do you still buddy check

[almitywife]

ok, i did a search and im seriously curious.

i do buddy checks when im diving with Almitychild but to be honest i dont think ive done one with an adult buddy since i passed my OW.

so are you still doing the check before entering the water or are you giving it a miss?

 

[H2Andy]

every single dive for overhead

not so much for OW

 

[Bratface]

If it's my usual dive buddy, I give a quick look-over since we usually dive with the same equipment. If it's a new person or one with little experience, I do a complete buddy check and also check on their air consumption during the dive.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Every dive. If it's someone I'm not familiar with, I'll do a complete equipment check. If it's someone I am familiar with, we'll do a quick review to make sure we've got everything, and do a bubble check ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[vel525]

i don't typically do a formal buddy check anymore. if it's my normal buddy (my wife) i'll do a quick scan of major items (is your air on, is your tank strapped, etc) before we jump in the pool. if it's a complete stranger, i will take a little more time to be familiar with their configuration (i.e. - where is their octo located ), but i still don't do a formal buddy check. i do try to talk to the person on the boat ride out to see if i can get a sense of their dive history and then keep a closer eye on them during the first dive to see how they are underwater (i.e. - dog paddle a lot or finicky with their bc) to determine how close we should be as a buddy pair.

 

[UWupnorth]

You bet, I do one every time I get in the water. Most of the people I dive are DM or higher cert level. We all do the head to toe equipment check. All it takes is someone forgetting one small thing and there goes the dive. Or even worse, someones life. You wouldn't fly a plane without a preflight check would you.

 

[tstormdiver]

For a while, no I didnt (I know, shame on me:no ) until last fall when my buddy had her husband set up her gear. She had been out of the water for a while because of pregnancy, & was trying to get back into it. Anyway long story short, she & I failed to check her air pressure before the dive. Her husband had given her an almost empty tank. She went OOA about 7 min into the dive:11: . I immediately gave her my octo, grabbed her BC & we began our ascent. The good part was we were only in about 15' of water at the time. After that episode, I learned my lesson as to the value of such checks. I now do a buddy check every time.

 

[Rick Inman]

On my last dive Saturday, we did a head to toe out on the RIB, but proceeded right down to the wreck without doing a long hose deployment (s-drill). There were three of us, and Mr. A was the leader and moved us right past 20' where we were supposed to do the drill. I though, oh well, and let it go. Mistake.

At 100', about 15 mins into the dive (36 degrees and just 4' vis) I got a light flash, turned around and saw that Mr. S was having a wild free-flow from his primary reg. He had his backup in his mouth, so I turned off his right post and stopped the free-flow.

But here was the rub. The hose from his primary was trapped inside his backup bungee - actually pinned uncomfortably against his lips by the bungee. I went to my backup reg, gave him my primary, unwound his mess of hoses and rerouted them properly, took back my primary (he went back to his backup) and all was good.

However, if someone had needed air from him, because his hoses were not routed properly, it would have been a total cluster trying to donate! If fact, at 100', it could have gone very badly. Because we did not do a complete check and skipped the hose deployment and s-drill.

We talked about it during the debrief, and everyone agreed that we would not make this mistake again.

 

[u4ia]

my buddy and I always go through a routine check before each dive, including a bubble check. though it may seem a superfluous task for many dives, we want it to be an innate, habitual behavior. complacency + diving is a bad mix in our view.

 

[Buoyant1]

yes..unless it's with someone I dive with often...then we usually just go over any new gear!

But we usually do a quick once over to check that our air is on and things are where we remember them. anyway...nothing "formal" like the infamous "BWRAF"