Dry suit valve stuck open on a 60 foot dive in Tacoma, learned the hard way

I figured I could skip the pre-dive valve check since it worked fine last week. Got down to about 60 feet near the Narrows and felt that familiar cold trickle down my back, except it didn't stop. By the time I surfaced my suit had so much water I looked like a beached whale. Turns out a little piece of shell got wedged in the exhaust valve, something that takes ten seconds to check. Now I do the full blow-up and listen test every single time, no exceptions. Anyone else had a valve fail on them when you least expected it?

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felixward25d ago

Tbh that exact scenario is why I always do the valve check now, I had an inlet valve freeze open on a quarry dive in Ohio and ended up doing a CESA with a suit full of water. The worst part is it was a brand new suit too, shell fragment sounds exactly like the kind of random thing you never see coming. Better to spend the extra twenty seconds on the surface than deal with that panic at depth.