Sunday, June 12, 2005

one way diving

Today I did a dive from Dive Tech to a little fishermans marina just about a quarter mile towards town. There is some great coral along there and so many fish.... I like making the one way trips on the rebreather, I see a lot better stuff. We just put all the gear in one car and leave the other at the get-out place and drive back and get in and dive to where the second car is.

Today I had an almost incident. I was at 145 feet and wanted to add some diluent and added O2 by mistake. Then I couldn't figure out why my PO2 went up (to about 1.45). So I tried to add another little squirt of diluent and added O2 again. My PO2 went up some more and I quit breathing and exhaled as I tried to do a dil flush but used O2 again. MY PO2 went WAY WAY up (Like 2.55 PO2) but I wasn't breathing it. Then I switched to my bailout gas and at the same time realized what I was doing wrong and did a flush using the correct gas and everything came back to normal. So I went back on the loop and continued on the dive. I never breathed any PO2 higher than 1.6 the whole time and the whole thing was over in seconds, but dang! It could have been a really really bad screw up! (You add O2 by pressing a button on your right and add diluent by pressing a button on your left, I was pressing the wrong button).

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Rich right, lean left". A great post there, Mark.

Good call for bailing out and resolving the issue to get back on the loop. Might be time to run a few drills again and reacquaint yourself with the operation of your rebreather. As Richard Pyle said, “Complacency kills.” I try and do skills every 20 hours or so on the breather.

Dave

June 13, 2005 4:40 AM  
Blogger MarkD60 said...

Yeah no kidding! That's EXACTLY how people get killed. One minute everything is ok and 90 seconds later you're dead! It was when I was reaching for my bailout that "Rich On The Right" popped in my head and it all clicked.

June 13, 2005 7:08 AM  
Blogger Sabine said...

Hi Mark - I followed your profile back here after you left a comment on my blog. Thanks very much. You're the first complete stranger to post there.

Great site, btw. Lots of groovy colours (I feel stoned just reading through it - at least I think I do, I've never actually been stoned) Lots of interesting pictures.

You worry far too much for someone living in such a beautiful corner of the world.

June 13, 2005 9:54 PM  
Blogger Chris & Cheryl said...

...did that scare the @#*&! out of you or what??? Glad you got it figured out though.

June 14, 2005 4:16 PM  

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