Equipment Failure

[Davey Willo]

Alrighty, heres a question that has been prompted by someone who really annoys me at my local club...

This bloke an assistant club instructor there and dive's a single, I don't think he even owns a pony as I've never seen it but I've only been in his company on shallow dives so couldn't guarantee it.

The other night after the pool session I happened to mention that I'm moving over to twins, and he gave this smirk which at times I'd really like to smack straight of his mush and asked me why I wanted them and then proceeded to state that twinset divers think they are cool cos they have two tanks and yet generally dive the same dives as him and yet he's only ever needed his single.. Not quite sure if this was a wind up or not cos his logic was beyond belief, I started to try and discuss the benefits of a manifolded twinset, benefits that would be just as useful on a 20m - 30m dive as would the deeper stuff.... when he looked me in the eye and basically said.... "Who do you know who's had an equipment failure? go on tell me, I bet you can't"... well you know one of those times when you're really angry and you can't think straight... that was one of them... I couldn't think of an incident.. I realised there and then that spluttering some sort of poor answer was not going to do it and decided that arguing with this guy at that particular moment was only going to make things worse and so decided to shutup shake my head in dismay and collect evidence of regular equipment failures experienced by divers so that I could go back to him all cool calm and collected and debate the subject in a controlled manner before I then grasped his windpipe and slowly choked the f*cker into unconsciousness.

So... I've already looked at BSAC incident reports, but what I'd really like is stories a plenty from you old dogs who've been doing it for years and if it hasn't happened to you do you know of any incidents, if so I'd love for you to relate some stories here.

Thanks everyone
Dave.

p.s. Guy's.. I'm also gonna post this on the darkside... I'm not sure If I'll get a nice long list of stuff or get flamed to death..... wish me well..... I'm going in!!

[MATTBIN]

Put it another way Dave, IF you get an equipment failure would you rather be on twins (even a Pony as I do) or a single. Tell you what you might not get a second chance to re-appraise your kit. Go for redundancy, if you dont ever need it, great. If you do, even better, cos you've got it.
Like why do I wear a seat belt/decent  crash helmet, hopefully I'll never need either, but just in case. The other blokes a tosser!
Matt

(Edited by MATTBIN at 12:17 pm on Oct. 17, 2002)

[Davey Willo]

Cheers Matt but your preaching to the converted ;) I'm going that way for sure, I just wanted some good stuff to hit this bloke with and real tales instead of scenarios will be a lot better ammo, thanks for the reply tho mate

Dave

[Dominic]

What counts as kit failure? I've had a torch flood (but keep working) and a weight belt come off... that's about it.

I've had friends with massive freeflows, broken regulators, computers going "fzzt" during a dive, and all sorts of other things.

Your friend's logic of "It hasn't happened yet so it never will" reminds me of the man who fell off a cliff and, having dropped 200 feet without incident, assumes that hitting the ground will also be perfectly harmless...

[Gavin Yates]

Alright Dave,

Mate of mine (won't name him without asking) doing a wreck in the Forth. He's a sensible and well prepared diver who also keep his kit up to scratch, well mainatined etc.

He's diving single 15 plus pony, his bud is on single 15.

They finish their dive to 40m plus (on air I know ...) (and have clocked up about 18 mins of decco). No probs up we go they agree.

Bang - my mates main reg goes freeflow (water temp is about 6 degrees) he switches to pony and despite trying to switch off to allow a thaw it's too late and all the gas is gone from his main.

They start ascending and get to 16m for their first stop. About 3 minutes into decco my mates pony freeflows. He grabs buddies AAS and go to 6m to finish off. After about two minutes of this gas is down to about 15 bar and they decide to hang on as long as they can. When they started to suck the remnants dry they both ascended have missed maybe five-seven minutes of stops.

They're both stressed, shook-up but not dead.

A bit of 02 on the boat and no symptoms. Cool.

Verdict - "The pony wasn't great but the few minutes of gas probably stopped me getting bent", "With twins I could have shut down and not lost all me gas in the first place", "Thank god I had a great buddy that was with me all the way .. ffs we were lucky."

Hope that helps Dave.

[Davey Willo]

Thats exactly the sort of thing Gav, cheers mate

[MATTBIN]

Gavin
"My mates pony freeflows"

Invert and shut/open manually so as to save as much gas as poss., whilst still using it, might have given a few more minutes. Glad nobody was hurt though, might have been even better if the other guy had a pony as well.

Matt

[Hobby]

Was hoping it was you on here as I can't post on the Darkside and can't be bothered signing up again!Anyway,Treardurr Bay in the summer,HP hose blew without warning on one of the twins,Andy Dales,helpfull guy he is turned it off for me while I swore at the goddam thing.Interesting thing was is that it was on my primary reg(Scubapro)not my battered old Manta I used as a secondary,as soon as I heard it I thought it'd be the old Manta but no.Don't know the morale of that one-expect the unexpected!I get the impression Dave that this guy may have an answer for anything,what effect it has on novices I dread to think.Lets see,I've seen a 2nd stage diaphragm absolutely blown apart,don't know how it happened but the skipper keeps it to show people.Freeflows due to freezing abound altough he'll probably tell you it's due to technique(some undoubtedly will be!).Straps of all types can break,light giving devices powered by electrickery love water as Dominic says.The most spectacular one I've seen personally was a commercial diver whose suit inflation jammed open,allowing him to do an impersination of Bibendum.While it all gave us a bloody good laugh it could have been potentially very nasty.Suits, especially zips,I've had a zip fail on me,I've seen one lad's fail when he hit the water doing a rig evacuation drill,this is'nt as much of a problem on a neoprene suit as it is on a membrane type.Seals particularly neck seals may split when under stress,that's fun too.Have been involved where equipment has resulted in a fatality,not really through failiure but misuse(it failed to do what the diver thought it would).I'll have a look round for some recorded examples,have a look on the CDG's website too as there maybe something usefull there.Hobby.

[Gavin Yates]

Matt - nice drill theory.

Difficult when your being pushed by swell, controlling your boyancy by breathing into the inflator etc. Also he had backmounted his pony so no shut down poss really.

Do you backmount or side-sling?

[Andy Winterburn]

Dave
Might not fit exactly what you mean, but whilst diving with a relatively inexperienced diver who had just bought some 'new' 2nd hand kit, at the Farnes recently when he suddenly grabbed my pony reg. Cheeky Bas***d I thought, use your own air, and he had loads, I could see it on the guage 80 bar plus. At the surface, including stops, he explained that his guage had jammed and he was out of air.

The problem I think you will find is that only dead divers have a problem with equipment without a form of redundancy. The rest of us only have a tale to tell.