The Turkey Who “Saved”

A few months back, I was visiting a friend’s dive store when a customer brought his BC and regulator in for its annual service. The BC was an AquaLung Malibu. On it was a SeaQuest Air Source. Something about the unit struck me as odd.

Upon closer examination, I discovered the problem. “Guys,” I said, “This BC has the wrong airway on it.”

Whomever had sold this turkey his BC had simply installed the Air Source on the BC’s standard inflator hose. They did not include the special airway SeaQuest requires, and which would have fit this particular BC. This caused a number of problems:

• The channel intended to guide and control the low-pressure inflator hose was now on the wrong side.
• Because of differences in the length of the stainless cable inside the airway hose, the Air Source could not be used to activate the remote exhaust.
• The most serious problem, however, was that, because the airway lacked the necessary hard point mid-way down the hose, and this particular BC had no right-hand dump cord, this diver had no way of venting air from his BC during an alternate-air-source ascent.

This left the diver with two choices:

• He could continue breathing from the Air Source during such an ascent, while the air in his BC continued to expand and drag both him and his buddy toward the surface at an uncontrolled rate.
• He could remove the Air Source from his mouth during the ascent and use it to vent the BC in the normal fashion. Doing so, however, would mean that, to share air with another diver, he would be forced to make what was, in essence, an Emergency Swimming Ascent — which completely defeats the entire purpose of having an alternate air source in the first place.

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