Capt. Steve-

I have no doubt that in your experience as a dive boat captain you have 
just about seen it all, more than I ever will. But I have seen all of 
these failures on my trips at one time or other and just about all of 
them were on single tank divers with no ponys.

If the problem was discovered underwater what I always heard was "when I 
saw the bubbling/free flow/air leak I called the dive and came up". No 
fatalities. I have never had anyone tell me "thank god I had my pony 
bottle". Wait, I take that back, one guy did say that he got into his 
lobster hunt so he sucked his main dry. Thank god he had his pony bottle, 
huh?

There was this one guy I dive with who almost died because he stuck his 
pony reg in his mouth and ran out of air on the bottom. Fortunately he 
did not panic and figured out what he did before it was too late. He now 
uses doubles.

All these failures you mention below are detectable or preventable 
through regular gear maintenance and inspection. I still think that a 
pony represents the "don't learn how to drive, just put bigger bumpers on 
your car" approach to dive safety.

And I have also received a couple of guilty private emails of folks deco 
diving with a single and pony and wanting suggestions as to switching to 
doubles. I am happy to see that *some* people on this list are seeing my 
point and understanding my argument. I have renewed faith in my fellow 
divers.

 Jim

Sender: Wahoodiver@ao*.co*  Date: 1/18/99 5:06 PM

>In a message dated 1/15/99 10:39:40 PM Eastern Standard Time,
>cobber@ci*.co* writes:
>
>> You are then narrowed down to failure of the neck Oring, something I have 
>>  never seen or heard of happening before until Wetlands post. And the 
>>  jury's still out on that one.
>Jim,  your lack of experience and time in the dive business is showing,
>	 I would say on any given weekend three day friday saturday and sunday
>accounting for about 70 divers or more, plus crew ( 7 or 8) we will have at
>least one or two regulators free flows, high pressure hose burst or leaking,(
>had a couple of people hurt from broken hose wipping around )   burst disk
>leaking or blown (the empty tank syndrom)  (we had 4 this year), low pressure
>inflator problem either button valve Oring connection,  porous hose BC 
>leaking
>from holes or fitting connections, Many from DiveRite BC's using plastic wire
>ties holding the infators hose, and valve neck orings leaking. 
>	This does not account for the problems that occur after entering the water
>some at the surface and a few at depth.  and I know a havent mentioned them
>all, just a few to open your eyes.
>catain steve bielenda
>--
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