Change your scrubber partII

wedivebc

I had my first brush with a CO2 hit and thought I would share it with everyone. I dive a dolphin/kiss and have about 30hrs in CCR mode and about 80hrs scr mode.
We were diving in Nanaimo and the dive plan was to involve a deep wall and wreck one day and then 2 wrecks on day 2 with the second being no deeper than 80ft. After day 1 decided my 1.7hrs scubber would do me another day. Water temp was in the mid 40s.
Due to wind conditions it was decided to do the shallow wreck first then see what happened with the waves. After dive one all was well and we decided we could duck in close to Gabriola Island and dive a steep wall under the bluffs. At the start of the dive I was not feeling great due to the rocking of the boat, the diesel smell from live drop off. I started down with my buddy who seemed to want to go really deep right off the bat. I should pause here and mention, I am not proud of the lack of pre-dive planning we excersized this dive. Anyway Ron's (oops I mean my buddy's) light was getting smaller in the depths and I was feeling rather uncomfortable with this. I paused at about 100ft and felt like it was hard to breath. I chalked it up to a little 'mal de mer' but kept my depth. My buddy finally ascended to my depth and I couldn't wait to go shallower. I can't explain it other than I felt uncomfortable. My desire to ascend was delayed by the fact we found an old submerged Volkswagen. This distracted me for a while but my discomfort grew. I had been noticing a difference in my PO2 monitors but since I had changed 1 cell the day before figured it was a calibration error. I started noticing a minor pain in my head and decided things might be going wrong. I ascended to 66fsw and did a dil flush to check my PO2 cell and my sanity. I actually felt less air starved so I was beginning to suspect scrubber problems. I thumbed the dive and we got back to the boat. I was curious so I tore down my unit. I had about a tablespoon of water in the exhale cl and some more in the cannister water trap, about 2 tablespoons in the inhale cl and some moisture on one of my o2 cells. The sofnolime had some purple but more intresting was the clumping. It looked pretty wet. In total I had about 3.5 hrs on the scubber. I believe I had some clear early warning signs of CO2 and I am glad I was able to experience such a mild hit so I will hopefully recognize the symptoms sooner next time.

cheers,
Dave...

Divechick

Hi Dave,
I didn't realise you had had a CO2 hit on that second dive. Glad to hear it was not too serious!

Nice to meet you and enjoyed diving with you in Nanaimo. We managed to get on the Cape Breton and do Burma Road the day after you left. I came up with a pretty big grin on my face after that!
Sarah

RonMicjan

Gee, and I thought that grin was cause we all noticed you stirred up less crud than Stuart....

that was a sweet dive, although we should name that route Leon's road, cause the usual burma version doesnt thread through the crewmans washroom LOL

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