New equipment is not always a good sign, and a fairly highly skilled diver is not always the best buddy.
About two months ago, I got on a boat that was setting off to a pretty nice wreck within recreational limits. I was one of the first to arrive, so I was pretty much geared up before most of the other divers arrived. I was wearing almost all brand new gear. My wet suit only had about a dozen dives on it. It is the 6th wet suit I have owned, and I do most of my diving these days with a dry suit. All my main gear was absolutely brand new and looked it--I had only a few dives on the regulator set, back plate, and wing. Why? My old gear had been purchased on employee or key man discounts at my old dive shop, and my new gear was purchased on a key man discount from a new vendor at my new store. Even my cylinders were new. I had recently purchased them to use in my doubles transition to side mount. The shiny newness of everything must have been dazzling.
A late-arriving diver, well-known by the operator, was assigned to be my buddy, and the DM who assigned him to me (who knew my credentials) had clearly told him nothing. He was obviously sizing me up. The new equipment was an obvious concern, but the fact that it was new gear with technical associations might have been confusing. He finally asked me how long I had been diving, and we exchanged some information. He was an instructor and a free diver himself, and he was wearing free diving fins. He had a big tank filled to cave fill levels, so he had plenty of gas. He said that if I ran out before him, I could go up the line by myself while he finsihed the dive alone. This wreck has a lot of interesting short penetration opportunities without the need for technical skills like line laying, and we agreed to give them a go. I followed him, as he knew the wreck well.
I could not understand why he was in such a hurry. He was putting those free diving fins to good use in terms of speed, and I had to work to keep up with him. He used flutter kicks exclusively. That meant that in every room we entered, he got a good view of everything there, while I saw everything through the cloud of silt he kicked up. As my gas ran low and I reached NDLs, I finally indicated I was going up, and he stayed down as planned. He was using a Suunto computer, so I knew he had to be pretty far into deco before he finally surfaced.
The second dive was a simple drift dive over a reef. It was a pretty good site. I handled the dive flag and got a good look in the nooks and crannies on the edge of the reef. He hung out about 15-20 feet above me. He finally came down and showed me that his computer had gone into gauge mode because he had so far exceeded its NDLs between the two dives. He was done. I wasn't even close to NDLs.
I am sure he was quite concerned that I would ruin his dives when he was first assigned to a dive with new gear. I am not sure he realized the extent to which he impacted mine.