Getting out of a Sticky Situation August 10, 2019
Posted by Chris Sullivan in Equipment, Technical Diving.Tags: Decompression, Diving, Dry Suit, Scuba Equipment
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Having to answer the call of nature during a long technical dive is commonplace. Good hydration is considered important in diving, especially decompression diving, so restricting liquids is not a great idea. When diving in a wet suit, the solution is obvious once you get your mind around it, but dry suits aren’t quite as accommodating.
Back in the day, the solution was adult diapers (a.k.a. “nappies”). Now we have P-Valves. I’ve had one on my dry suit for the last 3 or 4 years and wouldn’t leave home without it. For those unfamiliar with the device, the dry suit will have a valve on the upper inside thigh which can be opened and closed by the diver from the outside. A tube is attached to the valve, with a fitting on the end that goes to a ‘condom catheter’ (for male divers) which takes care of the skin to tube connection. Thankfully this catheter is external, but the downside is that it uses glue to maintain its grip. The catheter need to be applied carefully so as (a) not to entangle hair in the glued inner surface, and (b) to have sufficient area of contact to maintain the integrity of the connection throughout the dive to discourage leaks. A further complication is that the strength of the glue can be inconsistent.
When it works, which is almost all the time, it works beautifully, providing much needed relief to the diver. Once the dive is over, though, the catheter must be removed. The method I learned early on was to wait as long as possible (several hours) to let the glue weaken, and then give it a steady pull until it came off, which meant walking around with it long after the dive. I heard recently of a friend who couldn’t remove his until the following day!
Another friend, an EMT (a.k.a. paramedic), recently gave me some alcohol prep pads and told me that the alcohol would neutralize the glue. The pads were tiny, about 1cm x 2cm and I wondered how such a small amount could work. Well it worked like magic. Working it around the edge in circles gets it off in seconds. I was truly amazed and delighted and now the pads are an essential part of my cold water diving kit.
Diving in the News, October 13, 2012 November 12, 2012
Posted by Chris Sullivan in Miscellany.Tags: Adventure, Belize, burst disc, Diving, Diving fatality, Diving Rescue, hydro test, hydrostatic test, Rescue Diver, SCUBA, Scuba Diving, Scuba Equipment, Scuba Tank, Sport, tank explosion, VIP, Visual Inspection Program
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Unfortunately the weather has turned cold and I have to content myself with writing about other people’s diving for now…
A UK Diver received a bravery award at Buckingham Palace for rescuing another diver in trouble. No doubt that he saved his fellow diver’s life. The people that I dive with wouldn’t hesitate to do the same thing, and every one of us has done some “minor” rescue of a fellow diver, rendering assistance before they got themselves into real trouble. I’m glad I dive with people like that.
Also in the near miss category is another diver drifting away in Florida. This one was rescued by a fisherman. The diver had a safety sausage with him. That’s a good idea when diving in the ocean. A little further South from Juno Beach we dove in some fierce currents on the offshore wrecks. If you’ve got a decompression obligation you could end up surfacing several miles from where you started if you had nothing like the wreck or a line to hold on to.
My first glimpse of this story revealed the name “Amigos Del Mar” and I immediately thought of the dive operation in Cabo San Lucas with the same “Friends of the Sea” name. It’s probably a pretty common name for dive shops in the Spanish speaking world, and this one is in Belize. An employee of the shop was killed by an exploding scuba tank while filling it. While these incidents are rare, they are mostly preventable with good maintenance. The article speculates about faulty gauges and faulty compressors putting too much pressure in the tank, but I doubt it. If a gauge consistently read low, people would start to notice when they attached their regulators to tanks that had been filled at that station. A one time sticking gauge might have been the problem, but more likely it was a fault in the tank caused by daily use in a salt-water environment with insufficient attention to inspection and maintenance. Tanks also have burst discs that blow when they are overfilled, which is supposed to be below the pressure used in their hydrostatic tests.
Diving in the News, Sept 29, 2012 September 29, 2012
Posted by Chris Sullivan in Emergencies, Miscellany.Tags: Adventure, Diving, Diving Accident, Diving fatality, Outdoors, SCUBA, Scuba Diving, Scuba Equipment, Scuba Instructor, Scuba Training, Sport, Training
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OK I get it I think. The son of Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek, also called Eugene, is a diver. His project cleaned up trash from the L.A. River and made art about it. Good publicity and awareness I think but not my thing. Not that I’m not for cleaning up the bottom of our inland waterways, and not that getting public awareness is bad, and the sculpture they created is actually pretty good. So OK, I like it…. I guess.
Paris Hilton scuba dives. Lately in Maui according to Twitter. Perhaps I’ll run into her on a dive boat some time.
You can now go scuba diving in the virtual world with Google who have mapped the coral reefs in Google Earth, but c’mon now, get up off the couch and do something real, for Pete’s sake.
Speaking of Los Angeles, there were some more older diver deaths this week. A 59 year-old woman died near Anacapa Island, which is about 150km North West of Santa Catalina Island where I dove several years ago. Also reported was a 55 year-old ex-Mountie who died in Alberta. The accident may have begun with an equipment failure. A 45 year-old diver in La Jolla, California died. It seems he was diving alone. Another 45 year-old diver from Wichita Falls died diving in the Roi-Namur, in the Marshall Islands Kwajalein Atoll.
A 35 year-old Oregon woman drowned after surfacing from a dive, only 50 feet from shore. She was out of air, but on the surface. We all have two options that don’t require air. One is to drop the weight belt, and the other is to orally inflate the buoyancy compensator. Maybe more training is needed on these skills. OK if you’re a tech diver you generally can’t drop a weight belt, but then again you shouldn’t run out of air, either.
I was somewhat shocked that a couple had to close their diving business in the Ozarks because of the planned dumping of mining waste containing lead in the pristine lake they used for dive training. What a shame. It says here that this was done under the direction of the Environmental Protection Agency.
Over the Atlantic in Cornwall, England, a diver found a camera underwater and discovered that the chip holding the photos was intact. The (non-waterproof) camera had 800 family photos and once the story got out, it was reunited with the owners. That story reminds me of how I was involved in connecting the underwater memorial for Maureen Matous with the family who’d lost it in Cozumel several years ago.
Justin Timberlake is afraid of sharks, but Jessica Biel helped him overcome his fear. She probably have that effect on me as well.’
That’s all for this week. Let’s be careful out there and don’t dive beyond your experience and training unless you’re with a qualified instructor.
Another Apeks Quantum Failure September 9, 2012
Posted by Chris Sullivan in Equipment.Tags: Adventure, Apeks, Apeks Quantum, Brockville, Dive Computer, Diving, Enriched Air, Nitrox, Outdoors, SCUBA, Scuba Diving, Scuba Equipment, Sport
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My replacement Apeks Quantum failed less than a year after I received it. It’s great that I get a new one but it costs about $60 in shipping and handling each time so it’s getting to be pretty irritating. This time, it decided to start eating batteries. I noticed at the beginning of summer it needed a new battery even though it was only about 6 months old. Then again on last weekend’s dive it was too weak to dive it. I happened to have a brand new replacement with me and used it on the next day’s dive on the Oconto, but on the surface interval it was obviously dying again so I didn’t use it on the Kinghorn later than day and took it to Divetech where they said it could be replaced for another $60.
I think when I get the replacement I’ll sell it to someone who doesn’t read this blog and maybe even spring for the new Shearwater Petrel. That would give me two functionally identical computers and I would no longer need to carry decompression tables.
Apparently the Quantum is made by Seiko, and is also rebranded under several other manufacturers’ names including Dive-Rite, although though don’t seem to carry it any more but have a 3-gas model that looks similar. The Tusa Hunter looks identical, but the Cressi Archimede II is a bit more stylish but recognizably the same design. Cressi always seems to be more stylish if you’re into that – I’m not – and their motto is “Scuba Diving in Style”.
I’ve reset more bent Quantums (or equivalents) than I can count, usually because the diver using it as a backup computer didn’t figure out how to switch to the deco gas. That happened to me once too. The trick is to hold the left button down for longer than you think is necessary. If you don’t hold it down long enough, it will switch back to your back gas.
The other Quantum trick is that after a reset it goes into metric. If you dive in Imperial units you need to go to the DIVE/GAGE screen and hold the left and right buttons down for 5 or more seconds.
Tech Diving Mag September 7, 2012
Posted by Chris Sullivan in Diving Books and Films, Technical Diving.Tags: Adventure, DCS, Decompression, Decompression Sickness, Dick Bonin, Diving, Dominican Republic, Outdoors, SCUBA, Scuba Diving, Scuba Equipment, Scubapro, Sport, Technical Diving
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I found some interesting articles in this free on-line magazine. It’s worth a look (thanks go out to my dive team member Rob for the pointer). There are 8 issues so far. The articles are contributed by the readers and are of excellent quality. Issue 8 has articles about decompression sickness and treatment, margin for error in decompression tables, solo cave diving, cave diving in the Dominican Republic, and an interview with Dick Bonin, founder of Scubapro. I haven’t read the others yet, so they will make for some good reading on my commute to and from work (don’t worry, I go by train).
Diving the Oconto September 4, 2012
Posted by Chris Sullivan in Dive Log, Shipwrecks, Technical Diving.Tags: Adventure, Apeks Quantum, Brockville, Decompression, Dive Computer, Diving, Dry Suit, Oconto, Outdoors, SCUBA, Scuba Diving, Scuba Equipment, Shearwater Predator, Shearwater Pursuit, Sport, St. Lawrence River, Technical Diving, Vickery, Wreck Diving
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The Oconto lies in US waters a little upriver from the Gananoque bridge. It is actually just across the channel from the Vickery, and it was suggested by the owner of DiveTech that we could actually cut across the bottom from the Vickery to the Oconto by heading in the direction the Vickery’s mast is pointing. We decided to wait until next year for that adventure. Crossing a current at 190-200′ on air is not something to be taken lightly.
After finding my Apeks Quantum dead the day before, I installed a new battery, and set it up for gauge mode (bottom timer) with decompression tables written out and stowed inside a ziploc bag in a pocket on the belt of my harness. My primary computer was the ever-reliable Shearwater Predator, with Rob diving his Cochrane (plus a Quantum) and Matt using a Uwatec.
After verifying that the large shoal marker was the correct one (about 12′ square at the base) we approached in the dive boat and the three of us dropped into the water without anchoring. Like the one near the Daryaw, an Osprey was in its nest on the top of the marker and didn’t seem very happy to see us. We were also a bit downriver when we entered so we had to swim against the current wearing our doubles and stage bottles which was a bit of a workout. The bottom was shallow around the shoal marker (think about it!) and we were able to stand up and catch our breath before submerging.
We were told there was a line leading down to the wreck, but the only line we saw at the marker ran around about 1/2 its perimeter. We were also told we would go down to 30′ then up again to 10′ before going down the wall. This was also wrong, a fact not lost to us when we hit the first ledge at 54′. There is a lighthouse across the channel a little bit upriver, so our team of 3 headed off in that direction with Matt in front using his compass.
Using the narco stops plan we came up with the night before, we stopped at that ledge for half a minute or so. At 74′ I saw a line attached to a block and signalled it’s presence to Matt and Rob. We stopped again at about 100′ for another narcosis break and planned to the same at 150′ but instead ran into the Oconto at 141′ and did it there. The change in light level below 100′ was very apparent. We headed down the port side of the wreck, away from the wall and swam around and under the spars extending into the channel. Further down the wreck, and towards our maximum depth it closed in further and Rob, who was still under the spars at that time decided to turn and come to the outside at just about when I started signalling him to do just that. Wreck penetration at 175′ on air is not very safe – but without a line and on the first visit it’s just foolhardy, and I’m glad that I don’t dive with fools.
There was a large boiler on the bottom, and a couple of anchors that were nestled together. We circled around the end (or what we thought was the end, we think it actually goes further and I’ll let you know the next time we go there) and we were back at the starting point 15 with minutes into the dive. Starting at the port side, with the current pushing us along was the correct decision, as there was less current on the return trip when we were swimming between the wall and the wreck. Even so at one point I saw Matt swimming fairly hard and I cautioned him to slow down as I was concerned about his air consumption.
Now back at the bow, we checked our air and had enough left (with reserves in place) for a little more exploration and agreed on 22 minutes total bottom time (the initial plan called for 20-25 minutes). So we played around the first 30′ of the bow about more before starting an fairly uneventful ascent bang on our planned time. Unfortunately Matt cut a small hole in his dry glove hanging on to the Zebra Mussel-infested rocks, but at least it gave him the opportunity to give Dive-Tech some more business. I’ve been with lots of dry suit divers who have flooded their gloves and it’s one of the reasons I use wet gloves, even though it sometimes limits the temperatures I can dive in.
Rob and I on the other hand spent the 10 minutes or so on the 10 foot stop feed Zebra Mussels to the Gobies, and even a small Perch got into the action. We surfaced right where we started with huge smiles on our faces and our dive boat about 20 feet away. A fantastic dive with none of the narcotic weirdness of the previous day.
Dive time was 56 minutes, 22 minutes bottom time, with 18 minutes of that on the wreck. Maximum depth was 178 feet.
Adjusting the second stage August 8, 2012
Posted by Chris Sullivan in Equipment, Technical Diving.Tags: Apeks, Black Pearl, Diving, Egress, SCUBA, Scuba Diving, Scuba Equipment, Technical Diving, TX50
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My Apeks TX50 second stage came back from service a little too “hot”. It leaked slightly unless the venturi control was screwed at least 1/2 way in. The first thing I did was check the intermediate pressure coming from the 1st stage (an Apeks Black Pearl*). To do this I borrowed a pressure gauge from my local dive shop, immediately noticing that it consisted of a standard workshop pneumatic pressure gauge with a standard 1/4″ fitting fitted with an adapter for a standard inflator hose. I have to find me one of those adapters.
The IP was 130 psi (~9 bar), which is fine. So next I simply unscrewed the 2nd stage from the end of its hose with an 11/16″ wrench and gave it a 1/4 turn clockwise. This stopped the leak, and it breathed fine on the surface, but I observed that the flow when pressing the purge valve was weak. So it back it off an 1/8th of a turn (or maybe a bit more) and then it was perfect.
* Those of you familiar with the Black Pearl might be wondering why I had a TX50 second stage on it. The story started on a recent trip to Tobermory Ontario where I was about to dive the wreck “Forest City” in my doubles. My doubles setup as 2 Apeks Tek 3 regulators with a TX50 second stage as the primary, and an Apeks “Egress” (more about that later) as the backup second stage. When setting up my gear on the boat, I noticed the hissing coming from the TX50 and swapped it with the Black Pearl second stage (like a souped-up TX200) , and haven’t changed it back.
The Egress is a reasonable regulator for it’s purpose. It has no controls – and I’ve compared it to a backup ‘chute. You don’t need (or even want) fancy stuff on something that’s only there to take you to the surface – and I’ve breathed it at deeper than 150’ without undue effort. Having said that, and with some deep diving coming up, I’m planning to use the TX50 as a backup second stage on my tec setup, even though that leaves my poor Black Pearl second stage with two Egresses. The Egress points straight up when mounted on a necklace and invariably free flows when I jump in the water from the dive boat in the Tec gear (it’s fine with my recreational setup where it’s pointed in a different direction). That’s enough to make it less desirable for technical diving where one needs to aim for perfection.
Tidying up the Tec Gear August 4, 2012
Posted by Chris Sullivan in Equipment, Technical Diving.Tags: Adventure, Deco tank, Dive Light, Dive Reels, Diving, Light Monkey, OMS, Outdoors, SCUBA, Scuba Diving, Scuba Equipment, Sport, Stage Bottle, Technical Diving
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Using a dry suit as secondary buoyancy is all the rage these days, so a single bladder BC is all that’s required. I see the point, but that precludes warm water technical diving in a wet suit. I like to feel the water when I’m in it, and I also move faster in a wet suit, so I’m sticking with my double bladder OMS BC. On the other hand it’s time for some changes, so I’m about to spend a bit of money to make things better. This is the plan.
- I’m ditching the oversize OMS “no-sag” pockets. They’re just too large. I could use them to carry weight, two lights, a spare mask, a pocket camera and Jon line, plus a bit more no doubt. The problem is the drag, the difficulty in reaching things, especially with gloves on, and that they would get in the way when attaching stage bottles to the D-Rings. I stopped using them a while back but before I do any serious technical dives I need some stuff to carry the spare parts.
- So the first things are cheap, a mask pocket and a Jon line pocket. I’ll see where to put them when I get them but the mask pocket will go on BC belt on the right hand side (I don’t wear a weight belt with a wet suit – no need), and the Jon line I hope I can mount near the tanks. It’s only used at the end of the dive so it can be out of the way most of the time.
- Next, it’s time to ditch the lights in pockets. For that, I already have one light that used 3 C cells and is tied to my shoulder strap with a clip and a bungee. The second light, I plan to invest in a wrist mounted self contained unit. I’ve see these up to 1200 lumens which is almost good enough to light up a stadium and no canister is required.
- Then, I will buy commercial (Halcyon, most likely) stage bottle rigging instead of the metal units and home made rigs I have now. I’m not convinced that I’ll ever be at risk of being trapped by rigging that can’t be cut with a knife, but having a non-removable ring around the neck of the tank means it has to be drained to be taken off, which has proven to be a pain. The commercial kits are maybe 10-20% better than the home made ones (at least as well as I can make them) in my opinion and I’m willing to pay for that extra 10-20%.
- Finally, in Florida last April my reel slipped off my belt, D-ring and all, and by the time I went back to look for it, it was gone. So I’m buying a Light Monkey 400′ reel. It will be a nice upgrade and I have high hopes it will operate more smoothly than the OMS reel it replaces (and much more smoothly that the one I borrowed to penetrate the Spiegel Grove).
More on this when it arrives.
SDI Comes to Town March 17, 2011
Posted by Chris Sullivan in Equipment, Technical Diving, Training.Tags: Apeks, Dive Computer, Dive Training, PADI, Scuba Equipment, Scuba Instructor, Scuba Training, SDI, TDI
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The owner of our LDS has some SDI and TDI instructor certifications, but has been 99.87% PADI for years. He also has some IANTD certifications, but as I wrote long ago I started the IANTD Advanced Nitrox Course, but switched over to PADI Tec Deep mid way through. All my certs except Open Water Diver are PADI, although I did the SDI Solo Diver course but the card is lost in process somewhere.
Today (writing this on March 5, publishing later) Steve Moore from SDI/TDI gave the instructors and some other pro staff a presentation on their courses and standards, and also showed us some of the products he represents from Edge and Hog, which are recreational and technical product lines respectively. These products are aggressively priced and may be a signal of greater competition in the dive industry.
Edge and Hog Wares on Display
Throughout the presentation Steve gave dive shop pricing, but even taking that into consideration the costs were low. A lot of the gear was styled along the same lines as the Apeks equipment that I use, but parts are not interchangeable. The Hog (technical) regulators were similar to the ATX50, although they also had an end port which is handy for us dry suit divers. I use the Tek 3 these days which has all ports between the valves on the doubles and pointing downward so I don’t have to have a weird routing of the dry-suit hose.
He then started the introduction to SDI/TDI. This started with the announcement that Doug Arnberg was no longer the Eastern Canada Regional Manager. No explanation was given. I imagine I’ll hear the story sooner or later.
Pitching SDI/TDI in a PADI Shop
So here as some of the things I heard that make SDI/TDI different from PADI.
- In general, fees and materials cost less. This is why Steve was here in the first place. The problem for instructors though is that we are unlikely to give up our PADI memberships so we’ll end up paying for both.
- Open Water courses are computer based. All divers have to have a computer, which means the shop has to have them available for rent. The instructors would like them integrated into the console to cut down on losses. That may not happen.
- Training curriculum is similar (emphasis on RSTC standards) but is less rigid than PADI.
- Except for Open Water training, more than 3 training dives are allowed per student per day, as long as the dive profiles are reasonable. As many training dives occur in quite shallow water, this is quite reasonable and gives greater flexibility to the instructor. Mind you, students will get really tired after the 3rd dive.
- Instructor certifications don’t require Instructor Examinations by the agency.
In the end, the decision will come down to the specifics of deal.
I'm Listening, but Still Not Convinced
Recreational Diving with a Shearwater Predator March 7, 2011
Posted by Chris Sullivan in Equipment, Technical Diving.Tags: Adventure, Apeks, Apeks Quantum, Cochran Computer, Cozumel, DCS, Decompression, Dive Computer, Diving, Enriched Air, Gradient Factors, Nitrox, Outdoors, Presbyopia, SCUBA, Scuba Diving, Scuba Equipment, Shearwater Predator, Shearwater Pursuit, Sport, Technical Diving, Trimix
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My second Apeks Quantum developed a problem last summer. The first one just died, but this one has developed the common problem (that my friends have seen) which is that the depth gauge becomes unreliable. Mine will suddenly jump to 10 feet shallower than I am, beeping mightily about the astronomical ascent rate. So while I’d normally take the Quantum on a trip where the water is warm and clear, with purely recreational dives, I elected to take my tech diving computer, a Shearwater Predator, instead.
The Predator is a great dive computer. Mine used to be a Shearwater Pursuit and was upgraded once the Predator was introduced. The main differences between the two are the OLED colour display (vs. LCD monochrome) and the Bluetooth communications to the (free!) logging program (vs. Infrared). Both features make a big difference to the operation of the computer, especially the nice bright OLED display on someone whose close-up vision isn’t quite as good as it used to be due to Presbyopia.
Predator’s have technical diving features like multiple mixed gases (5 gases for the open circuit version, 5 more for the close-circuit version), flexibility for decompression schedules, underwater gas switches and changes, etc. It lacks features that recreational computers have, especially the audible alerts and the safety stop counter. I don’t mind missing the audible alerts. I’m good at scanning my computer and other gear. Also, I like to guess what I’m going to see before I look at the computer and my air supply, so I develop a good mental picture of my situation.
I use the Predator with a conservative decompression algorithm (GF 30/85, which is actually the default). The Quantum, at least for the NDL calculation, is less conservative and my diving buddies figure it’s around GF 88/88). The tough guys at in the dive club who use Cochran Computers have them set to about 100/100, by the looks of it. The 30/85 setting means that it will go into mandatory deco stops sooner than most of its recreational counterparts. So unlike the rules that new divers are given, if you use a computer like this you either have to abide by a very short NDL or accept the deco stops.
It’s probably no surprise that I usually do the latter. In the 18 dives I logged in Cozumel I didn’t go past 6 minutes total decompression obligation. Most of the time it was 2-3 minutes, sometimes nothing. It is my belief that a 3 minute 10′ deco stop with a conservative algorithm is more or less equivalent to a safety stop. If miss, the chances of DCS are greater but that’s also true if you miss the safety stop. So in effect, I’m just getting the additional discipline of a safety stop that my computer calls mandatory. Once I’m done the stop(s), I’ll stay a while longer to get some additional safety margin or surface – slowly of course.
Getting well into deco is an entirely different matter. 5 minutes is about all I’ll do with recreational equipment. If I have to escape to the surface I’m probably going to be OK, which is as much as you can say for missing the safety stop on a less conservative computer. Any further pushing of the limits means carrying additional redundancy to make sure that I have the means to complete the decompression under all foreseeable circumstances. That’s why we have technical diving training.
Disclaimer: This is what I do. You need to understand all the facts and risks to make your own decisions about what level of risk is acceptable to you. I certify that this level of risk is acceptable to me at the time of writing, and that’s all.
Chronicle of an older diver 