Ever been saved by your buddy?

[dschonbrun]

only 60 dives, but most were in the carribbean, and many were with insta-buddies.

5 instances where I've had to help a buddy in trouble.

1 OOA instance where he took my alternate.
1 Low Air instance where I stayed by her side and got her back to the boat
1 night-Dive freak out when she couldn't equalize her mask
1 weight belt came undone, lost 5 pounds, can't stay down... emptied my BCD, held him down, gave him a 3 pounder (I carry extra weight) swam him to the anchor line
1 young diver who didn't watch the DM or her Depth gauge, and was down at 125 when we were at 90-100. I tried signalling her, but ended up having to go get her and bring her back up to 90.

 

[Papa_Bear]

You missed that one as well GOB! I was speaking of the numbers! You don't see a problem with all the problems in 400 dives? Okay! He told the story not me! You speak of the value of training, don't you think he should learn the basics about his gas, tank, and reg? Why didn't you say something his was a few posts ago? If Papa Bears bed is too hard for you don't lie in it! :no

 

[seaducer]

10 years of diving. Only 1 potential incident.

It was a night dive, the diver in question was having some bouyancy issues at first. He either had an equipment melt down or he was breathing like I have never seen before because at 50 feet I still has 2000PSI in my AL80, he was down to 250 in his. He grabbed my fin, showed me his gauge, I did what I was trained to do. Double check my pressure, turn the light on my computer to full time so I can watch the depth, time and ascent rate, grabbed his BCD with one hand and my octo with the other and up we went. He surfaced on his own supply and I don't think it was really an incident, but it could have been.

 

[shoredivr]

300+ dives

(On re-reading the OP, ignore this post if you like, this was me helping someone else).

Dive shop group dive, about 30 divers in the group, several rescue divers/DMs in the mix patrolling around underwater.

I'm diving with 2 instabuddies, one of whom hadn't dived cold water with a hood before. Shallow dive (25 ft to a platform). When the new to coldwater diver got to the platform, her mask kept filling up with water. Unknown to her, the hood was under the mask skirt at the mask strap, so as she tried to clear it, it filled up again. She got a bit freaked out and started to ascend. Her other buddy didn't notice her (this took much shorter to happen than to write). I signalled to the buddy I was going up with the ascending diver who by now was in full flight to the surface. At the surface she was kicking to try and stay afloat and starting to hyperventillate. I surfaced out of arm's reach and told her to inflate the BC, which she did. Then once she wouldn't sink, I said the hood might be under the mask skirt. She had calmed down enough to think this through, and pulled the little bit of hood out from under the mask. Neither her regular buddy nor myself had noticed this on the dive precheck.

She was ok to continue the dive, she said, so we descended to the other instabuddy who had not come up to find out what was going on. None of the rescue divers/Dms noticed any of this.

 

[jim T.]

I have 121 dives logged now. Six in the '70s. The rest since '05.

Somewhere around dive #6, (in the 1970's with oral inflate only,horseshoe collar b.c.) I cut a buddy out of an entanglement. At least one commercial fishing net and lots and lots of mono filament in a big ball. The viz was very poor so it was mostly by feel so I couldn't even see what "it all was".
Permanently freaked me out about entanglements. I'm always packing 3 cutting tools. There were some wire "leaders?" involved in the
incident so snips are one of those tools I carry now.

I also helped to calm a panicing diver on the surface on a lake dive around the same period. I orally inflated his horseshoe b.c. and helped swim him on his back, to shore. Unfortunately I never asked him what his issue was,robbing myself of learning something from the experience. (It was the era of "it's cool, man" :14 and didn't want to "embarass" him.
On the beach, I saw that his "J" valve had been prematurely "tripped". Not everyone had spgs back then either. He didn't, I did. If he had any other issues they remain a mystery.

So far, I haven't needed any rescuing myself. Hope to keep it that way!
Training is so much better and more thorough nowadays! I carry redundant air supplies and visualize every contingency I can think of before the dive.

I'm actually glad that I literally saw and dealt with "what can happen" when I was a beginner, young and thought everyone lived forever.
I'm now 56,paranoid and overly analytical according to some but so far, it's been serving me well. I try to dive with other paranoid, analytical divers!

 

[Bob Vincent]

Hey guys thats just great ... Scubaboard is to promote diving ... alot of newbies base things on what they read here. They might not understand the circumstances which lead up to the incident in question ... save it for a professional room.

Stroke ego's there. You don't have to lie, but you don't have to tell them everything you know. I thought better of alot of peeps here.

 

[ArcticDiver]

I'm a relatively new diver pushing 400 dives. I've had only one really serious situation. That was when my "dive buddy" broke the dive plan and went many feet deeper and under a ledge; I had to go find him and discovered he was just hanging on to something; gave me a nearly out of air signal at 80'; and fought me when, thinking he was in deep trouble, I tried to drag him to the surface. I literally over breathed my regulator and did what every animal does when it can't get enough air.

Later he told me he had plenty of air, couldn't see why we needed to stay in contact, and couldn't understand my concern. Oh yes, on the preceding dive he had weight problems and dropped a weight that missed my head by about 6".

He never did understand why I wouldn't dive with him again.

Other than that I've been privileged to meet and dive wih some of the best folks a person could ask for. Many are more experienced and some are less. We may, or may not, share diving philosophy. But, with rare exception we have fun together.

 

[Thunder Bay Minnow]

On my first open water @ 30ft my instructor grabbed my arm. I turned to see my instructor looking to the surface and reaching towards her back. I got behind her and found that her tank had slipped completely out of her BC. She still had her regulator in her mouth so released the tank strap and got the neck some what pointed in the right directionme being 6'2" and 300+ pound and her being 4ft something and 130lbs. The problem was that every time I would move the tank or adjusted the strap, I was just pushing her, tank and all through the water. i ended up grabbing her shoulder with one hand and grabbing the bottom of the tank with the other and pulled the two together. Secured the strap, made sure we were both ok and we continued on with my first dive.

Oh by the way, I passed!!!

Jeff

 

[LiamtheDiver]

1) 106 Dives
2) One issue.
3) After a day of diving I stopped my dive buddy from smooth talking the very cute waitress when I noticed the large, upset man behind the bar was her husband!

 

[seaducer]

Hey guys thats just great ... Scubaboard is to promote diving ... alot of newbies base things on what they read here. They might not understand the circumstances which lead up to the incident in question ... save it for a professional room.

Stroke ego's there. You don't have to lie, but you don't have to tell them everything you know. I thought better of alot of peeps here.

You are right. (Obi Wan voice, waving hand) "Nothing bad can ever happen when you scuba dive."[/sarcasm]

Rescues and incidents are part of diving and should be examined, not relegated to a back room somewhere. For one a lot is learned from threads like this, second people who have issues shouldn't feel like they are the only ones, therefor stupid and worthless. YMMV