A good learning experience to share here on SB. Thanks. I will say that a buddy who is "in sight" but not close enough to be aware of your distress is too far away. A buddy close at hand could assist in replacing the weight belt, or to control your ascent if the belt was dropped. Proximity and awareness of each other are both essential to buddy diving. The purpose for diving as buddies is to be able to assist each other if the need arises. As pointed out in this thread, a need can arise very quickly. Keep your friends close and your buddies closer. That's the title of one of my blog entries here on SB.
DivemasterDennis
You are exactly right. Thank you for pointing that out. Had my buddy been there to assist me it would have removed 90% of the panic inducing stress I found myself in. I make it a point to never dive "follow the leader style" anymore, we always dive side by side now. If I can't see my buddy in my peripheral vision... I'm to far away from him/her.
The only thing that bothers me about this thread is it perpetuates the myth that goes : "If I lose my weightbelt I'm going to rocket to the surface and die." That just isn't true for recreational divers...
I was unaware of any such myth until I read your post.
... First of all, you will not rocket to the surface like a missile launched from a submarine. That's silly.
What Tigerman said would more likely be the case:
The way many new divers are weighted and the little experiece they have they WILL rocket simply because they are way overweighted and wont have the experience to get their BC emptied and their posture in place untill its way too late
...If you lose your weightbelt you're going to be quickly underweighted but that's not a disaster...
An uncontrollable rapid ascent
IS teetering on the edge of disaster in my book. There are a lot of variables involved here, depth, time at depth, over weighted, actual verses perceived rate of ascent, stress level... to name a few. And the closer you get to the surface, the more your suit and other air spaces expand, the faster you will ascend. Making for a very rapidly spiraling out of control rapid ascent.
...Dump any air you have. Try flattening out in the skydiver position to present as much resistance as possible to your upward motion.
Shallow your breathing and watch your computer. Are you still rising way too fast? If so, point your head down and fin against the bouyancy a bit. You don't have to fight to stay down. All you want to do is slow your ascent enough. Keep breathing. Manage the ascent rate until you surface.
-Charles
Sounds great in theory and on paper. But in reality, an inexperienced OW diver is not going to be able to pull this task-loaded maneuver off. Especially not an inexperienced diver in excruciating, nauseating pain like I was. Unless you are diving deep (which would be your first mistake as an OW diver), you would just simply not have enough time to pull all this off before breaking the surface like a fish-bobber.
I appreciate your thoughts and opinions and I'm not trying to come down on you or imply that what you suggest isn't possible, but I just don't think you are being very realistic as far as the capabilities of an inexperienced OW diver.
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as some people are they have way too much air in their BCs and losing the belt they have no chance of staying down without fixing it and their skill level is not neccesarilly such that they automatically dump air or flare..
