Do you dive solo?

[Eric Sedletzky]

Eric S., I like all that. The way it should be. I do wonder if the rescued diver (assuming alive) has to foot any of the bill for his rescue. That would only seem right, considering having the freedom to choose to dive on a bad day. I'm not sure how that situation is here, but I don't think the victim pays. Same thing as if they have to rescue boaters, etc.

I don't think so, but then I've never had to be rescued so I don't know for sure.
I can't even imagine what it costs to have the helicopter pluck you out of raging surf, plus all the ground support.
That has to be multiples of thousands.

 

[Kharon]

The thing is though, a lot of the things that can go wrong when you dive solo can also go equally wrong when you dive with a buddy, who may or may not be able to provide useful assistance.

I consider diving with a buddy more dangerous than being fully redundant, knowledgable, and skilled. There is way more they can do to cause me problems (to say nothing of the significant additional task load) than they could do to help in the off chance some problem pops up. Remember the commercial - "Mother I'd rather do it myself"? In times of stress, just leave me the eff alone. I can handle it and I know what I want to do - you don't - you are just guessing.

 

[Storker]

In times of stress, just leave me the eff alone. I can handle it and I know what I want to do - you don't - you are just guessing.

Everything? Including a medical emergency? According to BSAC (and DAN) statistics, a large number of diving fatalities involve some medical condition or another. Quite a few of those will escalate to fatal consequences a lot faster underwater than they do topside. I think that particularly middle-aged men should be aware of that, since that demographic is strongly overrepresented in cardio-related incidents.

As I mentioned in my previous post, the social aspect of diving together is an important factor from me, and solo diving can't give me that. Besides that, if my time is out I'd prefer that my buddy could tell my wife that I had a heart attack which would just as well have killed me in my sleep, while engaging in sex or while out hiking than having to worry about whether or not I spent my last minutes in agony from drowning.

YMMV, of course.



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Typos are a feature, not a bug

 

[Tigerman]

I like both solo and buddy diving, but I wouldn't dive a site that made me unsure if it was safe, with a buddy or without.
I have never dived with a buddy that is a hazard by itself, but I never assume they will be able to save me if I screw things up either. Yeah, a panicky buddy COULD grab you and your air, but you have two air sources and unless you're prone to panic yourself that should be manageable...

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

I've dove with people who were a danger to both themselves and me. I believe that diving with a hazardous buddy is more dangerous than diving alone. At least diving alone I am in 99.9999% control of the dive including my gear choices and maintenance level, where I go, the amount of risk I decide to take, and the end choice of how much redundancy I choose to provide myself.
If I screw up and die then there's only one person to blame, me. But I have 99.9999% control of making sure that doesn't happen.
The other .0001% is the shark that gets me, oh well such is life.
With buddy diving there is the total disaster buddy that is a complete liability, to the needy buddy that always has issues, to the control freak buddy that always has to run the dive and have things his/her way, etc.
Having my style cramped because of someone elses inadequacies really rubs me the wrong way.
I work hard and when I finally get to dive it's my time. I don't appreciate somebody ruining my day and stealing my time. Go ruin somebody elses dive.

As I see it, buddy diving is about 75% negative between the dangerous buddy factor and the PITA buddy factor.
Solo diving outweighs buddy diving in all factors combined so I choose solo diving.

 

[Tigerman]

You can choose to use the same redundancy diving with a buddy as you do solo. You can (and should) always screen a buddy an its gear before you splash. If the buddy want to go somewhere and you say no and he still goes, that's on him - "anyone can abort at any time for any reason", remember?
If you really have 75% **** buddies that's dangerous to themselves or you, I'd say you know the wrong people and frequent the wrong dive ops...

EDIT: Or are you saying that american divers just generally suck ass compared to european ones when it comes to diving?

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

You can choose to use the same redundancy diving with a buddy as you do solo. You can (and should) always screen a buddy an its gear before you splash. If the buddy want to go somewhere and you say no and he still goes, that's on him - "anyone can abort at any time for any reason", remember?
If you really have 75% **** buddies that's dangerous to themselves or you, I'd say you know the wrong people and frequent the wrong dive ops...

EDIT: Or are you saying that american divers just generally suck ass compared to european ones when it comes to diving?

Yes you can choose same redundancy but the buddy sort of is the redundancy in many aspects, at least thats always part of the discussion and the norm that is taught.
If the buddy want's to go somewhere and you don't and they take off then it's no longer a buddy dive. You may as well be solo from the get go and save yourself the BS of trying to plan something with someone else.
We do the best we can at screening, but unless you know the person really well and both of you are a well oiled buddy team then you really have no idea what you're going to get. Many times the true colors don't shine until the problem arise.
The 75% includes all buddies from treacherous to plenty safe but maybe just a pain to dive with.
The total nightmare buddies are maybe 1%. Unfortunately I have had the displeasure of winning that lottery.

Do American divers suck ass?
I don't really know how we measure up to the rest of the world. I don't get out much. I've only dove here, Hawaii, and Great Barrier reef. I wasn't too impressed with the Asian divers that were on the boat.
Maybe I'm just losing my filter and getting less patient the older I get. I'm seeing that time is getting too precious to have it wasted by idiots.

 

[Tigerman]

Asian divers is tbh the ones I have the worst track record with, but "only" 25ish % of them where dangerous to themselves as they had crap bouyancy control and where doing wall dives - yikes. You could smell it a mile away in order to avoid them too, so why the op let them go is beyond me.
Ive only hand a handful of people I just didnt like though, and never really buddied with them for that reason (although being on the same boat as some is bad enough)

 

[TMHeimer]

Buddy vs. solo: Not a great analogy, but for me it's a bit like seat belt vs. none. Yes, you can drown or burn if a seat belt jams. The %s say it's way better to use them (Will never agree on it being a law, but that's been discussed to death).
I agree with Storker about medical emergencies. Entanglement is another thing a buddy can really help with (the #1 thing to avoid when solo IMO). There are obviously other things. While it is true that a panicking buddy can put you in some dangerous situations that soloing won't, anyone who has taken Rescue has been taught how to deal with that. If one hasn't taken Rescue (or had it all in OW like with one or two agencies?), one should as soon as practical. Then as discussed, there are the "hassles" of being a good buddy (ie. not concentrating as much on your shell collecting....). But like the seat belt, I would agree that buddying in general is safer. He has Air.

 

[Nemrod]

There are two types of people regarding this solo vs buddy diving. There are the "people" people who feel a compelling need to share their feelings and validate one another in a group/tribal setting. I suppose it is evolutionary ingrained need for group sharing. But, there are always a few who simply do not care or even feel any compunction whatsoever for group hugs and are able to self actualize and self validate.

These two groups of people are never going to understand one another but unfortunately the group hug bunch feel violated when a lone wolf does not wag his/her tail and roll over for some belly rubs and feel the need to correct the behavior, which for this wolf, could result in somebody getting bit. I do not need a group hug and I do not want my belly rubbed. I am fine alone, thank you, and I do not want to share or discuss feelings either. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrowl.

N