Kay Dee
Contributor
25 times? I don’t want to sound my horn here, but………………… I did hundreds of dives ‘solo’ before ever getting involved in tech diving back in 1992. Besides other chores, I was / am an underwater photographer, and much of that was spent alone / solo, intentionally or not. Since tech certified I have done well of a thousand (or two) dives solo.
And complacent? I don't think so! Re-read Wookies post. Just like he said, any problems I might have encountered along the way that were my 'fault’ never happened twice! I never got complacent. As a matter of fact, compared to some of my solo diving friends (who are also still alive), I thought I was often too cautious. It's often not complacently that kills anyway, but overconfidence.
Unfortunately yours is a very forlorn hope Mark. And what norms pray tell? As I asked in a post above, who teaches / advocates 'limits' in solo tech diving? If the world lived by imposed limits no exploration would ever get done.
And my diving was mostly far from 'controlled environments'. We / I often dove in strong currents far from land in areas were there was negligible SAR assets (or chambers). I have done sub 100m dives solo, and cave dived solo. And not just once. Different strokes (no pun intended) for different blokes is all.
You keep referring to 'standards'. Whose standards are you referring to here? And what 'deviance's'? Not any I am familiar with. All I can say is that I dived like I did for 20 years or more and am still walking and talking (as are most - though not all - people I knew that did the same). So which / whose 'standards / protocols' do you refer to?
Well, I have been above and under it my whole life, and have had / still do have many of the benign forms of melanoma regularly 'frozen' off, or cut out of, my fair Irish heritaged now scaley skin to prove it ;-). That is I have been in or around the ocean (mostly in, much to the detriment of my schooling) since I could walk 68 years ago. And just like my diving, I surfed / windsurfed solo in many remote locations around the world. And often in biggish surf. After all, life is all about what level of risk one is willing to accept. What is considered risky to some is just another day at the office for others. Walk the path less traveled, or stand in line. Your choice.
After all, in many professions / walks of life some people are just 'risk takers', although I personally never thought I took undue risk. What I did all seemed pretty normal to me. To paraphrase Wookie "analyse the risk, accept it (or not, and abort), and if accepted, then manage / mitigate the risk as much as possible / to the best of ones abilities". That was taught to me and has served me very well.
As for putting your faith in buddies, my wife was almost killed by one who held the C cards asserting he was at least fairly highly tech trained, yet (he thought) he ran out of air at 40 meters, panicked, grabbed my wife's occy (2nd reg), and dragged her straight to the surface. So much for 'buddies'! (Twas lucky they / she had just arrived at depth, or the outcome could have been really bad.) Where was I you might ask? Off shooting photos, solo.
Anyway Mark, I am not asking you to change your ways, but maybe you should at least either broaden your outlook, or simply accept that people do things differently and have different degrees of 'risk' acceptance.
