tyler368•13d agoProlific Poster

Blew a valve at 120 feet off Louisiana coast last Tuesday

My drysuit inflator stuck open during a pipeline inspection and I shot up 30 feet before I caught it, scared the hell out of me and now I'm double checking every fitting before splash, anyone else had a runaway inflator?

2 comments

2 Comments

xena_williams13d ago

That "double check before splash" thing you mentioned @wade_young86 is key. I had a similar scare a few years back, but with my suit dump valve freezing open during a wreck dive off the coast. I went from 90 feet to 50 feet before I got it sorted, and my heart was pounding. What worked for me was switching to a dedicated inflator hose with a separate shutoff, not the cheap combo hose they sold with my suit. I also started doing what you described, flooding the suit at the ladder and checking the exhaust, but I take it a step further. I'll do a full buoyancy check at 10 feet, hover there for a minute, and make sure every valve works right before I drop deeper. That little ritual saved me from another runaway later on.

wade_young8613d ago

Honestly, I gotta push back a little here. That 30 foot ride sounds terrifying, no doubt, but blaming the drysuit inflator alone might miss the bigger picture. Tbh, I've been diving around South Pass for ten years and most runaway inflator issues I've seen come from guys not doing a proper pre-dive buoyancy check before they hit the water. Ngl, if you're already at 120 feet and your inflator sticks open, that's a problem you should've caught on the surface when you were testing everything. I double check my inflator by fully flooding my suit at the ladder, then using the exhaust valve to dump air, and only then do I start adding gas. That way, if something's off, I know it before I'm even underwater.