My buddy and I started doing our dives unguided recently, we learned to dive in the Red sea together, and did our advanced course out there. (We did Thistlegorm for our wreck speciality).
Diving unguided has been something we have dealt with very slowly and carefully, effectively treating the process as though we were doing our open water from scratch.
We've dived guided to 30 metres in Egypt, the deepest we've attempted in the UK is 8 metres so far.
We were aware when we started that we were going to have to get used to the less comfortable conditions of UK diving, so our process was as follows.
1) Very slow and gentle Orientation dive on an inland lake down to 7 metres with LDS, private session with just two of us and two instructors, vis was about 2 metres. Took advice from instructors and suggestions on how to improve our diving.
2) Re-visitted the same lake a few weeks later and carried out a 7m dive together with no guide, same conditions as before. Took our time arranging our gear carefully, and carrying out full buddy checks.
3) Organised and planned our first unguided Shore dive beside a local pier. Researched the tides and currents, spoke to a lds to ask about slack water times, were given incorrect advice as we later discovered, spoke to lifeguards on the beach and a freediver before the attempt to identify obstructions, hazards, marine life and topography.
4) Arrived at the beach just before slack water, discussed our planned dive profile, and brought a friend for shore cover and to watch our belongings. Performed buddy checks and entered the water. Our maximum depth was no more than 8 metres, and our max distance from shore around 50 to 100 metres, vis was about 4 metres.
After 45 minutes in the water, we decided to end the dive as we were disoriented by poor visibility (odd sensation putting your belief in a compass when you can't see anything else). We deployed our SMB, which went up diagonally (this was the point we discovered that the slack water times we were given were wrong), this was no major problem, but the smb did want to go in a different direction to us and that direction was under the legs of the pier.
From this experience we dived relatively safely, in a reasonably controlled situation, and learned more about our own limitations. We also researched the correct information relating to slack water, and now know that it begins 90 minutes before the peak tide in this area. I think we will be exploring this location a lot more until we are bored with it and feel ready to tackle a deeper dive.
Don't assume that you are competent enough to dive to the limits of your qualification on your first unguided dive, you have added psychological pressure of knowing that there's no DM or Instructor watching you for one, as well as this, you have to do your own research and risk assessments on the dive site you plan to dive.
Take your time and start with something gentle and shallow, there's a lot of interesting things going on at high tide just below the surface, lots of different crab species and Goby check out our pics.
http://www.lonefox.co.uk/brightonpier/ (the vis was bad, so we didn't take many shots. We also had some issues with focus due to the sediment)
