Posted by Chuck Tribolet on May 11, 2005 at 17:09:21:
In Reply to: Out of Air Situations - Here's my experience, what's yours? posted by Anonymous on May 11, 2005 at 11:32:39:
I've had to donate air once. It was at Outer
Pinnacles in Carmel Bay. Top's about 70' where
we were, interesting stuff starts at 90' and it goes
to 110'. I was on Nitrox with an HP100. My buddy
was on air with steel 72. Since he was on air,
I left one of my two computers on air so I'd have a
feel for where he was. After a while, I was around
2000 PSI, but my air computer was getting up around
the yellow, so I checked his gauges. His computer
still had some bottom time left, but his SPG said
500 PSI. We were at 90'. I thumbed the dive NOW,
we swam to the anchor line, and (with some effort)
convinced him to take my octo BEFORE he was OOA.
I got three lessons from this:
1. Hoovers live.
2. Get your buddy on your gas supply BEFORE he
runs out. As long has he has a little gas left,
if another problem crops up (like he looses
buoyancy control), the new problem is easy to
handle rather than fatal.
3. An octo is too short. This event convinced me
to go to the long hose and necklace.
I've personally gone OOA twice, and both times I
knew exactly how much air I didn't have.
The first time was about dive #9. My much more
experienced buddy made a 180 degree navigational
error at the end of the dive, and we ended up
against the cliffs instead at the outside of the
kelp bed. I swam out at 10' watching my SPG,
ready to surface as soon as the breathing got
stiff. That happend at about 200 PSI, just as
I came out from under the kelp.
The second time I was sitting on the bottom of a
pool flipping numbers on a strobe test target for
Northern California Underwater Photographic
Society. It was clear that the SPG wasn't going
down after about 2300 PSI. So I just kept flipping
until it quit and swam the 8' to the surface. I'm
glad it happend in a pool and not in the ocean,
but it was clear that something was wrong.
Chuck
knew exactly how much air I didn't have