I've seen a few real doozies but I'll relay one.
A diver was hanging around at the shop when I came in with my buddy to fill tanks before taking off to dive. He started chatting to us asking where we were going and then said that his buddy stood him up and asked if he could tag along. We said ok.
Once at the site we wanted to dive we briefed him. The dive was planned to go outside the designated dive area (my mistake) and we had planned to swim back into the dive area before surfacing. We briefed everything. Direction, depth, air consumption, time, buddies, goals etc etc you name it. He was AOW with about 15 dives so we decided that I would lead the dive and my buddy (who was RD) would buddy up with the new guy. I was RD at the time too.
So off we went. We had agreed to turn the dive at 120 bar and our maximum depth was 18 metres.
At about 15 minutes into the dive I was at about 150 bar when the new guy grabbed my flipper and showed me his SPG..... He had 40 bar. Neither myself nor my buddy expected that and believe me we were clear in the briefing that he had to keep an eye on it and give us a sign when he was at 120..... (my mistake again)
He didn't have time to get back into the dive area on the air he had so I offered him my reg (longhose) so we could swim back. He utterly refused to take it. I tried a couple of times to get him to put it in his mouth and he refused.
So I signed to my other buddy to abort the dive and surface. He signed "HERE!?!" I said "Yes". He signed "OK" but shook his head. The problem was there were a lot of small sailing boats around and the chances of an encounter were pretty good. But I figured better that than a dead new guy. At this point the new guy was getting low on air.
I signed to surface and the new guy started pushing the inflate button on his BCD and took off. I tried to grab him but missed so I rolled over on my back and signed to him "slow down!".... so then he vented all the air in his BCD and crashed to the bottom in a big silt bomb.
That's when I had enough. I took ahold of him and started to lift him myself. In the process I took my alternate and handed it to him. He still refused to put it in his mouth but after a few tries I got him to at least hold it in his hand. I figured if he went OOA he'd use it.
I lifted him to the surface and I think he still had a few bar left when we got there.
At that point we were about 80m outside the dive zone but fortunately in no danger of an encounter with a sailing boat. I was a little annoyed with the new guy at that point and just said "ok, let's get back inside the dive zone and make it fast". He tried to snorkel but the whole experience had overwhelmed him and he cramped up completely and I had to tow him back to shore. All the while my buddy had taken up the wing position and was doing what he could to help but didn't say a word.
Until we got back to the car. The new guy had parked a few cars away and as soon as we walked back to the car and were out of earshot he just looked at me and started talking. The whole conversation went something like this:
buddy: "f*kn hell... didn't see that coming".
me: "nope"
buddy: "we have to get rid of this guy"
me: "yep"
buddy: "you want to debrief this?"
me: "with you or with him?"
<laughing>
me: "let's go eat first".
There was a cafe around the corner so we went and sat down and the first thing they new guy said was "great dive guys. That was fun".
pffffff
I learned a lot from that dive, especially about assuming anything based on what someone says about themselves, the value of a check-out dive with new buddies and a lot about intervening earlier and more assertively. I hope the new guy learned something too. I never dove with him again.
R..
