Learned a hard lesson about drysuit valves this morning

I was doing a harbor inspection in Seattle last Thursday, about 15 feet down. Felt a cold trickle down my back and realized my drysuit dump valve was stuck open. Had to abort the dive and surface slow, took me an hour to get all the water out. Turns out a tiny piece of grit was lodged in the seal. Anyone else ever had a valve fail on them mid-dive?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_christopher15d ago

Jumped in the Puget Sound last month and felt a weird wet warmth spreading across my chest. Thought I was having some kind of medical emergency for a second. Nope. Just my piss valve decided to take a leak at 20 feet. Had to surface feeling like I wet my wetsuit as a grown man in front of a whole boat of divers. That grit is a sneaky little jerk, I still find tiny rocks in weird places on my gear.

jamie_adams15d ago

C'mon, it's not that big a deal, every diver's been there.

sage_moore3714d ago

Woke up at 4am last winter to drive to a dive site and realized I forgot my drysuit altogether, had to borrow a crusty rental from a shop that smelled like a wet dog and old coffee. But yeah, the valve thing happened to me once during a night dive in Hood Canal, felt that trickle and thought I was just sweating from nerves. @jamie_adams says it's no big deal but try explaining to your buddies why you're shivering and cutting the dive short while your undergarments turn into a sponge. That grit must be like the ninja of dive gear problems, always sneaking in at the worst possible moment.