A dive supervisor's offhand remark about gas matching stuck with me

Yesterday I was swapping tanks at the shop and overheard a supervisor tell a green tender, "If your mix is off by 2%, your bottom time is off by more than you think." I ran the numbers later on my own. Going from 32% to 30% nitrox at 100 feet cuts your no-deco limit by nearly 10 minutes. That hit home because I've been lazy about analyzing my own tanks, just trusting the sticker. Now I'm double-checking every fill with my analyzer, even on routine jobs. Anyone else ever skip the analysis and regret it later?

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aaron7406d ago

Trusting the sticker is how you end up doing a surprise deco stop you didn't plan for. That 2% won't kill you today, but it'll mess with your schedule when you least expect it. Guess that supervisor just saved your ass for the price of overhearing a sentence.

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