The solo diving movement, a good idea?

[McGlencoe]

My father started diving in the early 70's and dove up into the 90s; over those years he logged far more solo dives than buddy dives. As I was often along with him on the trips, either on shore or on the boat, I grew up without even questioning the thought of solo diving being bad.

Fast forward many years and I finally decided to get certified and start diving this year, you can imagine what happened when I mentioned that I was planning to do some solo diving.... yeah, that went over well.... LoL

 

[DivemasterDennis]

We need fewer posts on this topic and more on how to be a good dive buddy. DO not excuse your self with a dismissive attitude about a buddy who wouldn't or didn't do this or that. Talk, to them, learn about them and their experience and skill level, and share yours. Familiarize each other with your equipment, discuss the dive plan and objectives, and expectations for buddy proximity and awareness, as well as some basic communications. Work at it. And consider, if you have a sequence of crappy dive buddies, from your perspective, what is each of them thinking about you?
DivemasterDennis

 

[Kharon]

We need fewer posts on this topic and more on how to be a good dive buddy.

Exactly why? I don't really want to be a good dive buddy. I don't want to be any kind of dive buddy. I want freedom, peace, solitude. That's why I go to Bonaire for 2 weeks at a time alone and do nothing but dive, eat, sleep, repeat - solo, on my own schedule, where I want, on my dive plan, with no one to watch out for or babysit or worry about or teach or cater to or or or ... Again - exactly why? It costs a lot to dive, in money for training & equipment, in money for travel, in time and effort for practice, practice, practice as well as to thoroughly plan each trip, each dive, each surface interval. Am I selfish? You bet your bippy! I don't get paid to teach or babysit, I paid for my training, I never had to have anyone babysit me. So sorry. I don't agree at all. I think the more posts on solo AND buddy diving the better. Both have their place. Solo is for me and others so inclined. Others want to buddy up - fine. I don't go around saying that we need fewer posts about buddy diving because solo is safer and buddy diving should be relegated to the trash heap of bad ideas.

 

[Hatul]

I agree that you should check your own gear and not rely on your buddy for a check. I believe the main benefit of buddy diving is, as has been pointed out, psychological. It's more fun to dive with someone else, and it's comforting if facing some issue to have someone else there. It seems to be easier to control the onset of anxiety/panic.

However from the point of view of objective safety, while there are some benefits as we all know, especially with a good buddy, there are new problems as well. You have to worry about your buddy-- where is he? how much air does he have? If you see something interesting is it ok to go to investigate. You have to worry about Rock-Bottom gas supply, can't stop too long to take photos. Risk of getting separated in our poor viz. Separation is a real problem if it occurs in deep water, as you have to decide if to do a blue water ascent.

And foremost a dive requires a big chunk of time and it's not easy to find a buddy who is free at the same time as you are. We need to encourage people to dive more and not being able to mesh with a buddy can be a real obstacle.

 

[doctormike]

We need fewer posts on this topic and more on how to be a good dive buddy. DO not excuse your self with a dismissive attitude about a buddy who wouldn't or didn't do this or that. Talk, to them, learn about them and their experience and skill level, and share yours. Familiarize each other with your equipment, discuss the dive plan and objectives, and expectations for buddy proximity and awareness, as well as some basic communications. Work at it. And consider, if you have a sequence of crappy dive buddies, from your perspective, what is each of them thinking about you?
DivemasterDennis

With all due respect Dennis (and I do respect you - I buy your books!), the OP was asking about solo diving, so it's reasonable that this thread center on that topic. Yes, being a good buddy is important, but it's also important to recognize that there are many who prefer not to dive with one for reasons other than concerns about having a bad buddy.

Furthermore, for a lot of single vacation divers who are not solo certified, the instabuddy is a reality, and you aren't going to be able to do much to fine tune the buddy skills of someone you meet a few minutes before your first and only dive together.

 

[TSandM]

In my world, they do! In all my dives I've had less than a handfull where the person(s) I was diving with weren't totally oblivious of me at least some of the time. Most of the time they submerge, hit bottom causing a silt out and disappear, never to be seen again. I never had a dive where a buddy asked for my remaining pressure. Only had one where my buddy and I remained close enough to do each other any good. I'll take self-reliance anyday.

I took another tack. Becoming part of the GUE/DIR diving world has simply removed all those issues. And before you say, "Well, but you can't count on somebody like that being on a dive boat," I'll say that I have had great success in finding such people to dive with in a WIDE variety of environments, some tropical, some cold water -- and that ability is growing, as the community grows.

I don't discount that some people (particularly photographers) might simply WANT to dive by themselves. I'm just saying that, if lousy buddies are the reason why you've gone to solo diving, consider getting better buddies instead, because they ARE out there!

 

[drbill]

I've dived solo for over 50 years now. Initially it was because there was only one set of gear for three of us. Today it is because a buddy I don't know can totally distract me from the reason I dive, to film. However a good buddy can indeed be a lifesaver. I have several but they can't dive near as frequently as I do.

IMHO (as I've stated many times here over the years) the most important thing you can know before deciding whether solo is right for you is how you respond to unforeseen emergencies. If you panic at all, you are not ready. If you remain calm and use your training and experience to safely extricate yourself from danger, you MAY be.

I have seen too many relatively new divers go solo when they really aren't ready... divers with less than 25 dives who have descended to 160 ft without any redundancy (I consider them extreme risk takers), divers who have run out of air at depths greater than 100 ft because they just weren't paying attention (narced?).

I went over my dive incident statistics a few years ago and found my rate of "emergency" situations was 17 times higher when diving with a buddy. Of course that is simply MY experience and cannot be extrapolated to others.

As for this being a frequently rehashed subject, so what. Solo diving is a topic that keeps coming up and the more intelligent answers that are posted regarding the wisdom of doing it, the better IMHO.

 

[Steve_C]

I'll go one better - if you have to rely on a buddy to catch your pre-entry errors then you never should have been certified in the first place.

---------- Post added August 19th, 2013 at 08:47 AM ----------



In my world, they do! In all my dives I've had less than a handfull where the person(s) I was diving with weren't totally oblivious of me at least some of the time. Most of the time they submerge, hit bottom causing a silt out and disappear, never to be seen again. I never had a dive where a buddy asked for my remaining pressure. Only had one where my buddy and I remained close enough to do each other any good. I'll take self-reliance anyday.



Don't want to share, babysit, or have to keep track of - my time left on earth is growing short. My time left underwater is even shorter. I don't want to waste it making sure I'm less than five feet from someone, checking their remaining air, etc, etc, etc - all the things I was trained that a good buddy does. Selfish? Definitely! I go underwater to enter the zone - where I just am. I strenuously avoid anything that interferes with that.

Maybe you need to dive in an area with better dive conditions? :cool2:

 

[Rhone Man]

I think one needs to distinguish between solo diving and solo diver training. Solo diving is either something you are comfortable doing or not, depending on a variety of factors, but solo diver training certainly helps breed good habits even if you don't intend to do any planned solo diving.

 

[Steve_C]

I dive with a buddy 95 % of the time. In all my local ocean diving I dive with a full solo configuration. Spare air. Spare mask. Etc.

When I travel, the instabuddy bit is totally random since it is never with a dive group much less a dive group I know. Picking a good buddy is out of the question. Then the rule is simple. If it is a shallow (less than 80) benign dive I take what ever buddy there is. If it is a deeper or more challenging dive I do not instabuddy. I hire a private DM for my buddy/guide but we treat it as a buddy with planning etc as opposed to blindly following the guide.

In a sense instabuddy should be like solo diving. It should not be a pinnacle dive (in SDI terminology) and it should not be under challenging conditions.