Thought it might be interesting to hear about people's worst ever rebreather experience. Here's mine:
Had a very unpleasant experience in Truk Lagoon a couple of years ago. I was deep inside a wreck at about 140 feet diving on my old Inspiration Classic. Was squeezing between floors through a very tight hole. I got stuck halfway through. Both of my arms were stuck below the hole. The manual dil button was above the hole. The manual O2 button was below the hole.
As you can imagine, trying to get unstuck caused quite a bit of stress and effort. In the mess of it all, I managed to deplete much of the gas in my counterlungs. Because I had grown accustomed to diving my rig with the bypass valve shut off on my ADV, I really needed to add some more dil to my counterlungs manually. Unfortunately, my bailout was stuck above the hole as well as my manual dil button and the only thing I could reach in my current predicament was the manual O2 button. Not exactly what I had in mind at 140 feet! But alas, since my two dive buddies were already around the corner and down the hallway, I had to deal with it myself.
It was either that or die!
I eventually got unstuck, got my breathing back under control and was able to complete the rest of the dive. Fortunately, it only took a couple of minutes to extract myself to the point where I could do a flush and get back on my dil. Learned an important lesson that day - Even though I rarely dive with my ADV on, if I am going in tight spaces, I open the bypass and have that available as an option!
Anybody else have anything interesting to share that would qualify as "worst rebreather experience ever"?
Regards,
Randy