Revillagigedos - Part 4 of 4: Gear Trouble

As I mentioned earlier, I had some gear issues on this trip. In the past I've had pretty good luck with my photo gear. Not so on this trip as I had 3 gear mishaps.

Drysuit neck seal: I ripped the neck seal. I do have DUI zip seals, so could've brought a spare. I will in the future.

Flooded strobe: Before we left for Revillagigedos, I went out for a couple of local dives in the Cabo San Lucas area. My strobe was working fine then, but apparently flooded either towards the end of the 2nd dive, or, more likely, during the rinse. I had not noticed it until I started setting up on the way out to the islands. I rinsed it out with alcohol and let it dry, but it still didn't function properly. I enlisted the help of Engineer Tim, who did an amazing job trying to resurrect it. He opened it up and dried it out in the dry heat of the engine room. He got it working again with exception of the focus light, which I don't use anyway. We tried it in the camera rinse barrel, and it immediately flooded again. I was pretty sure that when he replaced the big internal o-ring, he didn't clean it (Tim's hands are never actually clean) nor put any silicon grease on it. So, we repeated the process (did I mention how tiny the screws are in an Inon strobe?), this time taking proper care of that o-ring. Another day of drying, and it started working again. Another rinse tank test, no flood this time. It was looking good, so I hooked it up to the housing and took it diving. First flash, perfect, second flash, fine, but that was it, it started flooding again. Game over. Thanks for playing. The autopsy did not reveal the cause of death. I had replaced the main o-ring (which did not look like the problem) after the first flood, so that wasn't it. I suspect that it was one of the dial o-rings. The strobes are 4 years old and have seen a lot of service. Still... it sucked. Tim did a great job trying to get it to work.... but we had no chance at getting to the dial o-rings.

Smashed dome port: While the other 2 mishaps may or may not have been my fault, this one definitely was. I was working on my housing, replacing batteries in the strobe. I left it too close to the edge of that camera table, we took a roll and crash, the housing hit the deck, so to speak - the steel deck. The crashing, crunching noise was a sickening sound. The housing looked ok, but my dome port, which I needed for all the big stuff on this trip, lay in about 25 pieces on the deck. Damn, I can't tell you how crappy that felt.

The Subal dome port is made of 4 main pieces, the glass dome, the mount, the dome shade, and the o-ring. My dome shade constituted most of the pieces... no chance of repairing it. The mount and the o-rings were fine, other than being separated. The glass itself was not broken, but had some nicks in it. Engineer Tim to the rescue again... he was actually out on the back deck when it happened, and immediately went to work trying to fix it. I wasn't so sure it could be fixed. It was not obvious how to put it back together and even more non obvious how to make it stay together under 4 atmosphere of pressure. We did figure it out, though, and after about 30 minutes, we had it back together. First test was in the rinse tank, without the camera, of course. Amazingly, it held. Next test, strap some weight to it, and, with some rope, drop it down to 20 feet. Then down to 70 feet. Still holding. So now, it's big decision time. Do I dare to put my camera in it and go for a dive? Keep in mind, this camera alone is 3 BTU's, plus the lens is another BTU (see my earlier post Conspicuous Consumption for the definition of a BTU). But, damn, I really want this thing to work... I mean, ya gotta have a wide angle lens for mantas, sharks, dolphins... so, I gave it a shot, keeping a close eye on the leak detector light. Amazingly, it held for the rest of the trip, and other than the missing dome shade, worked fine. Thanks Tim.

Between the strobe and the dome port, it is going to be a pretty hefty Amex bill this month.