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That day in the Gulf I thought my helmet seal gave out, turns out it was something else
A couple months back we were doing pipeline inspection off Port Fourchon, about 40 feet down on a mixed gas run. Mid-rotation I started feeling a slow trickle of water around my neck, not a full flood but enough to make my heart race. I signaled my tender to start my ascent nice and easy, but by the time I hit 15 feet the seal looked fine and the trickle stopped. Surface crew checked everything, found a tiny pinhole leak in the breathing hose fitting, not the mask at all. What got me was how calm my dive buddy stayed on comms, just kept talking me through the numbers while I was convinced I was about to get a face full. That little fitting cost $12 to replace and took 20 minutes to swap out, but it shook me more than any real emergency I've had. Anyone else ever had a panic moment that turned out to be something minor, and how do you keep your head when your gut says abort?
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williamhill1mo ago
Doesn't that always seem to hit you on the easy dives, not the hairy ones? I had nearly the same thing with a drysuit inlet valve once, just a slow weep that had me convinced I was flooding out. My tender just kept saying "watch your depth, watch your bubbles" until we got to the surface, and it turned out to be a crumb of sand stuck in the seal. That little $5 o-ring gave me more adrenaline than any actual equipment failure I've ever had.
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