Loading…
15
Rant: my umbilical got pinched at 60 feet and the comms went dead for 11 minutes
Last Tuesday we were working a pipeline inspection off the dock in Pascagoula and my tender let the umbilical ride over a sharp edge on the guide frame. About 60 feet down I lost comms completely, and the only thing I could hear was my own breathing in the helmet. I switched to line pull signals, worked my way back along the hose, and surfaced on my own after 11 minutes that felt like an hour. We now wrap the contact point with a split rubber sleeve and tape it before every drop, costs about $8 and takes 30 seconds. Anybody got a better trick for protecting the hose at the frame, or do you just run a different route entirely?
1 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In1 Comment
the_andrew12d ago
Wait, was the comms failure really from the pinch, or did the umbilical actually get cut? Because a pinched hose usually kills your air, not your comms, unless the wires run inside the same hose as your breathing gas. On most of the gear I've run, the comms line is separate, so a sharp edge on the guide frame would have to bite deep enough to nick the wire before you'd lose the tender. If you lost both air flow and comms at the same time, then yeah, that edge cut through everything and you were lucky to have enough gas left to make it up. Either way the split sleeve and tape is a solid cheap fix, but you should also check the hose after every drop for flat spots, since a pinch can damage the inner liner without showing on the outside.
1