Bad buddies...

[Trailboss123]

Sometimes, no amount of dive planning and pre-dive communication will make a difference, because "Stupid is as Stupid does"
That being said, it has been my experience that regular buddies and insta-buddies do a pretty poor job of talking through and agreeing upon a pre-dive plan and briefing for the most part. Just a few things to consider and go over before descending together- especially for Insta-buddies:

1. Tell me about your dive experience? When did you last dive?
2. Are you familiar with this dive site and/or dive operator?
3. Let's familiarize ourselves with each others dive gear in the event of an emergency
4. Based on the dive briefing we just heard, how would you like to approach this dive? Discuss dive direction, dive depth, dive time, tank pressure, turn pressure, safety stop, hand signals, how to communicate tank pressure, at what tank pressure are we ascending to do a safety stop, at what tank pressure are we surfacing and back on the boat or land?
5. Are you comfortable leading the dive or would you prefer that I lead?
6. How are your navigational skills?
7. Do you like to dive fast and cover lots of terrain and see as much as possible or do you prefer to go slow, conserve air and not miss the stuff you might otherwise miss?
8. Let's do a buddy check- are you ready?

 

[The Chairman]

Sometimes, no amount of dive planning and pre-dive communication will make a difference, because "Stupid is as Stupid does"

Ain't that the truth. But let's change that to

 

[GreggS]

Plans such as that are best not discussed online.....

Hey, flyboy's the one that brought it up.

 

[rabe]

Or if you're unsure where the ef you are. How did you not know you were lost?

I know I drifted x meters from the boat, I just didn't know how many.
When I finally poped out my first thought was "Where the f!ck is the boat????", followed by "Oh, is there...", followed by "It's really far, let me use my sausage, you never know..." after that, they spotted it me, big ok, and they kept an eye on me until I got there (30 minutes later).
If there is boat traffic, I would pop the bag, but we there are no boats at all where I usually dive.
Than I jumped on the boat and we went to look for the other 3 that were really lost: as I mentioned, the conditions were terrible.

 

[Bubblesong]

How did your Abandoning Instaabuddy make it to boat first, if you had to surface or else you were about to go into NDL? Did he swim under deep, under heavy current, to anchor line, then do his decompression on anchor line, or he’s diving Nitrox not air?
Regardless, his fin twisting creepiness marks him as an angry person, best to avoid altogether in future.

 

[The Chairman]

I just didn't know how many.

So, you were lost and should have popped a bag from depth ASAP.

If I'm diving with someone with a flag and I get separated from them, I pop a sausage from depth.

If conditions are bad, guess what. Yeah, it's hard to believe, but I'm going to pop a sausage from depth.

When in doubt, I pop it on up. Why not? The sooner you send it up, the better off you are.

 

[rabe]

How did your Abandoning Instaabuddy make it to boat first, if you had to surface or else you were about to go into NDL? Did he swim under deep, under heavy current, to anchor line, then do his decompression on anchor line, or he’s diving Nitrox not air?
Regardless, his fin twisting creepiness marks him as an angry person, best to avoid altogether in future.

When I was trying to show him that I was ascending, he was holding the anchor line.
Unfortunately, the anchor was to deep for me to reach it again and the line wasn't visible, therefore I had not too many choices...
Do not ask me what he did (air, not nitrox though), he was probably in deco but he might had ignored it completely... Who knows...

 

[rabe]

So, you were lost and should have popped a bag from depth ASAP.

If I'm diving with someone with a flag and I get separated from them, I pop a sausage from depth.

If conditions are bad, guess what. Yeah, it's hard to believe, but I'm going to pop a sausage from depth.

When in doubt, I pop it on up. Why not? The sooner you send it up, the better off you are.

condescending |ˌkändəˈsendi ng |

adjective

acting in a way that betrays a feeling of patronizing superiority

 

[Bubblesong]

@rabe I have to be horribly honest; you may have been best served by the guy NOT leaving the anchor line so he could get up to boat fastest and let them know you were coming up in swift current and would have to be retrieved, rather than him try to come up to you, you both get swept off.
I hope you are sitting down for my next example.
My first dive with my then 12 year old after her certification; she got swept by slow current out of visibility because she didn’t hang on to anchor line that I was hanging onto. I did not leave anchor line, but instead trusted her to get to surface as trained, and I went up the line to get help. By the time I surfaced, she had surfaced right by boat, because current was pulling her in that direction.
I am sure that your buddy told the crew to look for you once he got to boat first, and may have helped them spot you in the storm, even if his personality is not the kind that I would turn my back on.

 

[Dan]

I had 2 insta-buddies (which also were newbies) during a night dive, so it’s a double whammy in terms of making a bad situation worse. We talked about how we are going to dive it, i.e., by staying closed together, going down on anchor line & turning left going for a few meters, turning around & back to the anchor line when the tank reach 2/3 full, mine would be 2000psi & theirs would be 140 bar (it’s in GBR).

We had fun looking at jackfish taking advantage of our lights to hunt for meal. I saw a green moray, barramundi & took pictures of them, pointing the fish to them. I saw some critters and other interesting fish & took more pictures. After awhile I looked at my gauge, it’s 2000 psig, it’s time to go back, but I didn’t see the two insta-buddies any more, only 2 faint lights at the distant. So here I went finning as fast as I could to keep up with them. I was sure those were my 2 insta-buddies because any where else around me was pitch black.

By the time I reached back to the anchor line, I saw a few divers hanging on the line for safety stop. I looked at my gauge, it was 1000 psig, checked if any of them were my buddies, but none of them were. My dive computer said that I had done my safety stop during the furiously finning back to the anchor line as we were diving not too deep anyway. The deepest bottom was 30 feet. So I continued finning back to the boat.

The minute I was back on the boat, I heard the DM lecturing my 2 buddies about not letting to fill up their tanks if they do it again, whatever the “it” meant. He turned & looked at me climbing up the ladder, came to me & checked my gauge, showing 750 psig and continued chewing on the 2 newbies. Apparently, one of my insta-buddies had found out that he was low on air and took off leaving me behind with his buddy chasing him. By the time he was back on the boat, he was OOA. The 2nd buddy had not much air left in his tank either.

The DM told them if they were low on air, they should have popped up to the surface & alerted the crew to come and get them with skiff there instead of finning like mad back to the boat & ended up with OOA.

Sometime you may think that you have a sound plan, but not enough detail and assume your insta-buddies know what to do if SHTF.