.<SNIP>>
> PS C'mon guys, there've got to be a bunch of tales out there.
>
Two times come to mind.

1) On a training dive where I was the DM for an OW course (or one of them -
I had a buddy team to tour around a really nasty pit) I was so busy being
sure that their gear was OK that I did not pay enuff attention to my own.  I
jumped in the water and promptly got a mouthful of water.  Odd I thought and
tried again.  Water again.  So since time was burning, I put the 2nd of my 3
regs in my mouth and trundled the new divers off to the platform where the
instructor was waiting.  After the instructor was done we went off on our
'tour' of the pit.  I stopped at one point and sat them down on the sides of
a submerged hot tub and took the cover off the 2nd stage that was breathing
'wet'.  There was a semi-circular hole chewed in the exhaust diaphragm.
Amazing how much the bugs like silicon.  And the two OW students probably
thought this is one crazy DM taking his regulator apart UW.

2)  Diving in Pompano Beach off of the Seahorse. Three of us jumped in for a
drift dive. As I was drifting down, I noticed a weight belt plummeting to
the bottom (I lost sight of it before it got there.)  When I looked up, I
saw one of my buddies had lost her weight belt.  The other (on her first
ocean dive after OW) was looking apprehensive to say the least.  For the
next few minutes, I juggled weights among the three of us until everyone had
enough to stay down.

CH