Found out my bailout bottle was never actually full during a 90 foot job in Galveston
Last Tuesday I was doing a routine inspection on a dock piling down at 90 feet in Galveston and when I did my pre-dive check on my bailout bottle, the gauge read 2800 psi instead of the usual 3000. I topped it off and didn't think much about it, but something felt off so I started a handwritten log of every fill pressure before and after each dive. After tracking 22 dives over three weeks, I noticed my bottle was consistently losing 200 to 300 psi between the fill station and the water, which pointed straight at a slow leak in the first stage that no one had caught. The shop guy said the seat was worn and it had probably been creeping for a while. I was diving with a bottle that could have gone dry way earlier than I planned for on a real emergency. Anyone else run into slow leaks that only show up over a bunch of dives instead of one? Would love to hear how you all track this stuff.