Six months ago or so, I let Seb borrow my Suunto Stinger watch/dive computer, as he wanted to have a backup device on his first dive on the Carrie Lee. The Carrie Lee is a deep wreck sitting between about 160-280 feet. I've never been down that deep, but judging by the training and equipment needed, the work-reward ratio doesnt seem to be that high enough for me. When he got back, he gave me the computer back, still wet, and with the "no-fly" icon lit (no kidding).

The next time I was out diving, I was coming up the mooring line, wondering why everyone was doing their safety stop so deep. I stopped where they were and looked at my analog gauge on my console and saw that it read 18 feet. When I got to the surface after my safety stop, the computer thought it was still at 21'. Eventually it sorted itself out and I did the second dive based on tables and my analog gauge.

I forgot about it until the next time I went diving. This time on the west wall, and down around 80'. All of a sudden it started beeping at me and when I looked down, it thought I was at 119' and beyond my no-decompression limits. What the? Did I lose track of everything and slip down the wall? I checked my analog gauge and sure enough I was still at 80'.

Nothing happened again for a couple months, and then in March I was out diving and it wigged completely out. I was down around 100' and my Stinegr started beeping at me. This time it said I was at 220'. As I turned and made my way back up the wall into shallower water, it came back to 90ish feet. Two minutes later it dropped to 350 feet and started flashing "you should be dead" at me. As I came up the line, it dropped to 421 feet, and then eventually the display just showed "- - -" as in "you're so far off the map that you dont deserve to see how deep you are". Once I ws back on the boat, it continued bouncing around from the surface to 450 feet. I had to wrap it in a towel and shove it in my backpack because the beeping was driving me and everyone else on the boat crazy.

Two hours later, after lunch, I dropped in to Divers Supply to have them check it out, since it's five year warranty was to expire soon (June to be exact). It had stopped beeping, but still thought it was down below 500'. I thought perhaps the battery was dying (even though the battery meter said one bar below full) or worst-case scenario, the depth transducer had failed.  I described what happened to it, and what the history was. Since it was a Sunday, they said they would have someone check it out and give me a call in a few days.

A few days later I stopped back in to check up on it, and they showed me the computer. They said they put it in the pressure tester and it failed. The other thing that happened since I dropped it off was that the LCD had "leaked" and turned mostly black. There was no way this computer could be repaired now. I also got two conflicting stories from them at that point, too. One employee told me that as soon as it failed the pressure test, they put it aside. Then another employee told me that the o-ring was pinched. How did you find that out? "We opened it up and took a look". So which was it, they set it aside after it failed the pressure test, or they opened it up and saw the pinched o-ring?

At that point, they latched on to the idea that Seb must have opened it after his dive, since his employer is a dive shop and MIGHT have the special tool required to do it. When I told him of their accusation, he went through the roof. I went back in about a week later and spoke to the manager, and when I left there, I felt that we actually made some progress. He said he would send it to Suunto, but that Suunto would just say that it was the installation, not the o-ring, and it would be back "on them". He admitted to me that Suunto was going to look at the date of the last service, and the date of the "problem" and say that it wasn't a faulty o-ring. I agreed with that, because it wasn't a faulty o-ring, it was a faulty installation by the technician who installed it... THEIR technician.  He even (at my suggestion) gave me one of their rental computers to borrow in the meantime.

That was the ONLY thing that Divers Supply did "right" throughout the whole thing.

Next time, part 2: the lube-less shanking.