Freeflow

As an instructor you have not so many possibilities to guide the certified divers under water. You have more courses running.

But every now and then we guide some fun dives. It is a nice mix, relaxing under water with certified divers knowing what there are doing – most of the time at least.

So I went down with 3 fun divers at Batu Tabir. Two of my divers were experienced (over 100 dives) and had dived with us the last days - about 10 dives. We were just at 14m depth, as I heard a familiar sound - blowing off regulator (free flow).

Instinctively I turned to Peter, he dived with his own regulator and previously had problems. Suddenly he came to me eyes wide open, close to panick, regulator in his hand instead of the mouth.

I grabbed my alternate air source, dived quickly over to him and gave it to him. Then I calmed him first and told everyone in the group that we go up.

While we went up, I turned off Peter’s tank. On the boat we tested how much air he had left in the tank, but the freeflow had been so strong, he had only 40 bar left. After 25 seconds the freeflow released about 160 bar. This meant for Peter waiting on the boat.

That made me realize again how important it is that you dive with a buddy. Peter would not have made it up to the surface with the freeflow regulator. Especially not if he is not keeping it partly in the mouth, breathing out of it. It would have been much safer from him to dive over to me to get the alternate air source if he would have remembered what he learned in his course. But everything went well.

The next day I began a rescue diver course and was able to demonstrate this critical experience in the diving course.