Be careful changing bottles

[Mick F]

A few years ago I posted about running out of air on a dive. I think it's worth reposting; you decide.

I always dived with a 15L 232Bar steel cylinder in my OC days. Basically because I'm a fat airhog. On this particular day I had used my 15L/232 on dive one, but we had no opportunity to refill cylinders in the SI, so I used a mate's 12L/300 for dive 2. I used the same weight belt as I had earlier & was very over-weighted for dive 2. I went through the air like no-ones business and at 80 bar after a 25M dive, I thumbed the dive.

I dropped my torch about 5M (20M depth) from the bottom & dropped back down to get it, spent a minute or two looking for it, found it & headed up. Now my buddy had a reverse squeeze so we had a very slow ascent.

I got to 5M with about 25 bar left. After a minute or two, my Poseidon Jetstream stopped. I don't mean it got tight in any way, it just stopped delivering air half-way through a breath. Thankfully I had signalled to my buddy that I was low, & he was ready and waiting with an octo. As he's a skinny git, he had loads of gas left, we finished out the stop & surfaced safely.

So then, no damage done, but what was learned.

No 1. Sort out your weights for your kit. I was far too heavy & raced through gas because of this.

No 2. Leave the damn torch down there after dropping it. It was a Beaver £20/€30 backup torch; not worth drowning for.

No 3. Either get a pony, or twin up. Get some gas redundancy and spread your eggs through your baskets.

No 4. Buy a rebreather. Never worry about running out of gas again.

OK the last one took me a couple of years, but seriously, redundancy isn't an unnecessary luxury on shallow dives. Except for a very attententive buddy, I was in trouble that day.

[Ivon]

Nice report Mick, there are to many dives to do to sacrifice for one.

Ivon