EEEK!! Out of air

[malcolm smith]

Having recently had an out of air situation, I was wondering if others on the list have been there, and how the problem was resolved.
Mine was in a training situation, but I was assured after the dive, the situation was not a deliberate part of the training/attempt to kill me!!   --in case my emoticon handling is wrong, that is a joke!
Using manifold twins, just after having my long hose main reg returned after simulated buddy OOA, went to suck on it after blowing it clear of water, nothing there. Ha! part of the test----switched to backup on necklace and blew that clear with what little breath I had left. ARGHH no air from that either.
Quick scrabble to the left post valve brought no relief, and I really could do with some air.
Looked hastily round for a handy source of air, there it was below me with his back to me. Swam quickly down, span him round by his cylinders------and now finally for my point-----the only reg my low on air lungs could see, was, just as our trainers tell us, was the one in his mouth, soon to be mine!!
After a few frantic and wonderful gasps, the long hose kept me out of his face, he was on his necklaced backup and I had the leisure to have a good fiddle with the knobs, and after 1/2 a minute or so, all was working fine. He restowed his long hose and the dive continued-----not uneventfully , it was a training dive after all.
Lessons for me:
I guess if I had practised it regularly, which I don't, I could have tried for a breath from my wing inflate.
My need to breath would have been less urgent if I purged the reg by a brief freeflow, which I don't in cold water.
The standard dir style system of regs and hoses worked very well in a genuine although brief OOA.

A couple of friends had a genuine OOA a while ago, ie, one of them had breathed all his useable air. Same tunnel visioned grab for the reg in buddies mouth-----it was for sure the only one I could see-----standard short hose, shackled together in each others faces, and a rather hurried rapid emergency ascent, and much bad feeling afterwards.

Sorry for rambling on, but, should your buddy rush at you for air, you are likely to have a more stressful situation with the standard short hosed main reg and your pony/octopus in a place known only to yourself, in spite of the buddy check,  than if you long hosed it.

Any other OOA stories out there?
Cheers all, Malcolm.

[Davey Willo]

Glad to see you survived a genuine OOA Malcolm, it also helps proves the fact that a diver on his last gasp will nearly always rip the one straight out of the mouth of another diver... IMVHO the long hose and the necklaced backup should be mandatory equipment.

Did you find out why both of your regs failed to give air, was it genuine or percieved? (easily done under stress) you say that afterwards you continued the dive, what was the problem?

BTW I believe the art of breathing from the wing inflate would require that your right post be still delivering air, you have to press both the inflate and purge buttons simultaneously for it to work

Best regards
Dave

[malcolm smith]

Hi Dave, I still don’t know what the problem was, but the regs will be serviced ASAP. They have worked fine on a few dives since then.
Genuine or perceived? Amounts to the same thing when it happens :-)
You are right regarding needing the right post 1st stage working for wing breathing. With the luxury of hindsight, I feel I should have had the presence of mind to at least try it, or at the very least to have blipped the purge buttons on the regs.
I guess this has made a really good course into an excellent one-------it’s made me think!!
I expect we all do hundreds of dives on autopilot and then one crops up every now and then that cranks the brain cells into action.
Cheers, Malcolm.

[Hobby]

On page 3 of the Medical forum is a thread entitled"Wreck Salvage..." Toward the end is an account of an interesting OOA situation.
When you went to your back up reg did you check that someone had'nt turned your air off? Having dived with the people that I have that would have been my 1st thought!
In the event of a freeflow you should be able to manually turn your air on/off at will so you can obtain gas from the cylinder in question.
Same for your redundancy .Seems fortunate that there was someone else around.
Hope you get to the bottom of it!
Hobby.

[Davey Willo]

Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] (malcolm smith @ April 06 2003,11:26)]Genuine or perceived? Amounts to the same thing when it happens :-)

LOL!! too true mate, anyway I'm glad that your reaction was the correct one, too many could of bolted for the surface in a similar situation, nice to know you had the presence of mind to actually head away from the surface down to the diver below you... sounds obvious I know, but a gasping for air induced panic can prove fatal simply because logical thought process's go out of the window... it proves you controlled the situation and turned what could of been a serious incident into a spinchter loosinging lesson in survival.. well done that man


Best regards
Dave.

[Mark Chase]

<font color='#000F22'>Good points above

You did well to think logicly enough to head down for your buddies air rather than the obvious up.

Have also to totaly endourse agree etc with the long hose from mouth of donar diver and kneckles rig should be standard idea, as mentioned above.

Yellow octo on short hose in chest triangle is a totaly rubbish idea and potentialy dangerious for donar and recipient in equal measure.

My wifes uses this system and I tolerate it coz she only dives with me and I am on a twin set. I use a flimsey plastic clip that will snap with a good pull in any direction or relese in the corect direction but I still dont like it and the hose is too short encouraging too close a contact with the buddy which IMHO induses further stress to the situation.

My wife often dives on my 2m hose when she gets down to 70bar and we are still enjoying the dive and she is comfortable finning allong beside me. I encourage this practice as it gets her used to swaping regs and reducis the likley hood of panic in a real OOA situation.

Got slagged for doing it by the dive guides in the Red Sea they didnt like it at all.

I can only asume that the valves were only one turn on so the reduced tank presure caused the regs to offer greater resistance to the breathing. On manifolded twins this would obviouslt affect both regs at once.

A problem that dosent affect twin independant tank users.

Next thing is if you atempt to turn the air on and turn it the wrong way by mistake (very easily done) you just make things worse.

If you were able to eventualy sort it than that appears to be the probelm. The likley hood of a mechanical failure on both regs at the same time is not worth discussing so I doubt if servicing will gain you much.

Still well done and thanks for proveing that it CAN hapen,

ATB

Mark Chase

[darlodiver]

The long primary hose and neclaced ochy makes good safe sense to me, is this the DIR config and is it used on singles as well. presumably not just a 'tekky' thing?.
A thought provoking read, thanks guys.

[Mark Chase]

<font color='#000F22'>I use the long hose on singles as well but I have to confess that I dont have an occy on the main tank as I will always carry a pony so I just have the reg on the pony as back up. It can still be necklessed thow if you mount the pony on the wing too.

The ONLY reasion I do this is that I dont dive singles very often and dont like constantly striping and re configuring my 1st stage so I just use the long hose primery first stage and a deco reg on the omny swivel for the pony.

If I were to dive singles more often I would rig it with an octo.

ATB

Mark Chase

This reminds me of an incident with my missus in the Red Sea on the Thistlegorm.
When we dived her I said at the beginning that I was emptying the tank to get the most time on the wreck. I led her round and arrived at the shot spot on with 20 bar and started up.By the time I was at 4m and had done a safety stop I was at 10 bar. She on the other hand had stopped at 8m and was looking down at the other divers on the wreck. She was quite happy hanging there while I waited for her to ascend so I could surface.
Eventually I completely ran out of air so I decided that I would be better off going down to her than popping up and leaving her. So I swam down, tapped her on the shoulder and signalled OOA. She gave me a blank look. I signalled again, another blank look! At this point I reched over and grabbed her octo and once it was in my mouth comprehension dawned in her eyes! &nbsp; &nbsp;We both went up and onto the boat, the guide was unimpressed at 0bar and 10bar &nbsp;
On my part i should have let her know I was getting so low and she needed to practise signals &nbsp;

[Digger]

Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] (Rubber Johnny @ April 14 2003,13:40)]When we dived her I said at the beginning that I was emptying the tank to get the most time on the wreck.

[quote]

I hope you're joking, but I get the sneaking suspicion you're not. Great dive planning, resulted in an emergency. If i were the dive guide, that would be the last dive you did with my company...

Just think what would have happened if your wife's supply got knackered at the bottom. You're both in the shit, and neither of you have got enough air to safely get to the surface.

You shouldn't have needed to let her know you were that low, because you shouldn't have been there.

I hope you don't plan dives like that any more. Then again, Darwin has a theory. I'm told he does awards, too.