At 02:20 PM 1/31/2003 -0800, Ed wrote:


>Diving with my son many years ago his BC failed. He did a giant stride off
>a boat, I followed him. After we dropped down a few feet I noticed he was
>sinking in a cloud of bubbles. Where the inflator attached to the BC had
>separated comletely. It was an old Parkway(?), he wasn't a happy camper,
>and wouldn't dive again till he had a new BC.

         At the risk of having no dive buddies in Fiji, I'll have to admit
this too happened to me since it happened in the presence of Mika and
Lee.  At the same time my depth gauge filled with sea water, and a crack in
my mask put it in a condition of continuous flooding.  As I swam along,
pinching shut my bc hose and continually clearing my mask, I was suddenly
overtaken by an underwater existential angst, a high pressure yet
depressing concern that I wasn't enjoying the dive and that I should take
the step of ending my dive.  What???  Abort the dive???  I'd never aborted
a dive before; but I guessed it was okay, George Irvine allows it; maybe
not on a weenie dive like this, but he allows it.  Anyway we were in a
slight current and the dive boat was following us, so I let Lee know I was
leaving and let Bjorn's super long scuba tuba fly up to the surface.  The
dive boat was there when I surfaced, and I got aboard.  Thanking the DM for
taking my camera I said, "Excuse me, my humiliation for the day isn't quite
complete," and bending over the leeward gunnel (gunwale Wisconsin style,
not the fish), I  attempted to attract some fish to the dive site.  I don't
believe in luck, and I have my equipment overhauled annually, so I guess it
has to be that that stuff under the tails four or five standard deviations
out was happening.


DPTNST,


John