Trip Report: 03/26/11 Boynton Drift Dive

[ScubaDadMiami]

We had a close call yesterday, and it didn't even take getting into the water for it to happen. Hopefully, Hello Kitty will post the photos soon for all to see.

As we were about to suit up for our dive, we heard a pop with the sound of a major gas leak. When it happened, I saw a small cloud coming from Terri's rebreather. She did a quick valve shut down, and started taking off the first stages from her Meg to change the o-ring out.

Apparently, we came very close to having an oxygen fire break out. When she pulled the first stage from her oxygen side of the unit, the the small piece of o-ring that was left was pretty well burnt. Worse, the edge of the DIN connector was missing a good sized chunk, and had completely burned through. This was indeed a very close call!

The weird thing was that this didn't happen when opening the valve. The unit was just sitting there on the engine cover cushions when it happened. The cushions had a nice burn mark on them afterwards.

[tecterri]

Here are pics of the first stage that was damaged . . . We still do not know what caused the flash fire. I had done both a positive and negative test at home with both gasses on, drove to the dive boat with the gasses off, prebreathed the unit on the boat and it sat there with gasses on for 5 plus minutes while finishing suiting up. I'm having Mark at Fill Express take a look at the tank this week.

It was great seeing you and Arial (sp?) !!

[MarcLaukien]

This is scary! Did you find out what caused this?

[ScubaDadMiami]

My guess (and it is a guess) is that the o-ring (where the DIN connector rests against the base of the valve) blew, and then the high flowing gas against the small void lit up the o-ring.

[Tienuts]

Those pics are tiny and hard to see. Any shots of the o-ring?

Are you sure there was actually ignition? I'm certainly no expert in fire, but I would think if there was actually a flame on the cushions, with flowing O2, there would have been a major blaze, and we'd all be diving the wreck of the Underwater Explorer.

[netmage]

I think any ignition went out the vent port in the valve, directly into the can... The anodizing certainly took a hit... You'll see it tomorrow...

[ScubaDadMiami]

I think any ignition went out the vent port in the valve, directly into the can... The anodizing certainly took a hit... You'll see it tomorrow...

Do you mean against the outside of the can, or do you mean that you found issues inside?

[netmage]

Do you mean against the outside of the can, or do you mean that you found issues inside?

outside,...