4 Failure's in one day - Should've stayed home...

brockbr

My dive day started out in my garage at around 6:45a, assembling my KISS Classic. As I assembled it, I was putting on the counterlungs. For those unfamiliar with the KISS, the counter lungs are actually Mountain Safety Research (MSR) water bags. The connection to the head is a ring that is attached to the port on the head, and threads onto the orifice of the counter lung.

Since the seal only sees ambient pressure on both sides, the ring doesn't have to be very tight - Just snug, and only with your fingers.

As I snugged the ring *with my thumb and index finger*, I heard a crack - this it what happened:


"Damn" I thought. I don't have a spare. Well it turns out, since these are made from MSR bags, I do have multiple other water bags around, and specifically, I had a "Camel Back" that uses the same cap, only better construction. I modified it to work, and it turned out better than factory. Failure #1, Fixed.

If only the next 3 were as simple

The Mask (and Dil)
To start with, my dive buddy (diving doubles and a pony) and I were on dive #2 of the day. The plan called for dropping to 70', then swimming towards a particular feature (which was a little deeper), we'd meander around, and eventually turn back and reverse course.

On our way down, when we hit 70', my mask began to flood. "No big deal" I thought, just clear it*. Although I tried many times to adjust it, it wouldn't seal and started to flood non-stop (the seal ended up having a tear in it). Being a good student of my tech instructor, I had my back-up mask in my drysuit pocket. I asked my buddy to hold while I switched masks. This went off pretty smoothly, and I got my back-up on, and my other mask stowed.

While I did this, my back up started to fog - We had dropped below a 56*F thermocline. As I tried repeatedly to clear it and de-fog it, it wasn't any use. I got close enough to my buddy to show him the problem, and we turned the dive. I grabbed his leg cave-style and he led me back.

Switching masks was no problem; trying to keep a little water in the backup and defog - No problem. Being led back blind to the platform - Again, no problem. Once we got into the 30' range, the warmer thermocline allowed the mask to stay usable and I surfaced on my own.

No problem, right? I'd made it back after trying to keep my failing mask clear (using tons of dil*), and successfully swapped masks (using a TON of Dil*) and turned back to the platform.

Once I got back, since we had only been under a few minutes, we still wanted to get our dive in, so I ran up and grabbed a new, identical mask.

15-20 minutes later we submerged a second time. This time, I had a working mask*.

* - In case you haven't noticed, I burned a TON of Dil to this point

The Dil and BOV Failure
We dropped down again - Same dive plan. Once we got to 70', we found the road bed and dropped to 110'. We cruised around for about 10 minutes in the moonscape having a GREAT dive.

Then, as we went a little deeper, I tried to kick in the ADV by taking a deep breath - I noticed it didn't sound right. I tried again - and it was like drawing on a dead cylinder. Then it hit me - I'm out of Dil - I had burned it all up previously with my mask adventure, and *hadn't checked it* before submerging again.

Ok - No big deal. So long as I don't go any deeper, I can make it out no problem. But at this point, I wanted to make sure my buddy knew the problem. I stopped, and wrote via my wet notes "No Dil - No down - Only Up". He responded that he understood.

At this point, we turned the dive not wanting to incur a deco obligation.

As we turned, I hit my inflator on my wing, and it sounded normal. This got me to wondering if my Dil was OK, but my ADV was broke.

Thinking this, I thought the best way to check if I had Dil was to quickly swap to my BOV and check.

BIG ***mistake***

After I got bubbles from it using the purge button, ***I inhaled WATER through the BOV*** - Not a full inhale of course, but it made it to the back of my mouth before I was able to spit it out.

At this point, I was 80' down and simply testing my BOV - NOT expecting to get a mouthful of water

Since I had taken a somewhat cautious breath anyway due to the fact I wasn't sure I had Dil, the water, although shocking, didn't cause a problem - I exhaled enough* to get the water out, then switched back to CCR - * = another mistake. Now the volume in the loop was very low.

This is what the BOV looked like when I got it out of the water and on my workbench:

(Side note: I pre-breathed it BEFORE I submerged, and I purged it before trying to breath off it at depth...WHY did it fail?!?! Compression of the dead space as I descended, causing the diaphragm to be sucked in??? Not having enough Dil to properly purge it (which would have fixed the diaphragm???))

That mistake led me to a predicament - I didn't have enough loop volume, and I couldn't add O2 to add volume without spiking my pO2. This is all happening at 80'. I was also worried that I didn't know how much further we'd swim at 80' before it got shallow, and I didn't want either of us to incur more of a deco obligation.

I turned to my buddy and signaled "Question", then "Reel". He responded with "Yes", and I asked him to shoot his bag. While he was getting ready, I told him to "watch" me, and I switched to my RBS, which is a sling mounted AL80. Since I was getting short on breath, and didn't want to push the loop further, I decided to fully bail out prior to ascent. I got on my OC, and he shot his bag.

I covered the top of the line with my hand, while he reeled. We stopped at 30' for 1, then 20' for 1', then slowly went to the surface.

As we passed 20' I signaled to him that I'd have to orally inflate my wing - He gave me the Ok and that he'd "watch" me. We got to the surface, and I switched between OC and manually inflating my wing.

Eventually, we got up and floating.

In the end, everything turned out just fine. My screw-up of running out of Dil, and then being compounded by my BOV failure, didn't turn bad (surprisingly) and all of my training and my buddy's training to that point was used appropriately.

In hindsight, we didn't exhaust all options, and used the one's that made the most sense, given my failure at the onset.

Strangely, in a weird way, this event has taught me that something breaking isn't the problem, but how you handle it is the key. Having backup's is important; Having procedures is important; Having communication is important; Having a tuned-in buddy is important.

And a special thanks to my buddy for doing what buddies are there to do.

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robinfante

Defogging my backup mask is one of those things I do very haphazardly, but ounce of prevention/pound of cure. Your story inspires me to get on that more diligently.

As I'm sure you realize, an option if you had wanted to stay on the loop would have been to just blow some dil into it from your offboard. But like you said, you weren't out of options and picked a nice solid one to get you home.

Good post, thanks for taking the time.

jkaterenchuk

I too have heard the heart sinking sound of the cracking cap while securing the CL. The ability and ease of a fix is one of the nice things about the Kiss.

What BOV are you using....not the Paragon I hope. (no need to answer i see its the Mares Proton from another posting)

John

Skipbreather

First: "That which does not kill us makes us stronger."

Second: Good on ya' for telling the tale so that others might learn.

Third: Excellent example why (generically) having ability to plug in bailout to loop is good equipment rigging.

Lastly: Bailout is a GOOD thing to have when the dive goes to "organic fertilizer". :D

sadave

Thanks for sharing, glad to hear you made it back ok.

Question... do you have an SPG on your dil?

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Stephane

To avoid this, put a hose with a BC connector on your bailout regulator. You'll be able to inflate your wing and your dry-suit if you run out of diluent.

brockbr

Good point to bring up. I did have a low-pressure inflator on my RBS rigging but opted not to use it in this case. One reason I wasn't worried too much about my buoyancy was because my drysuit is routed to a completely separate 2L Argon bottle:



My thought process was to not complicate the situation any further by trying to swap inflator lines. Since I had a fully functioning redundant buoyancy system, I felt sticking with that was better.

In hindsight, I wonder if that was the right choice?

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lizardland

The ring isn't taking much strain, you can still dive with a broken ring if the lung is secure. I broke mine in the first week and changed it about 4mths later when the whole face finally came away

If you get home without any dramas then it's the right choice :D

Cheers,

Stuart