Almost lost a job last month to a bad umbilical splice

I was working off a dive boat near Port Fourchon last week when my comms went dead at 60 feet. Turned out the splice I'd done three months ago had corroded inside the boot. Anyone else double-checking their cable connections more often now?

2 comments

2 Comments

anthony_lane5523d agoMost Upvoted

Took my lesson after a similar scare... dielectric grease on every connector and a quick continuity test before each drop, saved my hide twice since.

felix38523d ago

...and that's exactly why I've been paranoid about every splice I've done since my own scare a couple years back. I was on a night dive in Destin, nothing crazy like 60 feet but still deep enough, and my light setup went dark because the connector had a tiny crack I couldn't even see (you know, the kind that lets water in slowly). Spent the rest of the dive feeling blind and cursing myself for not using dielectric grease. Now I do this thing where I run a small bead of silicone caulk around every boot after I crimp it, just to be safe. It's a pain when I need to redo a cable, but beats the hell out of losing comms at depth.