How long did you wait before you started Solo Diving?

[MXGratefulDiver]

As I've said previously ... you can't "help" people who don't want to be helped.

master00sniper didn't come here looking for advice ... he came here looking for validation.

Seen it many times here on ScubaBoard ... as always, it's a waste of time trying to convince anyone of something they don't want to hear ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Ana]

Seen it many times here on ScubaBoard ... as always, it's a waste of time trying to convince anyone of something they don't want to hear ...
(Grateful Diver)

Maybe is not a waste of time.

Like dealing with your kids, you tell them and tell them a thousand times and they seem to be deaf, but one day when it counts they remember what mom or dad said that day.

Here you don't convince anyone of things they don't want to hear but the idea goes in their brain. Whatever they put in their replies may not exactly reflect what goes on in their brain.

Maybe later on they'll face an "oh crap" moment in a dive, hopefully they'll survive and after they locate their migrated testicles and catch their breath back, that hidden idea will resurface and then the "hmmmm" moment finally kicks in. If they don't survive at least they can be used as examples.

We are adults, I agree with the post about brain maturing at 25 (for some people even later) but adults should be allowed to do as they think. Society doesn't have to give them a blessing for their actions if they are considered stupid actions, but they should be allowed.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

Dam you Devon DO YOU EVEN READ WHAT I WRITE?

lol

My instructor, one who has had as many dives as you have had, has done basically everything you can do diving, and has been certified since 1963 GAVE ME THE OKAY FOR SOLO DIVING.
geez. I've only mentioned it what, 3 or 4 different times on my threads? You always seem to ignore my points and just go on with your own bull ****. How many times have i said I'm not a self proclaimed solo diver? Maybe I haven't said it in the forum yet. Here we go I'M NOT A SELF PROCLAIMED SOLO DIVER. I'm just not gonna let not having a buddy stop me.

anything else I need to clarify for you in CAPS?

Also, in your post above, how the hell do you begin your ascent with your air off? Do you get all the way down to the bottom before you realize you were only breathing the air in the hose? Yeah maybe if the bottom is only 10 feet deep or so. Do you mean descent?

That is funny and scary. If you are really qualified to dive solo, then the last thing you will be looking for is validation from your open water instructor. I will let you in on a little secret: almost ALL new divers think that their instructor is a GOD. They have insufficient information to make an objective decision and when they finally do survive 100 or 200 dives (with Good divers), they begin to realize how bad the OW course sucked and probably that their instructor ain't so great either.

Here is another little clue: If your openwater instructor is giving you the OK to dive solo after you completed a typical OW course, then your instructor SUCKS.

When I taught diving, I NEVER promoted solo and instead followed standards and taught the buddy system. Of course, I dove solo by myself thousands of times, but that was not talked about.

Just because many people can survive learning to dive solo (without much help) does not mean that it is safe and it does not mean that the buddy system should be dismissed, especially by new divers.

 

[Thalassamania]

I have to second DD's analysis, except for the "I dove solo by myself thousands of times, but that was not talked about."

 

[DaleC]

A sample of skills that a solo diver doesn't utilise:
1) Gas switching drills
2) Multi-gas dive planning
3) Decompression procedures
4) Line laying
5) Penetration procedures
6) Accelerated decompression
7) Hypoxic gas considerations
8) Lost buddy procedures
9) Cave rescue procedures
10) High O2 procedures (analysis, marking, storage, filling)

and so on and so on and so on.......

You make some good points and I don't know if solo diving is technical diving (seems there is debate as to whether technical diving is technical diving) but I have always approached solo diving as if it were technical diving. This probably has something to do with my region (cold, low vis water) and the fact that it wasn't a spur of the moment idea for me.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What I didn't add in my previous post is that, although I did solo on dive 21, I had been solo climbing, solo wilderness backpacking and solo canoeing for 20 years before that and had developed a good sense of what was acceptable and not acceptable risk.

For quite a while I pre planned even my simplest solo dives with certain self imposed parameters that I would not violate (like a tech dive). I limited my time, drew my routes on a slate, limited my bottom depth etc... In wrecks they do progressive penetration (sometimes); I did progressive solo diving.

I also often solo snorkel in isolated locales and even limit my water time in those circumstances so I won't become incapacitated by hypothermia without knowing. Who does that?

Far from being exciting, my solo dives were/are boring, labour and equipment intensive affairs. Far more so than the casual buddy dives I see others doing. My current solo dives are just beginning to include some intentional mixed gasses (different nitrox blends) and again, I am back to those pre set dive plans I used to make.

My instructor, one who has had as many dives as you have had, has done basically everything you can do diving, and has been certified since 1963 GAVE ME THE OKAY FOR SOLO DIVING.

If he said you shouldn't would you stop?

It doesn't matter what your instructor says, he won't be there with you when you dive. Someone ready to solo does not rely on some external source to validate their decision. Period...

...and that can be a lonely position to hold.

What I learned from climbing is that nobody really cares if you solo, except for a drunk girl in a bar perhaps, and everybody will think you're a fool if you die. You may get your 5 minutes of fame but it is fleeting. Someone will always come along and do something bigger better and bolder.

Whatever you do, give yourself time to approach your endevors like someone who intends to partake in them for a long time. Even if your experiences seem meager at the time, own them, know them and build on them. Leap frog is not a soloists game.

 

[DaleC]

DD beat me to it, posting while I was thinking.......

I always found solo diving complimented my buddy diving; making me more aware of the potential for problems.

I also found buddy diving complimented my solo diving; opening up dive sites and situations I would not have experienced via soloing itself.

 

[captain]

What's his name and instructor number?

What dive center?

At my attorney's advise I refuse to answer that question, officer.

 

[Dive-aholic]

Let's be real here, I have never met a dive instructor that ever thought that anyone was able to teach themselfs anything. Can you poast some numbers from some site that suports the claim that a "majority of solo divers never take a formal course and do not adopt the mindset of technical divers"????
Many divers have to get the info from the net to be able to get ANY info on safe solo diving. Ya I know that just pisses off the Instructors out there but really, life sucks like that some times.(I know you spent all that money to be a Instructor and all) There's no info that someone will pay for that someone elses that takes the time ,can't get for free on the net or elis where. One just needs to be smart about the sorse and back it up. Libbirys are full of books and so is the used book market.

It's not just an instructor thing. I have also believed that self-teaching isn't the best form of learning. You can read about a subject all you want, but real world experience is needed to really get it. Book learning and the real world are very different, and not just in scuba diving. That said, it doesn't mean a formal course needs to be completed. I have never taken a course in solo diving, sidemount diving, DPV diving, or stage diving, yet I do all of those things, and even teach them. However, I have had great mentors that have taught me a lot about those types of diving. I didn't just read information on the Internet or in a library about how to do them. I only mentioned waivers because as an instructor I'm held to a different standard when it comes to liability. While a mentor may be able to walk away from a law suit with nothing lost but time, an instructor has a lot more to lose.

Rob,

Just wondering, if a cave diver never wants to go beyond NDL is he a technical diver? What makes a technical diver a technical diver? Is it going beyond NDL, special gear, special classes? I could care less what solo is classified as but there are gear considerations and things that need to be learned - in formal class or not.

What is a technical mindset vs recreational mindset?

I don't like the phrase "technical diver". If you go back and read my post you'll notice I use the word decompression more than technical. I only used the word technical because it was used in the post I was responding to.

What's a technical diver? I don't know. There are cave divers, decompression divers, and recreational divers. And some divers are a combination or 2, sometimes all 3, but usually not all 3 on the same dive.

What I consider a "technical" mindset involves the preparation for the dive. While most "recreational" divers simply don gear, jump in the water, and monitor their SPG and computer so they know when to come up, "technical" divers put a lot of time into planning their dives, and this often takes longer than the dive itself. "Technical" divers know how long their dive is going to be, how much decompression they will accrue, what they will be doing on the dive. Sure there are "technical" divers that simply jump in the water and decompress for the amount of time their computer tells them to. There are instructors that teach decompression diving that way. But it's NOT safe and should NOT be done that way.

 

[diver_doug]

I think the problem here is that a number of people seem to want to tell mastersniper what to do. Mastersniper, although young, is an adult...and adults tend not to respond well to being told what to do (especially when the tone comes across as being insulting and condescending). The best you can do (both with respect to scuba and non-scuba endeavors) is to provide a person with a lot of information and hope they make an intelligent decision, or set of decisions, based on that information. Telling a new diver not to solo dive works about as well as telling a teenager not to drink or have sex.

 

[MORAY SCUBA]

My first solo dive was probably dive #10 or 12 for me. When I was first certified I did not know many other certified divers in my area and fewer still owned their own gear. Most of my early solo dives were in relatively shallow water (less than 30') and were in familiar areas of a local lake. Now I solo dive anytime my dive buddy don't show up or there's no one else to dive with. I have frequently made planned solo dives in the past few years.