I'm certainly in there with everyone else on the "Anyone can call any dive at any time for any reason..." concept.
On one weekend trip, my wonderful buddy could not get warm enough after her first dive to stop shivering (it was November, frigid, and *windy*). I told her I would not do the dive if I were that chilled, as it would certainly not be fun and may be unsafe. She concurred and stayed on the boat to change and bum some coffee off the captain. The next day, she warmed up between dives and had no problem... but I got *fantastically* seasick, so I called *my* dive. (She came back from that dive telling me how much she enjoys diving with me, as it was a classic "bad instabuddy" experience, hehe.)
We stress to our students on their checkout trips that if there's a reason, they should feel free to call/skip a dive. If it's just the normal apprehension, we work with them to help them through it, but if the seas get to them or they're too chilled or their ear hates them or what have you, "I'd rather be on the boat wishing I were in the water than in the water wishing I were on the boat."
Of course, one thing that *really* helps our students not feel pressured to make dives they ought not make is that we plan *seven* dives in our three-day checkout trips. NAUI standards only require five. If a student has no problems, having seven dives over three days means they get more just-diving experience to plan and execute their dives with their buddy while being watched over by us. On the other hand, if someone has a problem there's no pressure on them to *make* *every* *dive* or not finish. It's *so* much easier to cheer someone for calling a dive when they don't have to feel guilty or otherwise obligated.
Kathryn Schulz has a series on mistakes. One interview in particular I found to be particularly interesting:
Into Thin Error: Mountaineer Ed Viesturs on Making Mistakes. It's definitely worth a read, but for those who won't follow the link, I've copied a piece of it that seems relevant to the whole "thumbing a dive" idea:
You've written that the worst mistake of your climbing career occurred on K2 — which is a bad place for a mistake, given its reputation as the deadliest mountain in the world. Can you describe what happened?
I was with two other climbers trying to make the summit, and we'd had to sit at our high camp for three nights waiting for the weather to clear. Finally we had what we thought was a window of opportunity, so we started climbing. About halfway into the day, the clouds below us slowly engulfed us, and it started to snow pretty heavily. I always contemplate going down even as I'm going up, and I was thinking, "You know what? Six, seven, eight, nine hours from now, when we're going down, there's going to be a tremendous amount of new snow, and the avalanche conditions could be huge."
I talked to my partners, and either I was overreacting or they were underreacting, because they were like, "What do you mean? This is fine." So I was kind of alone in my quandary. I knew I was making a mistake; I knew I should just simply go down, that I should unrope and leave my partners and let them go, but I kept putting off that decision, until eventually we got to the top. When we got down to camp that night, I was not pleased with what I had done. I'd have to say that was the biggest mistake I've ever made in my climbing career.
Really? Given the many fatal mistakes made on mountains every year, this doesn't sound so bad. You made it down safely, after all.
Yeah, but a mistake is a mistake even if you get away with it. Even though we succeeded, I don't ever want to do that again. I felt on the way down that the conditions were pretty desperate. We could've gone down in an avalanche at any minute. We just got really, really lucky. There were moments I was convinced we weren't going to make it down, when I said [to myself], "Ed, you've made the last and most stupid mistake of your life."
I think a lot of people, when they survive a situation like that, they're willing to do it again. They're like, "Well, you know I got away with it one time, I can probably get away with it again." You do that too many times and sooner or later, it's not going to work out.
What kept you from acting on your knowledge that it was a mistake?
You know, I was so torn. Part of me was thinking, "Is this really as bad as I think it is?" Here you've spent two and a half months of your life trying to achieve a goal, and you're within 1,000 feet of getting to the top, and it's one of the worst times to have to make these choices. You think, "Arrrrghhhhh, you know, if I turn around right now, we'll have to go home, we've spent all this time and energy, and we won't have made it to the summit." So that's pulling me in one way, and then the other way is going, "Jeez, Ed, it's going to be terrible, just turn around, just go down."
But you didn't.
No. I kept saying, "Well, let me go on for another 15 minutes and then I'll decide." And then after 15 minutes I'd say, "Let me go on another 15 minutes and then I'll decide." And I just couldn't make a decision, and I put it off so long that I got to the top.
If you have a chance, definitely go read that and some of her other interviews. It's fascinating to hear all about how people end up making mistakes, and I like to think that maybe, just maybe, I can learn enough to avoid at least a few of my own.
