A Day of Trying to Dive
Jason and I set out fairly early for the sea wall to get in a morning dive as the water looked great out there and the tide was mostly still high. With the recent huge swings in tides, think like 6 feet type deal), planning your dives with the tides is becoming more and more important.
So gear is all set up and hoisted on and we are just about to head to the water when, Boof! Screaming hiss and me going "Turn it off! Turn it off!". That was the sound of my O ring on my tank exploding and all of my air leaking out. Now for any one who has experienced this, it scares the crap out of you. We all know its just air in the tank but things are hissing and exploding behind your head, primordial fears kick in I tell you.
So Jason shut off the tank, we ungeared, got out our save a dive kit and fixed the O ring. We assumed it was messed up from the fill station or some such. We have has O rings leak before and replaced them for that so its not all that uncommon. The exploding is, the finding a bad one is not.
So geared up again we make it down to the water, in the water, fins on. Boof! Screaming hiss and this time me just reaching back and turning my own air off. Still a bit shaken with the repeated near head explosions but now I am mostly just pissed. Many curses that might shrivel your ears were uttered and back out of the water, back to the car and back to the save a dive kit.
Regear and back again to the water, though this time I let Jason put the O ring in and he put my reg on to remove any sort of Crystals a Morron from the equation. At this point we assumes, one O ring was the fill station and one O ring was me putting something on funny. Enough said, this time all of that has been removed from the equation we head out to start the dive.
Things are going well, no leaking and we are under the water. We start to descend to 35 feet and tool around and what do I head. Bubbles. Lots of small bubbles. Not normal leaking tank bubbles, but lots and lots of tiny bubbles. I stick my hand above my head and feel lots of bubbles. I get Jason's attention and he makes the surprised face and starts pulling off his spare reg and shutting off my air.
That might I add is a bit nerve wracking. You have no idea how bad things really are, after all its all happening behind your head. And if things are bad enough to turn off my air, things were probably not good. But since you don't want to run a tank dry its for the better to shut it off before this happens.
In any case we practice an emergency ascent on his octos and abort the dive. LOTS of curses are now happening. I take care of my gear, its all new gear and damn it, now I am not diving. Clearly something is wrong with my gear and so its off to the Marina to ask them, why is my crap broken.
First off, it is never good to head "I have never seen that happen before". Its just not comforting. You want to hear, "Oh, this is an everyday problem. Simple fix." But the Marina determines its not my tank it must be my reg and since my reg is from Torii (Tank Marina) I need to go there to get it looked at.
Off we go to Torii to get it looked at. I get to Torri and they wander off with my reg and after a while come back and say "Its your Tank". Insert more curses here.
After a little discussion about, Kadena cleared my tank and you cleared my reg... some one is wrong we came up with a novel idea. Its the O rings. All the O rings were from the same save a dive kit. Torri said they got in a bad batch and assumed that the Marina probably did too.
So $2.00 expensive fancy last you for ever O rings are purchased for our tanks and two spare O rings in case some how some one messes up the good ones. But by now, the tide is super low. No way to dive most of the sea wall now. Or most places for that matter, its just that low.
So its to Obligato for lunch and then home for a nap to wait for the water to come back.
Round about 4:00 we start to pack up the gear and head on out. Get a call from Justin and now our dive party becomes 3. A Dusk and a night dive are planned. We group up and head on out to Maeda.
To kill the suspense the O rings all hold for these dives.
The dusk dive goes well, though we should have brought our lights down with us as we hit the stairs pretty much in the dark on the way back. But Maeda has a lot of stairs... ::whines:: and with all your gear its a long way to the top... and heavy... and and and... no one wanted to. So that was that.
The dusk dive was nothing that special really. A nice and pleasant dive, though dark at the end. But the night dive that followed was pretty good with a huge cuttle fish being spotted, lobsters, a sponge crab, also HUGE, an anemone hermit crab, an eel, a baby cuttlefish, an octopus and I am sure a few other odds and ends. A pretty nice dive with a lot of critters that came out.
So despite the day starting off poorly for diving it ended well. I wont mention that we could have done two tanks at the sea wall and two tanks at Maeda had things not gone so wrong... but any hoo...
So gear is all set up and hoisted on and we are just about to head to the water when, Boof! Screaming hiss and me going "Turn it off! Turn it off!". That was the sound of my O ring on my tank exploding and all of my air leaking out. Now for any one who has experienced this, it scares the crap out of you. We all know its just air in the tank but things are hissing and exploding behind your head, primordial fears kick in I tell you.
So Jason shut off the tank, we ungeared, got out our save a dive kit and fixed the O ring. We assumed it was messed up from the fill station or some such. We have has O rings leak before and replaced them for that so its not all that uncommon. The exploding is, the finding a bad one is not.
So geared up again we make it down to the water, in the water, fins on. Boof! Screaming hiss and this time me just reaching back and turning my own air off. Still a bit shaken with the repeated near head explosions but now I am mostly just pissed. Many curses that might shrivel your ears were uttered and back out of the water, back to the car and back to the save a dive kit.
Regear and back again to the water, though this time I let Jason put the O ring in and he put my reg on to remove any sort of Crystals a Morron from the equation. At this point we assumes, one O ring was the fill station and one O ring was me putting something on funny. Enough said, this time all of that has been removed from the equation we head out to start the dive.
Things are going well, no leaking and we are under the water. We start to descend to 35 feet and tool around and what do I head. Bubbles. Lots of small bubbles. Not normal leaking tank bubbles, but lots and lots of tiny bubbles. I stick my hand above my head and feel lots of bubbles. I get Jason's attention and he makes the surprised face and starts pulling off his spare reg and shutting off my air.
That might I add is a bit nerve wracking. You have no idea how bad things really are, after all its all happening behind your head. And if things are bad enough to turn off my air, things were probably not good. But since you don't want to run a tank dry its for the better to shut it off before this happens.
In any case we practice an emergency ascent on his octos and abort the dive. LOTS of curses are now happening. I take care of my gear, its all new gear and damn it, now I am not diving. Clearly something is wrong with my gear and so its off to the Marina to ask them, why is my crap broken.
First off, it is never good to head "I have never seen that happen before". Its just not comforting. You want to hear, "Oh, this is an everyday problem. Simple fix." But the Marina determines its not my tank it must be my reg and since my reg is from Torii (Tank Marina) I need to go there to get it looked at.
Off we go to Torii to get it looked at. I get to Torri and they wander off with my reg and after a while come back and say "Its your Tank". Insert more curses here.
After a little discussion about, Kadena cleared my tank and you cleared my reg... some one is wrong we came up with a novel idea. Its the O rings. All the O rings were from the same save a dive kit. Torri said they got in a bad batch and assumed that the Marina probably did too.
So $2.00 expensive fancy last you for ever O rings are purchased for our tanks and two spare O rings in case some how some one messes up the good ones. But by now, the tide is super low. No way to dive most of the sea wall now. Or most places for that matter, its just that low.
So its to Obligato for lunch and then home for a nap to wait for the water to come back.
Round about 4:00 we start to pack up the gear and head on out. Get a call from Justin and now our dive party becomes 3. A Dusk and a night dive are planned. We group up and head on out to Maeda.
To kill the suspense the O rings all hold for these dives.
The dusk dive goes well, though we should have brought our lights down with us as we hit the stairs pretty much in the dark on the way back. But Maeda has a lot of stairs... ::whines:: and with all your gear its a long way to the top... and heavy... and and and... no one wanted to. So that was that.
The dusk dive was nothing that special really. A nice and pleasant dive, though dark at the end. But the night dive that followed was pretty good with a huge cuttle fish being spotted, lobsters, a sponge crab, also HUGE, an anemone hermit crab, an eel, a baby cuttlefish, an octopus and I am sure a few other odds and ends. A pretty nice dive with a lot of critters that came out.
So despite the day starting off poorly for diving it ended well. I wont mention that we could have done two tanks at the sea wall and two tanks at Maeda had things not gone so wrong... but any hoo...
Labels: Diving, Justin, Maeda Point, Obligato, Seawall
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