I had an experience diving last weekend and was not sure what to make of it. I did my OW certification several years ago, then last fall, I took a refresher with an instructor in a pool then the following week took the AOW certification. I did my AOW at a quarry through a local dive shop that does many classes there. No other dives after that. On the weekends when the shop goes to the quarry, you can pay to be brought along with transportation, rental gear, weights, tanks, and entrance taken care of, then dive the quarry at your leisure. I thought this would be an enjoyable way to do some more diving nearby, so I signed up. When I was signing up, I explained my experience and what I was looking for and asked about buddies since I was going by myself. The guy at the shop assured me I'd have no problem with buddies since others had signed up for the same thing, and worst case scenario I could tag along with a class's checkout dives.
So the day to dive rolls around, and we're heading to the quarry. An instructor informs me that there are 4 of us diving "for fun". The other divers are me, one experienced couple, and a guy who I happened to sit next to on the bus ride there, who I am suggested to pair up with. To get started, we could stick with the instructor's group for a dive along with his class to one of the wrecks. The guy I'm buddied up with tells me he has never dove this quarry, which is cold, and has never dove cold water at all. He did OW and 4 more dives on a fairly recent vacation. So we listen to the instructor's briefings, get geared up and all head down to the water together. I talk to my buddy about our plan (same as the class's), hand signals, etc. So far everything seems ok.
Then we surface swim out to a buoy, and on the way my buddy tells me he's never used a dive computer, so he doesn't know how to use the one on his console. He didn't take sufficient weight for a 7mm suit and can't go down. The class goes ahead with their dive and we're on the surface still. We swim back to the shore so my buddy can get more weight. He comes back with, and while we're on the platform, chest-deep in water, I'm ready to go but he's putting on fins, he steps off the platform, no fins on yet. I see one of his fins start to sink so I grab it, then I notice he's not staying afloat and I tell him to inflate his BC, but he seems to be panicking and doesn't do it. I grabbed his inflator and put air in then I shove it in his hand and he presses it. But he's still sinking. I grab him and pull then push him back onto the platform. He tells me it was inflated all the way but he was overweighted and still sinking. So he needs to get rid of some weights, but only had big weights so he had to go back up to get different ones. While he goes to get weights, a DM from the class we intended to follow initially is on the platform and I tell him what's going on. He agreed to help for a bit and take us down while his class took a while to all come up and reassemble.
My buddy gets more appropriate weighting, the DM takes us down without issue, swims with us to a couple of "wrecks" then heads out, we continue our dive, finish, go for safety stop, buddy can't hold the safety stop and floats to the surface, I finish the 3 mins. We surface swim back, talk about what happened, get back to the group tables, buddy talks to the DM for a bit. We eat lunch, take a break, sit with the class groups, then get ready for another dive. I knew the features in the quarry, confirmed them with the DM, told them to my buddy who said he'd do whatever I wanted, and did that dive with no issues at all, buddy held his safety stop, no weight problems. Throughout, my buddy sticks close to me and we frequently check on each other, our air, etc. On the surface swim back, I told my buddy that after a break I wanted to do one more very close, shallow dive, since we had the air and there were fish/plants on the quarry slope at like 20ffw. We get back to the platform and my buddy realizes he's lost his mask because it was on his head during the surface swim. He's done diving for the day. There was nobody for me to do that small dive with, and I did wish I could do it alone but that seemed wrong and I didn't do it.
At the end of the day the instructor asked me how it was diving with him and I adopted a sort of jovial tone and said I only had to save my buddy from drowning once, so I don't know if that was taken seriously or not, and I don't know if I was serious or not. The instructor asked what I did for the second dive and I described it to him and he said that was a good dive. The buddy wanted to swap contact info for future trips like this, and after much, "uhhhh" on my part he insisted on facebook friending me, so I let him, but I don't plan dive with him. So yeah, I'm not sure what to take away from this experience. It wasn't what I expected from the day. I was initially frustrated and even angry at the buddy's lack of planning/considerations. I think I assumed I was going to end up with someone more experienced than me. But obviously this was a different experience than if I just followed around someone who could handle themselves very well.
So the day to dive rolls around, and we're heading to the quarry. An instructor informs me that there are 4 of us diving "for fun". The other divers are me, one experienced couple, and a guy who I happened to sit next to on the bus ride there, who I am suggested to pair up with. To get started, we could stick with the instructor's group for a dive along with his class to one of the wrecks. The guy I'm buddied up with tells me he has never dove this quarry, which is cold, and has never dove cold water at all. He did OW and 4 more dives on a fairly recent vacation. So we listen to the instructor's briefings, get geared up and all head down to the water together. I talk to my buddy about our plan (same as the class's), hand signals, etc. So far everything seems ok.
Then we surface swim out to a buoy, and on the way my buddy tells me he's never used a dive computer, so he doesn't know how to use the one on his console. He didn't take sufficient weight for a 7mm suit and can't go down. The class goes ahead with their dive and we're on the surface still. We swim back to the shore so my buddy can get more weight. He comes back with, and while we're on the platform, chest-deep in water, I'm ready to go but he's putting on fins, he steps off the platform, no fins on yet. I see one of his fins start to sink so I grab it, then I notice he's not staying afloat and I tell him to inflate his BC, but he seems to be panicking and doesn't do it. I grabbed his inflator and put air in then I shove it in his hand and he presses it. But he's still sinking. I grab him and pull then push him back onto the platform. He tells me it was inflated all the way but he was overweighted and still sinking. So he needs to get rid of some weights, but only had big weights so he had to go back up to get different ones. While he goes to get weights, a DM from the class we intended to follow initially is on the platform and I tell him what's going on. He agreed to help for a bit and take us down while his class took a while to all come up and reassemble.
My buddy gets more appropriate weighting, the DM takes us down without issue, swims with us to a couple of "wrecks" then heads out, we continue our dive, finish, go for safety stop, buddy can't hold the safety stop and floats to the surface, I finish the 3 mins. We surface swim back, talk about what happened, get back to the group tables, buddy talks to the DM for a bit. We eat lunch, take a break, sit with the class groups, then get ready for another dive. I knew the features in the quarry, confirmed them with the DM, told them to my buddy who said he'd do whatever I wanted, and did that dive with no issues at all, buddy held his safety stop, no weight problems. Throughout, my buddy sticks close to me and we frequently check on each other, our air, etc. On the surface swim back, I told my buddy that after a break I wanted to do one more very close, shallow dive, since we had the air and there were fish/plants on the quarry slope at like 20ffw. We get back to the platform and my buddy realizes he's lost his mask because it was on his head during the surface swim. He's done diving for the day. There was nobody for me to do that small dive with, and I did wish I could do it alone but that seemed wrong and I didn't do it.
At the end of the day the instructor asked me how it was diving with him and I adopted a sort of jovial tone and said I only had to save my buddy from drowning once, so I don't know if that was taken seriously or not, and I don't know if I was serious or not. The instructor asked what I did for the second dive and I described it to him and he said that was a good dive. The buddy wanted to swap contact info for future trips like this, and after much, "uhhhh" on my part he insisted on facebook friending me, so I let him, but I don't plan dive with him. So yeah, I'm not sure what to take away from this experience. It wasn't what I expected from the day. I was initially frustrated and even angry at the buddy's lack of planning/considerations. I think I assumed I was going to end up with someone more experienced than me. But obviously this was a different experience than if I just followed around someone who could handle themselves very well.
