Buddy distance.

[MurkyRockDiver]

How close do you stay to your buddy and do you think you could get to him for air if something went wrong or would you go for the surface?

I will only dive with buddies that stay within 10-15 feet max and I discuss this prior to the dive but I have seen many dive very far away at depth and was wondering is this common.

 

[spectrum]

10-15 is a nice number. If visibility and risk allows I will extend that a little.

If one does not consider their buddy to be accessible in an OOA situation they must face the reality of solo diving.

There is buddy diving, same ocean diving and solo diving with shades of gray between all of them. This will be compounded by visibility, diver preference and the given situation.

Pete

 

[eriediver2002]

Depends, if I'm with my regular buddy, we tend to lose each other alot (we both solo also). If I'm with friends that are new to the sport I'll stick right with them.

 

[SteveAD]

I try to stay within contact distance. If I can't reach out and put a hand on my buddy, that's too far.

 

[El Orans]

I try to stay within contact distance. If I can't reach out and put a hand on my buddy, that's too far.

That's about right for local diving.

 

[TSandM]

There are two things I want to accomplish by setting the distance to my buddy. One, I want to keep track of him. Therefore, I don't ever want to be far enough apart that we're losing visual contact. In the water where I dive, separation can be ten feet, or two, depending on how bad the viz is.

The second thing is that I want to remain where I can use my buddy as my backup gas supply. I've tested this, and 25 feet is too far, no matter what the visibility is.

So my buddy separation will generally be as far as is comfortable with the viz, but no more than about 15 feet.

 

[MBH]

The majority of my diving is and has been in pretty crappy visibility so we really stick together like white on rice. More often than not- 10' of seperation and you are solo diving down here. Good dive light protocols help tremendously.

I've had the misfortune to get hopelessly seperated from two teammates in very low vis and brother let me tell ya...I will do everything in my power to keep that from EVER happening again.

 

[beester]

It will depend on visibility. If it's the usual vis of around 5 to 10 feet then I'll stay right next to my buddy... even going as far as keeping physical touch or using a buddy rope. With good vis (tropical water) it could be as far as 20 feet.

Taking in consideration that I mostly dive 1 tank with double valves and double separated breathing systems (2 first and second stages).

 

[wardric]

an arm's lenght on all my local dives. Our fins often touch so we know our buddy is there. A longer distance and you can lose your buddy in just the blink of an eye.

In tropical waters, I tend to keep that habit altough I sometimes extend to about 10ft max.

 

[nereas]

Visual range is the norm for extremely advanced divers on easy dives. I imagine that is what you are asking about, Murky. You want to be able to avail yourself of sharing air, though if you are properly monitoring your air/nitrox supply then it is unlikely this would ever become an issue.

Arm's length is the norm for extremely complex dives. A complex dive for a novice diver is about any dive. A complex dive in the technical area is also any dive.

If you want to coin a phrase for this, you could say: Visual range for easy dives; arm's length for complex dives.

I think that with time and experience you will see that this is the general rule.