dsteding
Contributor
Greetings all,
I am a newer diver (20 or so dives, 14 in a dry suit) that is fortunate enough to have teamed up with some really great DIR trained dive buddies. For me, diving with these people has been an eye opener.
My training plans are to do AOW with Grateful Diver (next week, his class sounds both challenging and useful) and then do Essentials and/or Fundies in the next six months or so. I'm probably up to logging about 10 dives a month-I wish it were more, but I got to pay the bills. I am focussing now on getting bottom time, working on trim and buoyancy, and developing a stable platform from which to build skills.
My dive buddies are an awesome support network for this. For instance, tomorrow I have two dives in the afternoon with TSandM, and I always learn something from Lynne when we dive. Grateful Diver is another awesome mentor, and I learn much from him every time we dive as well. This weekend I managed to get paired up with another DIR diver for a charter up in the San Juans.
As I said, I am fortunate.
However, I got to thinking that it may be appropriate to ask all of you what you would want from a newer diver when you dive with them? I'm specifically asking this because I am diving with a new DIR diver that I've only met in the parking lot before. I have been frank about my experience with him, he seems willing to work within my skill level, but at the same time I'm interested in working with him so we can have a good time on Sunday (and I am one of those freaks that thinks skill dives constitute a good time).
I know some mention that the great thing about Fundies is to learn good muscle memory and develop good habits, I'll get to that as soon as I can, but in the meantime it seems to me that I need to work on being a safe buddy that can be a sufficient resource to my dive partners so that if the crap does hit the fan, we can work together to get out of that situation safely. I don't want to develop a mindset where it is them leading me, but us working together as a team, and I feel like I am getting to the point in my diving (i.e., past struggling with my buoyancy and the newness of a drysuit) where developing this awareness should become my primary task (which I don't see changing even as I gain more experience, this seems like a constant project to work on).
Undoubtedly, by the time Grateful Diver gets done with me in a couple weeks, I'll have greatly enlarged my skill set. But, in addition to that, I'm hoping to start a brainstorm here. I've been lurking a bit for a while, but haven't seen anything like this from a DIR perspective. Any thoughts, pointers, comments, rants, or stories about personal experiences with someone like me would be much appreciated.
Thanks,
-Doug
I am a newer diver (20 or so dives, 14 in a dry suit) that is fortunate enough to have teamed up with some really great DIR trained dive buddies. For me, diving with these people has been an eye opener.
My training plans are to do AOW with Grateful Diver (next week, his class sounds both challenging and useful) and then do Essentials and/or Fundies in the next six months or so. I'm probably up to logging about 10 dives a month-I wish it were more, but I got to pay the bills. I am focussing now on getting bottom time, working on trim and buoyancy, and developing a stable platform from which to build skills.
My dive buddies are an awesome support network for this. For instance, tomorrow I have two dives in the afternoon with TSandM, and I always learn something from Lynne when we dive. Grateful Diver is another awesome mentor, and I learn much from him every time we dive as well. This weekend I managed to get paired up with another DIR diver for a charter up in the San Juans.
As I said, I am fortunate.
However, I got to thinking that it may be appropriate to ask all of you what you would want from a newer diver when you dive with them? I'm specifically asking this because I am diving with a new DIR diver that I've only met in the parking lot before. I have been frank about my experience with him, he seems willing to work within my skill level, but at the same time I'm interested in working with him so we can have a good time on Sunday (and I am one of those freaks that thinks skill dives constitute a good time).
I know some mention that the great thing about Fundies is to learn good muscle memory and develop good habits, I'll get to that as soon as I can, but in the meantime it seems to me that I need to work on being a safe buddy that can be a sufficient resource to my dive partners so that if the crap does hit the fan, we can work together to get out of that situation safely. I don't want to develop a mindset where it is them leading me, but us working together as a team, and I feel like I am getting to the point in my diving (i.e., past struggling with my buoyancy and the newness of a drysuit) where developing this awareness should become my primary task (which I don't see changing even as I gain more experience, this seems like a constant project to work on).
Undoubtedly, by the time Grateful Diver gets done with me in a couple weeks, I'll have greatly enlarged my skill set. But, in addition to that, I'm hoping to start a brainstorm here. I've been lurking a bit for a while, but haven't seen anything like this from a DIR perspective. Any thoughts, pointers, comments, rants, or stories about personal experiences with someone like me would be much appreciated.
Thanks,
-Doug