Try number two for taking photos. Our pre-dive checks went fine, we got into the water and clipped everything on, and as I checked my machine's PO2 before breathing the loop, I saw that my first cell was dead. This has happened a couple of times before. The first time it happened to me was when I was ascending from a 70m dive in the shaft at Badgat, on one of my first 10 dives with the machine. It is the second time that it's happened to me on this trip. The last time Kev pushed the head around a bit and the cell came alive. We have always assumed the cell cartridge comes a bit loose. This time no amount of smacking, or jiggling or my swimming upside down got the cell to read, so I had to get out.
Even after opening up the head and pushing the cartridge back in, it didn't read. I called Kev out the water. We took the whole cartridge apart and removed the wiring harness, and there we could finally see that one of the wires was unconnected. It looked like it had been pushed, instead of soldered, into place.
The light went off for both of us as to why my cell had sometimes just stopped reading and then started again with some bumping. We would have to contact Hammerhead to get a replacement wiring harness, but in the meantime we both really wanted to dive. So Kev pushed the wire back on and managed to get the cartridge back together without it bumping. Back in the water and finally we got to take the pics :) I'm putting albums of all the links at http://www.facebook.com/StatesOfImmersion, but here's one of the entrance into Jackson Blue, and others are scattered through my posts.
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| Looking out from Jackson Blue cavern to the entrance |
Afterward we contacted Trish at Juergensen Marine (manufacturers of our Hammerhead Rebreathers), sent a pic of our problem, and luckily they had a spare wiring harness which they sent overnight to Cave Adventurers ... once again the efficiency in the States is incredible, in South Africa I would have been out of action for weeks.
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