Buddy in trouble---leave or stay?

[PfcAJ]

3. Now let's go to a combination of the two. I am waiting for my buddy, as in #2, but this time I have a scooter. I am monitoring my gas. I know roughly how much I will need to swim out. I plan to leave when I hit that mark. But I have a scooter! Do I now dip farther into my gas reserves on the assumption that the scooter will carry me--and possibly my buddy--all the way to the exit, all the time knowing that if it fails, I won't make it?

I would wait. He has a scooter, too (if not, wtf are you doing?). I would reserve enough gas to exit towing (roughly 100fpm vs 150fpm for normal scootering) and when I hit that, I'd leave. Surface with a thin margin but knowing you did all you could do.

 

[boulderjohn]

I really like the way people have stepped forward to express their thinking. It has been valuable to me. I would like to repeat my earlier question: Should this issue be a regular part of the instruction/discussion in a standard cave course?

 

[PfcAJ]

Lost buddy was taught in my gue cave classes. There was discussion on how long we can search.

 

[Pavao]

...

1. When you go through a restriction, continue a few feet past and turn and frame the restriction with your light so your buddy can see his way through it, and wait to regroup.


...It's really not that difficult.

This video illustrates a bit this, really strong team diving here, situational awareness at its maximum, well, let me let the video show it.
Note the segment between about 4:30 and 5:30, diver #1 does not continue until last diver gives the OK, this isn't even a super tight restrictive area and the water is as clear as it gets.
[video=youtube;YiDxv6_eqHw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiDxv6_eqHw#t=332[/video]

This is how I want to dive!

 

[boulderjohn]

Lost buddy was taught in my gue cave classes. There was discussion on how long we can search.

Lost buddy was taught in my class, too. I am talking abut where you roughly know where the buddy is, but he is in a silt storm. I don't think it is the same thing, as I explained in the opening post.

 

[kensuf]

Lost buddy was taught in my class, too. I am talking abut where you roughly know where the buddy is, but he is in a silt storm. I don't think it is the same thing, as I explained in the opening post.

Why do you think it isn't the same thing? How were you taught a lost buddy drill that makes you think we are telling you something drastically different?

I haven't been a cave instructor that long, but years ago I mentored several people for several years. Between teaching and mentoring, I have grown fond of having discussions about "what if" scenarios. But remember, there is no real way to discuss every single possible scenario that could ever happen, so I find that discussions like this are useful at gauging an individuals thinking process and hopefully helping them make a course correction.

Here's another one I enjoy discussing with my students. What do you do when you and your teammate are hopelessly at an impasse regarding a navigational decision? You are convinced one direction is the way out, but they are convinced that you are wrong and that another direction is the way out?

FWIW, that has happened more than once. As a matter of fact, we have a gold mainline in tourist systems today because of this very situation.

 

[Hetland]

Lost buddy was taught in my class, too. I am talking abut where you roughly know where the buddy is, but he is in a silt storm. I don't think it is the same thing, as I explained in the opening post.

It's sort-of the same thing. Your buddy IS lost. You have an idea where they are, but no proof they're not going the other way at full-steam, or incapacitated in the silt, or....

Because there aren't really any "RULES", I think the only thing you can teach beyond lost buddy is what the options are if you find yourself in that situation. Options will be different based on the circumstances of each dive. Maybe it should be stressed as an essential element of dive planning. What do we do if we're separated? How can we use the resources available to us on this dive to solve that potential problem?

 

[boulderjohn]

Why do you think it isn't the same thing? How were you taught a lost buddy drill that makes you think we are telling you something drastically different?

Good question. The main difference I see is that in this scenario, you know almost exactly where that person is, but you have a serious question about your ability to get him or her out of the predicament or the ability of that diver to solve the problem himself or herself. I think other people see a difference as well. In the three cases I described, three different people--an instructor and two very veteran divers--headed for the exit at apparently the first opportunity rather than follow the lost buddy protocol. I believe that all three would have followed that protocol under different circumstances. That alone tells me there is a difference.

 

[TSandM]

I guess I'm a bear of very simple brain. To me, a lost buddy is lost. Whether he's lost because he went somewhere I don't know about, or whether he is lost because he's on the other side of a siltout, he's a lost buddy. I was taught a lost buddy procedure, which involved calculating, as close as I can, the gas required to exit from where I am, reserving twice that much gas, and using the rest to search. How, HOW one goes about that search was discussed, but there were no specifics for "buddy in siltout". I don't think I would go into a siltout to search, especially if I knew it was very extensive, but if we were at the mouth of a silted out tunnel, I'd sit as close to the mouth as I could, hoping my buddy would orient himself to exit.

I was taught, in my lost line drills, that you will ALWAYS find the line, and the exit direction, if you don't panic and keep looking. Whether you find it with enough gas to exit is another question, and that's where the difference between survival and death could lie in whether your buddy had the patience to wait for you.

The likelihood of exiting a cave, finding help, and having that help get to my buddy while he is still with us is just too low for me to face it. Where I dive, in MX, it isn't uncommon at all for us to be the only team not only at the cave, but within a half hour or more driving distance from that cave.

I like the, "Get to closest clear water and wait" approach. I hope I never make the decision to exit without someone who then dies, but I'd sure hope that, if I ever have to do it, I would get out with no more than one person's exit gas.

 

[Pavao]

Swim out and leave the scooter.

If you breathe your reserve and your scooter dies, you're a 2nd victim.
If you dip into reserve, and end up towing TWO divers, possibly sharing gas, you could become a second victim.
If buddy makes it out of silt, he has a scooter he can use, hopefully catching up to you on the way out, but if not, he now has an asset he can use to buy time.

The safest assumption on the buddy's scooter is that it's inoperable.

I think you would wanna leave more than just a scooter clipped off, the buddy coming out of the silt out and seeing the scooter clipped off might think you clipped it there to go look for him.

I haven't seen anyone mention it, or maybe I missed it, but isn't this the scenario where you clip off one of your back up lights to the line, shinning the direction where you think your buddy will come from, if/when you have to leave of course?