the full story emerges
The guys were on the Dresden, having gone down the bow shot, touched 30 odd meters and were on their way back after 20min in the water. JD was on a single 15 and starting to ascend within no-stop limits and 100bar remaining. A thump that was felt, rather than heard and A managed to catch the guage as it started to descend, free from the console. JD went onto K’s long hose reg and his 15 was left open to allow him some air for bouyancy etc. The guys then did 2@12m and 3@5m for safety and climbed back on the boat. I shut his bottle down as he walked past thinking he had a leak in his reg but nothing more. We checked his bottle before filling and there was still 65bar left, which goes to show how effective the constriction at the base of the HP hose is.
An explanation how it happened..
You can see from the pistures that the threads look undamaged and they went back together despite the internal spindle being absent. The console must have acted as a ratchet mechanism so that every time the air was checked it unscrewed the guage from the hose untill it finally came off.
Lessons to be learnt…
As always a calm head will get you out of a situation better than panicing and there is more air in a cylinder and a smaller hole in a hp hose than you (ie me) think!
