Buddy Diving - Can be more Harm than Good

[F106A]

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
If it weren't for insta-buddies, I wouldn't have met a bunch of wonderful divers.

I'm not in it to meet a bunch of wonderful divers.

 

[DCBC]

Care to elaborate some more? Myself, I've found that the deeper I go the more valuable my buddies seem. Of course I've never gone much deeper than 130' either. I was once part of a dive that could have gone very badly when a diver froze up at 120' and just stopped responding. With a diver on each side of him holding his upper arms we escorted him into shallower water and everything was fine. Even in shallow water though I've had several situations where a buddy was very handy.

I like to dive solo at times, but I've never really encountered a situation where a good buddy would be more of a liability than an asset with the one exception of spearing fish.

I didn't want to elaborate in the Basic SCUBA area, but perhaps you just have not been deep enough. Unless I know the buddy personally or am running a deep air class, I will not dive below 130' with them on air. I've experienced two people who were narced and ran out of air at 180' while on vacation. It was a 210' wreck dive that they never quite made (two PADI Instructors from New York that should have never been on the dive in the first-place). We were not buddies, but I felt required to come to their assistance. It could have cost me my life. I will not place myself in that situation again. Hopefully that's enough elaboration... Before you (or anyone one else) start to lecture me, this was in in the late 70's. Trimix was not available and it was common for very experienced divers to dive deep (including wrecks like the Andrea Doria and others) on air.

 

[elmer fudd]

Fair enough, but it sounds like what you are saying is that only known and carefully selected buddies are assets beyond a certain depth. That I can easily understand. Solo-diving beyond 130' on the other hand sounds a bit nuts to me, although I know some people do it.