Diving without predetermined buddy

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

Status
Not open for further replies.
Go for it. Look for likely buddies, tell the DM or guide your experience level, try to be one of the first in the water (because you will surface with half a tank of gas anyway). Avoid anything that looks like an instructor with students, anyone spearfishing, the overweight blowhards. I would say avoid photographers (I'm one) because we are really slooow. But we do tend to find interesting stuff. Most of all remember to have fun, and keep a sense of perspective if you get a dud of a buddy.

I actually have a lot of insta buddies who like to dive with me as they have no camera and I will take photos of them on the dives and send to them by email. I have two insta buddies that are now divers I dive with twice or 3 times a year now.

Anyways I am just happy to be diving and always bring my camera gear. Most operations will put you in relevant groups but I'm happy enough to join a group of OW on a dive when I don't want to go below 20m. I actually find most younger divers appreciate having an older more experienced diver who helps them improve their diving and is happy to answer their questions and be treated with respect. Last year I dove with a married couple who did their dive OW course in Thailand. They said when they had just certified there were divers that would treat them poorly and they left Thailand and came to Cebu and had a great time being treated nicely.

After all we were all newbies at one time.
 
Maybe we should try not to be quite so disparaging about instabuddies. By definition, if I'm paired up with an instabuddy I am also an instabuddy, regardless of my own self importance and feeling of superiority. :wink:

I do a lot of pickup dives with strangers. It's fairly easy to avoid the worst of the worst. After that, it's been my experience that most instabuddies have at least met the minimum standards for a dive buddy. (Keeping in mind, that a basic OW buddy is pretty much just an alternate air source.) There's only been a couple that I wouldn't dive with again.

And, there's at least one out there that'll never dive with me again...

Sometimes we're the bad instabuddy and don't even know it apparently. I got chewed out by an instabuddy once. We had met randomly at the dive site and agreed to dive solo together. That was the understanding. We were both on our own and not to rely on each other for anything. We would just be in the water doing the same dive at the same time. That was the other diver's idea, not mine. Weird, but ok, since I was going anyway.

I was wearing double 104s and, since I had planned to dive solo, I was also carrying an AL80 safety bottle, and an AL40 with O2. When I'm solo, I normally carry my safety bottle for the whole dive, but we were doing an easy circuit that I had done many times before. When we got to the junction, things were going well, instabuddy looked good in the water, so I put the unused safety bottle down for pickup on the return leg. This put a full safety bottle 500ft from the exit for our return leg, which is a great spot for a backup. On the way out, I stopped to pickup the safety bottle and buddy suddenly realizes that I hadn't been carrying it and communicates his disapproval. We do a few uncomfortable minutes of deco, with him shooting me dirty looks, while I deco on O2 and he's on back gas because he came inadequately prepared. I wait for him to finish deco and we exit together.

After the dive, instabuddy comes over and chews me out for dropping my "stage bottle." I explained that it wasn't technically a stage, I don't need a stage for that dive, and I didn't use any gas from it. And, that's what you do with stage bottles anyway, you drop them at a strategic location. Diver storms off before we can talk rationally about it. But, the funny part was this diver only had back gas and didn't take a stage, a safety bottle, or O2 on the dive at all. So, I had more gas for the dive due to larger tanks, a strategically placed safety bottle, and O2 for deco, but I was the bad diver. He's probably still telling the story about how a bad instabuddy almost killed him.

To me, having a sub-par dive buddy isn't a death sentence, and sub-par is better than not diving - most of the time anyway. Instabuddies often allow me to do dives I otherwise could not because of the no solo rules in force in most places. So when some rando asks is he can join your group, do him a favor. He most likely won't kill you.
 
I have done all my trips alone. In fact when I went to Roatan in 2017 I roomed with someone I didn't even know and never dove with before and I will be doing the same this year as well. And I only have 250 dives -- so you should be just fine.
 
I was once the new diver's instabuddy horror story once. I'm still embarrassed.

I had hundreds of dives at the time but was on a non diving vacation with a nondiviving friend

There was a dive OP at our resort so I decided to rent the gear, yada yada yada

I was assigned the newly certified buddy
We rolled. My mask filled. Whilst at surface sorting myself it turned out there was a current and I'd drifted quite aways but very gently. Try as I would, couldn't make my way back to them. Doh

A guide had to come for me. He was choked lol

I had a decent dive with one eye on my buddy who was stuck like glue to one of the guides.

When the dive was over, I was last to ascend and came up right beside my instabuddy.

Hi, I said, with a big smile. He snarled and violently pushed me away.

:acclaim: :rofl3:
 
I have done all my trips alone. In fact when I went to Roatan in 2017 I roomed with someone I didn't even know and never dove with before and I will be doing the same this year as well. And I only have 250 dives -- so you should be just fine.

Like UrbanEve, the majority of my trips have been as a solo/single.

I've been blessed to have made many diver friends the world over.
 
Well Taiwan just put all of EU UK and any transit through Dubai arrivals on mandatory 14 day quarantine when they arrive in Taiwan.

So my UK friend living in Cheltenham flying Emirates transiting Dubai now cannot fly to Taiwan and onto Bali. He has to cancel his trip today. So that leaves me going alone to Bali and needing to buddy up with perhaps just the guide as I was told so few tourists for diving there atm. It's low season and people are changing travel plans.
 
@shmuggy the last trip I did on a LOB, I was traveling as a part of a group. We had an odd number of people, however, and I found myself as the "odd man out". There was a woman who was traveling alone and her and I got paired up as "insta-buddies".

Before our first dive, we took a few minutes and went over our gear (where is your ditchable weight? where is your octo? that type of thing) and confirmed what we would be using for hand signals, and we talked about our underwater tendencies. After the dive, we "debriefed." What did I do that you weren't expecting? What would you like me to do that I didn't? Did I do anything that you would categorize as being one of the "3Ds": Dumb, Dangerous or Different.

After a few dives, it was as if we had been diving together for years. Both of us had a great time.

Communication is critical. If you do go alone, talk to your insta-buddy before you ever get in the water, but also talk to them after you get out so that you close any loops that there might be.
 
I have made and met some really good friends while my solo trips. I did meet a great dive buddy on my last trip to Roatan. He was a brand spankin new diver and he was such a natural at it - we just meshed really well.
 
I like diving with photogs as buddies. They pretty much leave me alone to do my thing and we can show each other stuff.

Can't wait to dive with you Chilly :D
 
Not to cross the politically correct line, I will say that as a male, I have traveled alone on many dive trips overseas. That said there may be increased risk for any dive tourist traveling alone. A dive trip planed by a group traveling together is always recommended from a travel safety point of view. My last solo trip with an organized group I was teamed up with a diver who claimed to have 500+ dives. My buddy ruined so many pictures for me and others with their inability to not stir up the bottom on muck dives in Philippines. Skill level of less than my scuba students on their first ocean dive. After a bit I talked to the trip organizer and got a private DM (no charge). Others though I as exaggerating, until they had to deal with the diver and then said I was understating the issue. Diver would not accept pointers to improve and even asked if they had ruined a picture for me. When I said yes they replied "good". So you take your chances with instabuddy. But in general you will make new friends and if you stay with the group on any away from the resort or dive boat you should be ok.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top Bottom