How close do you stay to your dive buddy ?

[CamG]

Greetings there are several considerations that I take into account when determining separation distance.
First for me it begins with the dive plan and environment!
Next it is a matter of who is my buddy and do I know them well and how they react under stress.
I know the plan, environment, my buddy , his gear and mine then we talk about it if we are going to be beyond normal distances.

My normal distances are two body lengths in clear water with little current and if nasty vis it is arms length.
I have done dives where my buddy and I were almost in constant touch contact for communication.
These are usually not very long in duration and task oriented.
It is a good idea to always form dive plans according to your experience / training level and or comfort levels.
Talk buddy distance over with your buddy before ever getting in the water.
If you are not comfortable then change the plan or abort it all together.

Just my opinion and rules that I dive by not everyone agrees nor would I expect them to. We all form our own dive practices and hopefully we choose wisely.

CamG Keep diving....Keep training....Keep learning!

 

[sambolino44]

How far from the buddy is an easy one...

String, I love you, man! Everything seems so simple and easy for you. My point is it takes a considerable amount of work to determine what the right distance is.

...todays gear is pretty darn safe...

My hammer is very safe until I pick it up and smash my finger with it. Thanks for beginning the discussion. This is one of those things that many of us take for granted, or don't really think about.

The thing about "how far you can swim on a lung full of air" is that you have to remember that it really should be "how long can you swim on a lung that is empty of air".

Rather, shouldn't it really be, "How far can you swim on empty lungs and still have enough time to survive while you get your buddy's attention and get their reg in your mouth?"

...Try breathing out and see how far you can swim in full scuba kit sometime, ive tried it and i didn't get very far...

We tried it tonight, see below.

... I have done the experiment of exhaling, pretending I'm out of gas, and swimming to an otherwise distracted buddy, and I found that 25 feet is as far as I EVER want to be from my spare gas. So 25 feet is the MAXIMUM I'll get from my buddy

That's at least twice, and probably closer to five times the distance we came up with tonight. However, considering the fact that you are at least twice, and probably closer to five times the divers we are, not surprising. Nevertheless, well, see below.

...and that is only in calm water with superb visibility. If the water is moving, it gets harder to reach that breathing supply, and if the viz is low, 25 feet might be quite enough to lose one's companion completely.

This reminds me of something somebody said at work the other day, "If it isn't written down, it didn't happen." If you've lost your buddy completely, you have no buddy. I know that's not what you meant; you meant that in bad viz 25 feet is too far. You have to adjust the distance for the conditions, as many in this thread have said.

Remember this is why we check the contents gage during the dive to avoid running out of air

You seem to be missing the point of, "This is why we train for the worst-case scenario." Of course we check our gauges to avoid an OOG situation, but if the worst case is something we absolutely want to avoid, then it makes no sense to rely on something that might not have happened.

Yes because checking a contents gauge will completely eliminate the risk of a hose blowing, burst disk (in countries backward enough to use them!) blowing, a HP seat going, a reg diaphragm breaking or any other mechanical fault......

That's right, I love you, man!

Things can blow on the surface or underwater. Yes hoses tend to go when first pressurised but not all the time. Thinks can bream at any time, usually when you don't want them to.
Also, contents gauges can lie and jam as well.

Exactly.

Wouldn't the initial presser from first pressurizing the system have more effect then at depth and after some of the air volume has been used up?

This would support the reasoning behind having your contents gage serviced annually,

Don't rely on assumptions of what should be. When the defecation hits the oscillation you'd better be ready, and then you can figure out what happened and why when you get back on the beach. Your posts on this thread give me the impression that you might benefit from a large dose of skepticism. That gauge that you had serviced annually could kill you. My advice could kill you. Be careful! Believe nothing! How can you relax and have fun if you don't have all your shXX covered?

If you want practice, try using the miflex HP hoses. These let go often enough underwater to give you plenty of practice recognising and dealing with the problem

String, I've been curious about the miflex hoses, including the HP. Have you ever seen one of those camp saws that is basically a piece of wire with another wire wrapped around it and two rings on the end? That's what those HP miflex hoses remind me of. They may work, but they's destroy everything else around. And then here you are saying they don't even work? Please add more info about this, either here or PM me.

My buddy and I based our dive today on this thread. Our exercise was this: we descended to about 15', stabilized, one of us went as far away as we thought we could do this, then, when both of us were ready the subject exhaled and swam to the... object? anyway the other diver, and we did an OOG air share. We started at a distance that we thought we could succeed at, and kept reducing the distance until we could actually get it all done. It turned out to be shockingly closer than we expected. A real eye-opener.

All I can say is I strongly urge everyone reading this to try it yourself next chance you get. You won't know for sure what the distance is until you do. And then, once you know what that distance is, how can you justify going beyond it?

 

[Soakedlontra]

We started at a distance that we thought we could succeed at, and kept reducing the distance until we could actually get it all done. It turned out to be shockingly closer than we expected. A real eye-opener.

It's late and I am falling asleep so I will reply to this for now.

Actually you got it done I did not despite trying 4/5 times! Right when I got your attention and you gave me your regulator I had to take a breath of air from mine before switching to yours! I don't know why maybe I was still too far from you or you were slow in giving me your reg. So we have to do it again!

Good night!

 

[String]

String, I love you, man! Everything seems so simple and easy for you. My point is it takes a considerable amount of work to determine what the right distance is.

It does? Take your reg out on a dive, empty your lungs and swim in a straight line. See how far you get until you need to stick the reg back in and breathe. That's your *maximum * distance.

Now add on the fact the buddy might be facing away, looking in a hole or even swimming away and reduce that distance accordingly.
Maybe practice OOA drills to a buddy swimming away as is common in tech training to get a feel for it.

String, I've been curious about the miflex hoses, including the HP. Have you ever seen one of those camp saws that is basically a piece of wire with another wire wrapped around it and two rings on the end? That's what those HP miflex hoses remind me of. They may work, but they's destroy everything else around. And then here you are saying they don't even work? Please add more info about this, either here or PM me.

The miflex LP hoses a i like a lot, they're light for travelling and on twinsets where you tend to have bends make hose routing look a lot nicer and less stressed. Ive not had any break on me and after 500 or so dives the outer layer frays slightly but thats about it.
The HP hose (the thin flexible bit of string) first of all i'll say i liked a lot...initially.
Very flexible even when pressurised, very light and neat. HOWEVER, ive had 2 blow on me in a relatively short space of time, 1 pre-dive entering the water, 1 actually in the water. The mode of failure is the outer layer seems to lose all its tension and pull itself together causing the inner to rupture in 2-3 places along the hose.
Yes hoses do break normally but the miflex ones do appear to go more regularly. Ive also heard of several other people having multiple hoses fail on them and even the website now has odd additions like "strain relief" and other things hinting they know there's an issue. So despite looking nice and being very nice to route i now dont trust the HP ones.
My single tank working/teaching recreational setup has a miflex HP. I dot trust it on my technical setup as a failure is much more of a problem.

In short, i love the LP hoses but have serious reliability questions regarding the HP.

 

[sambolino44]

...practice OOA drills to a buddy swimming away as is common in tech training to get a feel for it...

It appears we agree on what to do, just not whether to call it "an easy one" or "a considerable amount of work". Heck, for me, it's a considerable amount of work just to get out of bed in the morning.

 

[Crush]

IMHO it is whatever you and your buddy have discussed on the surface. Others have given practical advice on vis and on how far you can swim with no air in your lungs, so I won't re-hash that.

Last weekend I was actually waived away by my dive buddy. We were drift diving, and she was my insta-buddy. She was also a far better diver than I was. She took the SMB reel and we were off to the bottom. Vis was about 45 feet and we were at about 60 ft. I felt it my duty to parallel her travel (after all, she had to haul the SMB) at a separation of approximately 20 ft. I'd look at her, check my buoyancy and trim, look about, snap some pics of the fish, look at her again, etc.. After a few minutes of this she felt that the better fish were about 40 feet distant in my general direction. Not wanting to fight the surface winds and swell acting upon the SMB she motioned that I should take some photos "over there" and shooed me away! I complied, and returned a few minutes later. I was able to see her at all times.

I had never before been told to get lost while underwater.

 

[Soakedlontra]

My rule of thumb is always maintain AT LEAST clear line of sight to my buddy and make eye contact every 30 to 60 seconds when far apart. So when she goes around that bommy i have to swim up to her. But we can often get 30 to 40 feet apart - when I am lying in the sand just waiting for those gardens eels to come back up to get that perfect picture or when she is letting some peterson shrimps clean her hand. Line of sight & regular eye contact is maintained.

This loose contact is not appropriate for low viz, current or deep. Low viz or current we stay / get out of the water (i said wuss!), deep (below 50ft) we are within 10 ft & make eye contact regularly.

You guys can swim to each other without air in your lungs when you are 30/40 ft apart? Good for you!

I have tried to swim to my buddy with empty lungs from a distance that must have been about 12/15 ft only and I could not make it! (When I go swimming at the pool I can usually swim without resting for one hour so I am reasonably fit even if I could be fitter).

As TSandM and others have pointed out visibility has got nothing to do with the ability of swimming to your buddy on empty lungs and share air safely. What gets in the way is the density of the water, which is not related to visibility at all!

During a dive at Langley marina, where visibility can go down to 1ft or less, I was fooled to believe that because the visibility was so great (25/30ft) I could swim away from my buddy for the same distance. After the dive my buddy got mad at me for being so far away and I could not understand why. I thought he was overreacting: "What's the big deal? The visibility was so great!" I told him. Well now I know why he was so concerned. Now that I know what it's like to swim without air to my buddy half of that distance I would not do it again!

 

[TSandM]

Yup -- if you do the exercise, you get a whole new appreciation for the limits of buddy separation. And I don't really know why people want to get so far apart, anyway; I've never found it difficult to stay closer to my buddy, nor do I find it to chafe me. If I want to see something "over there", I signal my buddy and that's where we go -- we BOTH go. And vice versa.

 

[nhebrant]

agree with sting.... distance should be based on how far can you swim with empty lungs?
My opinion cant really do more than 5 meters (especially if you get slightly panicky)..... two arms distance is the ideal distance... anything more should be only done with experience .... that or get your self a pony bottle so u dont have to worry.

 

[knowone]

Then there's the eyes air glass water closer bigger further than they actually seem syndrome which in good vis is actually smaller and more further ..