1st trip to the Hinkle

For my birthday dive we decide to head up the mainline at Ginnie. 3 divers with Makos head to the Hinkle. The plan is to drop the scooters before the restriction and continue swimming until we hit our turn pressure. Get to the Hinkle and my scooter implodes - I hear a low boom and my scooter (which I was just setting down anyway) drops into the rocky floor. I turn around to see who rammed into it (bad drivers in here?).. then I turn back and the front plate on the nose cone is letting out bubbles 8 :(
..... (Man do those things get HEAVY!)

We have plenty of air to get out, so this is more of an inconvenience than a problem. I had a stage to make up the difference between my HP Gen 100s and the larger tanks my buddies were carrying. I was a couple hundred pounds from turn and each of my buddies had more than that left.

Thumbs up - time to go home. Diver1 attaches my scooter to his butt D-ring (with my assistance - did I mention it got heavy?!) And diver2 tows me. Diver1 is behind us as we start to head back, since we didn't realize that he is now in the worst position. He is moving slowly and keeps dropping further back. We stop and wait, then continue, etc.

The problem is that with the scooter so heavy, the way it is attached it is pulling his butt down (did I mention it was heavy?). Through the lower passage he is cradling it in his legs to keep it off the floor. Once we realize what is going on diver1 gets in the lead. This is not a fast process. After bringing the scooter 800' or so out, diver1 has worn out his legs and is burning air. We decide to leave the scooter and come back to it with a better retrieval plan later.

We scooter out the rest of the way with no major events. Diver2 is still towing me and diver1 can now keep up with us.

**Improvements**

If we had clipped the scooter across someone's chest, like a stage bottle, we probably could have removed it from the cave.

If diver1 was towing me in addition to the broken scooter, I may have been able to help lift the scooter and in turn fix his trim. This would have been slow though.

**Recovery**

After arguing over dinner about who gets to go on the recovery dive to get the failed, water-logged, heavy scooter, we come up with a plan for pulling it out. We had a single tank adapter and wing. We attached extra long webbing and two D-rings to it. In the cave the removal went smoothly - attach the wings to the scooter and get it buoyant... the 2 D-rings on the webbing allowed us to clip it on like a stage bottle. Then just head out with scooter.

I had drawn the short stick and got stuck on shore waiting since we only had 2 scooters to use for the recovery, and 3 divers :(