Thanks for your answers. So it seems that besides getting cold and having a hard time getting out of the water, a flooded suit doesn’t really affect the diving portion, assuming your wing has enough lift to adjust buoyancy. Good to know, I thought it would be quite an event, up there with gas loss or scooter failure.
Dry suit failure
My first time diving dry was at Gilboa Quarry. I did not zip up the inner zipper. (Blonde) After about 20 minutes and feeling water sloshing in my feet I realized what I had forgotten to do. By the time I got to the exit it took took several people to help me out of the water I looked like the Michelin Man
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roadkill
Depending on the failure and how much water you take on - speaking specifically to a shell suit - it can throw your trim out of whack. I had a 2 inch rip in the leg of my suit when 2,000'ish back in a Texas cave while scootering. I flooded pretty quickly and therefore my legs were definitely negative on exit. That made scootering a bit inefficient to say the least.Originally Posted by LMN
David Moore
JWEP, GSEP, OCDA
I was taking a side-mount class in JB, I had a trilam DUI suit. I was a newbie drysuit diver. I had too heavy of undergarments on, and the suit was already a bit too small for me. I managed to get into the suit. When I was zipping it for the 2nd Dive, the undergarments were not tucked fully in, and I pulled the zipper over part of the material. i pulled and pulled and then backed off the zipper. was able to get it fully closed (so I thought....)
During the pre-dive discussion, I could feel like water was some-how around my hip area... I thought maybe its just sweat as I was so stinking hot from all the undergarments I had on....Ignoring this we went under, and he had us doing the basic skills for this class.
About 30 min into the dive, i was really feeling cold. I also was starting to have major buoyancy issues. kept having to push off the bottom..... when I was feet down, head up to get off the bottom, i could feel the water sloshing around in my feet. I added a bunch of gas into my suit to help me w/ lift. As I added the water I could hear gurgling inside my suit, as the air was going into the suit.. not good....
Instructor (Edd) was raising his hand like get off the bottom. I did the best hand signal I could for Im cold and suit is leaking...
At the cavern area, after a brief 3 min stop, I had to inflate my wing fully and kick to move towards the shore area. I get there, and was so hard to move around. I had gallons of water in my legs.
During the dive debrief, I started shivering, and Edd is still talking to us.... He is telling us what we didn't do correctly, and then he gets to me, and was saying why I kept pushing off the bottom, what my signals were, and how the first dive was so much better..... I said I believe I flooded my suit... he told me my lips were starting to turn blue....
I had to slowly walk my way up the shore area to get out, and looked like I had huge edema legs. Edd helped me un-zip the zipper and water poured out.... Edd said some-thing funny about the zipper.... to help relief the situation a bit...
I had to lay down in the grass near the picnic tables to get the water draining out of my legs. the zipper ended up being ruined by zipping over the undergarment.
So adding air to your feet did or did not help with trim and buoyancy? That’s kinda how I thought I would deal with a major leak around the seals or zipper: just add some air where it can be trapped to provide some buoyancy if very negative. Of course that will mess up your trim and may be difficult to vent on ascent. Last thing I’d want in such a scenario is losing my fins when the suit balloons.
The weight of the water in my legs was pulling me down.... adding air to the suit helped inflate it in my chest and arm area, so it helped a bit, but I looked more like a OW diver diving at a 45 degree angle, feet down head up.... legs were so full of water, and SO heavy..
My fins stayed on, angling my feet helped keep them on.
Why didn’t you add air to your feet? Was it because you couldn’t get head down at all?
My guess is he couldn't. Unless one has something like a decent line to hang onto, to get yourself inverted to get air in the leg area, it would be hard. Going to the bottom and holding onto a big rock would work as well.
He said that he was a newbie DS diver.
"...some night, in the chill darkness, someone will make a mistake: The sea will show him no mercy." John T. Cunningham
"Experience is something you get after you needed it."
"...some night, in the chill darkness, someone will make a mistake: The sea will show him no mercy." John T. Cunningham
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