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Got asked to surface from 60 feet with a bad gauge or finish the weld, and I picked wrong
Last month on a pipeline job outside Morgan City my depth gauge started reading weird at 60 feet, bouncing between 55 and 70 with no real change in my ears or the bubbles. The tender yelled down that we had 20 more minutes of weld time and the barge was on a schedule, so I stayed down instead of calling it. I finished the pass but came up 12 minutes later than I should have, and my deco stop math was all off because I was trusting a gauge that was lying to me. Dive sup pulled me off the rotation for two days and made me sit through a review with the company man, which honestly was fair. Anyone else had a gauge go bad mid dive, and do you bail right away or try to finish the job first?
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anthonyhunt1mo ago
Worth pointing out that a bouncing depth gauge at 60 feet is usually a sign of a flooded unit or a bad hose, not just a flaky reading, so the thing was probably done the second it started jumping. The bigger problem is you finished the weld on deco you couldn't actually plan, because your stop times hinge on depth and bottom time and neither one was reliable at that point. In your spot I'd have tapped out and let the sup sort the schedule, since a two day benching beats a chamber ride every time. Sounds like the review was the right call and you already know it.
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