Absentee buddy

[zboss]

Well I have to admit if I were in Palau with a Hoover for a buddy, he or she would be surfacing on his or her own as well.

on the other hand, I think it's worthy of discussion with any dive buddy before the dive - we want to be prepared for a difference between a buddy surfacing because there is a problem and surfacing just because they sucked all their air.

Also - I am a bit confused about your reason for sucking air... you say that you were sucking too MUCH air because your breathing resistance knob was turned up all the way? If you are saying:

1) that you sucked air because the knob restricted your air flow, that should have reduced your consumption and not increased it (I'm guessing here).

2) or that you had the knob all the way open, this is no different than diving with one that has no knob at all, which means that your breathing rate would not have been higher than if you had been not using a reg with it.

 

[Charlie99]

Though I have dived with this guy about thirty or forty times and had never had this problem before because previously we used our air at roughly the same rate. I have since decided not to dive with him again. We remain friends.

So, what lessons did I learn?

1. Choose your buddies carefully!
2. Be prepared (in terms of mindset and equipment) to finish any dive on your own.
3. It's been said before, but plan the dive - and make sure that both members of your buddy team (yourself included) understand that when the set time limit or minimum air level is reached then it's time to go, it's the same as calling a dive - no buts.

You should think about how you could dive 30 or 40 times with a guy and not have agreed upon this procedure. There might have been a lot of other items that you weren't in agreement on, such as lost diver procedure.

Whenever I have a "buddy problem", I look hard at myself and what I could have done to avoid it.

 

[Taipeidiver]

Well I have to admit if I were in Palau with a Hoover for a buddy, he or she would be surfacing on his or her own as well.

The difference probably is that given any choice at all I would buddy with someone who, like myself, is self reliant enough and properly equipped to surface without a problem and who does not expect me to cut my dive short and, quite frankly, who will not complain about it. Another difference is that we would discuss this before hand and would arrange for one to notify the other so that the low on air buddy is mistakenly assumed to be missing.

The buddy system is ok within it limits but, expecially for new divers, it tends to get rather dogmatically applied as a matter of indoctrination with little critical thinking involved. For more experienced divers it often becomes a crutch for poorly developed skills or redundancy inadequate to properly safeguard the diver in the specific conditions.

Now don't get me wrong, both of these dives were fifty minutes or more and I was surfacing only five or ten minutes ahead of the pack.

Luckily, I am sufficiently self-reliant to get on with these things on my own too, a by-product of my tech training where the requirement to stay on the deco schedule means that you might well be alone when you reach the surface (make sure that you stay friends with the boat guys). I also make sure that I have the equipment I need to finish any dive on my own and this includes, as a minimum, a compass, whistle, SMB and line, slate, and a torch and / or strobe.

The buddy system is advocated by every recreational dive certification agency for very good reasons, it generates safety through multiple redundancy. Having a buddy adds an independent air source (and it's one that you don't have to carry!), not to mention a second set of judgement where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts (usually).

If you consistently leave your buddy (or your buddy leaves you) at the end of a dive, whether this is by agreement, accident, or individual choice, at that point you both become a solo divers, with all of the requirements that solo diving requires. Instead of having your multiple redundancy carried by your buddy, you now need to either carry it yourself or accept the risk that a critical equipment failure (for example, your first stage regulator) could lead to a serious incident.

 

[Taipeidiver]

on the other hand, I think it's worthy of discussion with any dive buddy before the dive - we want to be prepared for a difference between a buddy surfacing because there is a problem and surfacing just because they sucked all their air.

Also - I am a bit confused about your reason for sucking air... you say that you were sucking too MUCH air because your breathing resistance knob was turned up all the way? If you are saying:

1) that you sucked air because the knob restricted your air flow, that should have reduced your consumption and not increased it (I'm guessing here).

2) or that you had the knob all the way open, this is no different than diving with one that has no knob at all, which means that your breathing rate would not have been higher than if you had been not using a reg with it.

Having the breathing resistance turned right up means that I was giving myself a workout by just breathing. Increased effort required for any physical activity = increased air consumption.

With the knob all the way open I was breathing much more easily, and in fact surfaced with more air than my buddy.

 

[Taipeidiver]

You should think about how you could dive 30 or 40 times with a guy and not have agreed upon this procedure. There might have been a lot of other items that you weren't in agreement on, such as lost diver procedure.

Whenever I have a "buddy problem", I look hard at myself and what I could have done to avoid it.

True enough, hence lesson learnt #1.

There was not much I could do under these circumstances. When you gotta go, you gotta go. Or grow gills.