Greetings Angelo,


>       Kinda quiet these past few days - either people are outdoors diving
>or indoors daydreaming about future dives (sadly, I belong to the latter
>group) and in case you're also part of the unfortunate group here's
>something I'd like to ask.

         It could be worse, you could be diving in the painfully cold, zero
viz waters of Illinois with no www diving planned until October, but the
real bad news is that things will go wrong when you are diving and most of
them will be things that you aren't prepared for.  Fortunately, PADI's and
Lee's advice, "Stop, think, and act," should see you through all your
difficulties even when the cause of the problem isn't immediately
apparent.  More to the point of your first question, I had a sudden
buoyancy problem just last month and while I stopped and acted, I fell down
on the thinking part; here's my tale.  (Also, here's hoping Lee or Mika
aren't reading this, or they'll start to think I'm jinxed and half-witted.)

         I was facing up shooting video of my buddy while she was taking a
picture of a barracuda underneath the dive boat when I suddenly became
buoyant.  I lifted my Air II and pushed the deflator button but no air came
out.  Then I let the video camera hang from its tether on my bc and reached
back to my dump valve and pulled that - no sound of air and no bubbles.  I
was now having to kick down to keep from ascending and wondering, "What the
heck is wrong."  Since the upward pull was decidedly on my right side, I
decided that air was trapped there and was somehow getting blocked from
getting to the dump valve or the bc hose, so I turned my body so that the
left side was higher than the right and pushed the deflator valve again,
still nothing.  Then I swam to the hang bar and clung to it for my safety
stop while gently kicking down, and that's the position I took for the rest
of the ascent.  (Thank goodness nothing looks more dignified than a fat man
ascending feet first.)

         The protocol on this boat is to hand up your camera, hand up your
fins, and climb up the ladder, so I managed to get back to my spot still
thinking there was something wrong with my bc.  DUH!!!  It wasn't until I
took off my weight belt that I realized that a six pound bag of shot had
pulled open the Velcro in one of my weight belt pockets and dropped to the
bottom (the shot bags are considerably larger than a six pound lead weight
and the pocket would barely close) while I was shooting my buddy and the
barracuda, and since it happened at the end of the dive when I'd gone
through about five pounds of air, it made me uncomfortably buoyant.  If
this were in <Skin Diver>, they'd probably make it into something life
threatening, but it wasn't; it was just one of those little irritations
that you have to expect when you dive.

         The ironic part of the whole thing was that I started travelling
with my own weight belt after I had to chase a rental one with a bad buckle
that fell off me.  (Fortunately, I wasn't on a wall, or I might have had to
surface carrying a coral head - I need an embarrassing amount of lead on my
weight belt.  :-))  In that case, what happened was immediately obvious,
but I intend to continue travelling with my own weight belt albeit with the
realization that sudden buoyancy doesn't always mean a bc problem.

         BTW, in my experience slow leaks into the bc from the inflator
hose are one of the commonest equipment malfunctions, and when it happened
to a buddy of mine several years ago in the BVI, no less than three people
reattached her inflator hose to her bc without letting her know.  (What's
worse is that I was the first to do it.)  It must have irritated her, but
her demeanor never changed; she just kept dumping the air in her bc and
unattaching her inflator hose.

         Well, I've got lots more tales of difficulties underwater, but I
won't post them for fear that nobody will buddy with me next June at the
2002NEDfest.  Ciao.


DPTNST,


John

.