No joy in Muddville for me tonight.
I arrived at Spring Mill Pond, all set up to dive and having just had my tanks filled at my friendly Local Dive Shop (LDS).
I geared up, got into my undergarments and drysuit and went through all the steps to be ready to dive by the car:
attach light to belt; remove light top from battery canister; turn and insert light top into battery canister so the light top is active and ensure its sealed; Get compass and computer on; check each regulator is firmly threaded into the tanks and hasn't backed out; turn on right post; make sure center valve is full open; turn on left post.....and drat.
The left regulator started immediately very heavily free-flowing. So I try to adjust it and it doesn't improve. Give it a good smack and nothing.
This is the same reg that free-flowed on my last dive so I figured it would settle down. It didn't. I borrowed a wrench and took it off the hose and tried to tighten down the internal adjustment - no luck still free-flowing.
Fortunately there was quite a bunch of divers at Spring Mill Pond tonight and one of them was a regulator technician. I figured he'd have it figured out in no time flat. No such luck. Apparently its got something interesting going on and I'll need to take it into the shop and have it worked on, so no diving for me tonight.
Even thought my primary regulator was working, going in with a dead backup is a great way of having Murphy come calling and terminally wrecking your dive plan, so I wasn't going to get wet tonight.
On the upside, apparently the visibility was absolutely trashed tonight so I didn't miss much. Just as well it chose to act up during a minor training dive rather than on a charter on the Great Lakes.
No comments:
Post a Comment