After putting the full monte of VDH parts into both my DAAM's, it was time to take them to depth in some salt water. Since we were on a cruise ship, our first stop in Cabo included the ship's pick of dive excursions. On the way out to the first dive site (wich is a really short boat ride), I was besieged by questions from the boat crew. All of a sudden, we were at the dive site and everyone with rental gear were ready to hit the water, and I was almost dressed, when one of the crew members grabbed my Phoenix while I wasn't looking and attempted to assemble my kit. It was my fault for not explicitly telling the crew to leave my stuff alone, but the next thing that I saw was the can mounted to the yoke WAY too far clockwise! As I began to yell "DON'T!", the crew member firmly grabbed the horns and twisted counter-clockwise, and yes, the tank yoke was fully open! The next thing that I heard was a big hiss, and then a pop, and then more hissing. Even though I thought that I could get the Phoenix screwed back into the body hard enough to seal, as soon as the air went on, I was hissing like an angry adder!
I haven't had a chance to pull the Phoenix off to see what happened, but I suspect that the nylon gaskets probably deformed and blew. They certainly are a "one chance" component. I've killed a couple of them trying to clock the HP ports into the right place with them. It was very disappointing, to say the least!
There is one positive to take away from this experience. I was planning to post a video of me diving this baby in Cabo and PV, and I did take a lot of video, even though I wasn't on my double hose. Unfortunately, when I was getting back into the boat in PV, one of the crew didn't catch the end of my weight belt, and it fell back into the water. I caught it with my wrist, which was the same wrist that had my GoPro attached. The weight broke the wrist strap, and my GoPro dropped off the wall and into the abyss.
All was not lost. As with any dive, I was blowing bubbles, and that makes up for just about everything.