JB Scooter/ reg failure

[akcaver]

A friend and I decided to scooter to Avalanche Alley after getting directions from Edd, seemed simple enough. We decided to scooter to 2500', breathing stages to a max of half+ 2, and then swim sixths maximum. Got to 2500' no problem, about 20 minutes after entering the water. Dropped our scooters and stages (to my suprise, still had 1900 psi in it!) and went up and found the jump. Put in the reel and arrow, then proceeded to see brand new cave (at least to us)! It was gorgeous! Especially the room where it opens up maybe 150' after taking the jump. You could tell most people dont go there. Took a wrong turn at the huge breakdown pile, turned around after about 100' and found the right line. It was amazing, you could look down to the right and see the passage where we took the wrong turn through holes in the breakdown. Gorgeous. Turned maybe 100' from the end of the line, not too sure. But then after a minute I swtiched regulators (sidemount) and had a reg failure! My second stage came loose from my swivel as I took it off my necklace. Tried to hand tighten it real fast, without much luck, so I closed the tank valve before I lost too much air. Tried tightening the connection again, but it still leaked air bad when I turned the tank back on. So I kept it off, breathed the other tank and made myself calm. Gave my buddy the "lets get out pretty damn fast" signal, and we were on our way. Got back to the scooters (I still hadnt hit my thirds (1/6ths x2) on the good tank, which was good) and started breathing the stages. I breathed it all the way out, had about 18 minutes of Deco on oxygen, for a total of 102 minutes runtime. Scootering is cold in a wetsuit, but the dive was well worth it. We made it out safe, and turns out I didnt lose much air out of the tank. Lesson learned: I will now include a crescent wrench as part of my dive gear. If a connection becomes loose, I might not be able to tighten it enough to keep the tank on. With a crescent wrench I could. I still would turn the dive in that incident, but it might make the gear still usable without loss of air. Hope this doesnt happen to anyone else!
Cheers,
Andrew

[Kelly Jessop]

Sorry for the mishap. One thing I did a long time ago was eliminate 2nd stage swivels because of that problem. There is a company called M&J Eng that sells a fixed 90 that works great.

[Wizard]

Always check the hose and swivel nuts every so often, they can and do work loose.
After you tighten it, put a dap of yellow paint on the nuts, you can see if they start to move by the marks not lining up.

Andrew, don't scare me like that. From your post's title, I thought you had both a scooter failure and a reg failure.

[Serota]

I am just getting ready to start learning to SM, so please excuse if this is a naive question: wouldn't it be good to have a "Y" or "H" valve with an extra regulator on one tank to deal with regulartor failures? I guess it would be a bit cumbersom, but would allow one to replace a failing reg. on either tank.

Thanks.

[rjack]

I am just getting ready to start learning to SM, so please excuse if this is a naive question: wouldn't it be good to have a "Y" or "H" valve with an extra regulator on one tank to deal with regulartor failures? I guess it would be a bit cumbersom, but would allow one to replace a failing reg. on either tank.

Thanks.

Why not just share gas with your buddy for a few minutes and move the good reg onto the tank with the broken reg?

[Jay]

Wow!

Don't jinx me now Andrew! I have been using the same swivel for ...ahem, 18 years !!!

At least 1200 dives on this same one.

[Serota]

I am just getting ready to start learning to SM, so please excuse if this is a naive question: wouldn't it be good to have a "Y" or "H" valve with an extra regulator on one tank to deal with regulartor failures? I guess it would be a bit cumbersom, but would allow one to replace a failing reg. on either tank.

Thanks.

Why not just share gas with your buddy for a few minutes and move the good reg onto the tank with the broken reg?

I was thinking of a solo situation, but yes, with a buddy the plan you mention should work.

[akcaver]

Why not just share gas with your buddy for a few minutes and move the good reg onto the tank with the broken reg?

Yes, that is an option, and I had thought about it if need be. But with the stage i was fine. One could potentially swap the regs solo if you can hold your breathe for a minutes time, or however long it takes you to unscrew one reg and screw it back into another tank.

[rjack]

Hey I'm just glad you didn't have a scooter failure too! That's what I thought initially