. I can see why it's entirely appropriate to check on the status of the novice who may have gotten kicked in the chops. That being said, based on the environment and what ground I've covered, if one of my fins happens to touch something, 90% of the time I'll immediately know what it was...even without looking. We've got a bunch of kelp here in SoCal, so there's really no need to look behind every time a fin touches something (probably a kelp stalk).

If I know that I'm clear of kelp, my fin hits something, and I'm not sure what I hit, I'll probably look back. One time I found a seal gumming my left fin with almost a sheepish look on his face. He would hide in the kelp, sneak up on me, nip at my fin, and then hide again. This game continued for several minutes, and I was happy to play along.

It also bears mentioning that, depending on the environment, it might not make a lot of sense to turn around to inspect what was kicked. Doing that can sometimes worsen the entanglement (fishing line, kelp stalk, etc.). Another option is to look back through one's legs. This is my preferred method of looking back since it doesn't entail so much neck-twisting, which can kind of suck in a drysuit.

Very true I should have mentioned the looking between my legs as opposed to turning around. Also your correct about knowing what your diving against. Such as inside of a cave its rather obvious what you kicked since all there is around you is rock.

My statement was aimed more so at diving in groups such as cruise ship diving which is more less the majority of my diving and I often run into seasonal vacation divers who dive maybe 4 dives a year.

Diving is something that requires a great deal of attention since often times are vision is so narrowly restricted to where perethial vision is non existant most times (with the exception to a handful of mask of course.) This is where its wise to get a dive brief on areas we dont dive often or have never dove before.

Cave Diver my deflator hose came off at the elbow.