In what situation would you leave your buddy?

[Vassilis Vlachopoulos]

Great topic and I will certainly agree on the "per case response" approach.
Let's, however, try to think of specific cases / incidents and see what we believe our response would be.

I have recently been diving the Blue Hole (in the Red Sea), which claims more than 160 lives, mostly due to disorientation -> dropping down to high PPO2 depths.

So here we are : a team of two, with TMX 15/40 in the Blue Hole, hovering at 75m /250ft, just about to complete our bottom time. Suddenly, buddy gets disoriented and starts dropping (not necessarily like a stone). We know that the bottom is at 120m / 400ft, i.e. PPO2 close to 2.

What would / should be our reaction ?

Personally, I want to believe that I would drop behind him for at least 10–20m/30-60ft, trying to catch him, and maybe further down, as long as I have more than 100 bar/1500 psi in my back.

 

[Capt Jim Wyatt]

Earlier this year a friend of mine and I became separated about 3500 feet back in a cave. The depth was 100 feet and the separation happened after we had both called the dive and were exiting the cave. At that point we both had used up 1/3 or more of our gas supply and were looking at around 30 mins of deco once we exited.

My buddy was behind me and when I realized he was not there I turned to go look for him. As Murphy had it he had accidentally jumped onto another line, when I passed that jump I did not see him as he was 50-75 feet down that jump.

He realized that he was on the wrong line, turned around and got back onto the correct line. He expected I was still in front of him and continued to exit -- he got to the point where we had tied off scooters and stage bottles and realized that I must now be behind him

He started back into the cave to look for me.

While he was correcting his path and starting to exit from making the wrong jump I am now a couple of 100 feet farther into the cave looking for him.

We both knew the protocol, we both knew that we would use a pre-determined volume of gas to look for our buddy. We used that volume of gas and both began our exits at about the same time.

When I got to the point where we had left scooters & stages, he was just saddling up his scooter & stage & readying to exit.

It was a heart stopper, it was an adrenaline rush, it was freaking me out. While the decision to go ahead and start my exit was emotionally difficult, the decision was rational and obvious and I reluctantly started my exit.

It seemed like a LONG time that we were searching for one another, but later realized it was about 10 minutes.

Bottom line is---> We knew the protocol that we had been trained for and the protocol we train our students for and we stuck to it.

Divers in caves, wreck or open water with a virtual overhead should discuss in advance what the protocol for their team should be, and stick to it.

 

[Capt Jim Wyatt]

The posts here regarding gold line at Ginnie were moved to T2T cave diving so we would not hijack this thread.

Jim

 

[down4fun]

I don't know if any one really knows where there cutoff point is until a situation happens. I do think it is easier to be more clinical, if you will, when diving with an acquaintance/friend vs a significant other.

But it really is something you should know before the situation occurs. If you try to figure it out during the situation, emotions will take over and possibly cause a double fatality. While it's not an easy thing to do, it really is something that needs to be decided before the dive. Maybe I've given this a lot more thought than most since I teach it on a regular basis and have this discussion at least once a month with students. I've also been in a situation where my buddy was taking a little longer than I expected checking out a lead and I began thinking about how long I would stay around before beginning my exit. It wasn't a thought I wanted to have underwater. Since then, I've decided on my gas usage for looking for a buddy based on what kind of buddy that is, my wife, a friend, or just someone I dive with every now and then. There is a difference.

I agree it is something you should have though about, and discussed ahead of time. And we have discussed at length, my boyfriend and I. And with anyone other than my boyfriend I would stick to the rules. Evaluate what i have left for gas, scrubber and potentially bailout and search for the appropriate time based on those things. For my boyfriend I would push the limits. Could it turn out bad, yes. But I would not want to go to bed at night, alone, knowing that he died 50 feet from where I called off my search based on accepted standards. Knowing you did the technically right thing and living with it are two different things. IMHO

 

[Dive-aholic]

But pushing it beyond safe limits may also mean you die while your boyfriend is back on the surface waiting for you. I've been with my wife for almost 9 years and don't want to lose her, but you have to make a decision at some point. We have 6 dogs and a cat at home that depend on us. It wouldn't be fair to them for both of us to die because of how we would feel if one of us lost the other. It would suck, but sometimes you just have to do it.

 

[down4fun]

I see your point. But even you yourself said there is a difference in how much gas you would use to search for your wife vs a now and then buddy. I'm not saying kill myself in some act of martyrdom trying to save my bf. But that I am willing to push the envelope some to know I exhausted the possibilities and still get out. Everybody has to decide for themselves where the line is. At what moment you have pushed the odds to your maximum acceptable limit and leave the wreck or exit the cave.

For instance say we were on a wreck at 170ft some how got separated and I have hit my turn pressure for gas or bottom time for the bailout I have and I
hear him banging on the wreck so now I know where he is. I am going to go help him. And if we have to bailout well I may get bent because I ran out of gas
and had to surface but that's an acceptable risk to me in that situation. For others it may not be.

The caves, and especially the caves on open circuit require more hard and fast rules. There is much less room for error o/c in the caves.

 

[Tienuts]

As the significant other, I'll throw my 2 cents in here...

First we are talking about 2 different things here. The original question of the thread is 'when would you leave your buddy?' and the thread has morphed into a 'how long would you look for a lost/missing buddy?'

My answer to the 'When would you leave a buddy?' question also depends on the buddy. In addition to my girlfriend, most of the divers I dive with are good friends. If I see them in some form of peril, I probably wouldn't leave them unless I was certain I was no longer assisting a troubled buddy, but rather participating in a body recovery. When diving with Kim, I can say I would not leave her, even if it crossed that threshold. Kim and I are both in a unique position though, with no kids, and no close family between the 2 of us. Our dogs would miss us, but our friends would give them a good home after they looted our house for the spare dive gear.

Case in point, my friend Don Six and I were diving one of our first dives in Peacock, when he had a pretty severe CO2 incident around the crossover tunnel. He sucked down his bailout supply much quicker than planned for, and was disoriented and confused from his CO2 hit. I was terrified. I actually thought I was going to watch him drown at one point. All I wanted was to get the hell out of that cave, but there was no way I was leaving him, and at one point began pulling his dumb ass down the peanut tunnel. Every time I come out of Peanut, I think of that.

The second question, how long would I look for a buddy? A long time. Let's assume that we don't have a plan laid out for such a scenario, I would look for quite a while past my planned dive time, cave or deep wreck. However the OP's question seems to be biased towards OC divers. On a CCR, it's quite different - even on aggressive dives, we exit the water using only a 1/3rd of our O2, diluent, and scrubber. A CCR diver can go hours over their planned runtime. Yes, in my prolonged search, I will reach the point where I exceed my bailout capabilities, but that's a calculated risk I'm willing to take to search for a good friend.

 

[Dive-aholic]

I think that's part of the issue here. You are coming into this from the perspective of diving CCR. The OP came into this from the perspective of diving OC. Yes, I did say I would stay longer to search for my wife, but I also stated I already know what that pressure is. It's not something I'm going to decide at that time. It's already been decided.

 

[rjack321]

Earlier this year a friend of mine and I became separated about 3500 feet back in a cave. The depth was 100 feet and the separation happened after we had both called the dive and were exiting the cave. At that point we both had used up 1/3 or more of our gas supply and were looking at around 30 mins of deco once we exited.

My buddy was behind me and when I realized he was not there I turned to go look for him. As Murphy had it he had accidentally jumped onto another line, when I passed that jump I did not see him as he was 50-75 feet down that jump.

He realized that he was on the wrong line, turned around and got back onto the correct line. He expected I was still in front of him and continued to exit -- he got to the point where we had tied off scooters and stage bottles and realized that I must now be behind him

He started back into the cave to look for me.

While he was correcting his path and starting to exit from making the wrong jump I am now a couple of 100 feet farther into the cave looking for him.

We both knew the protocol, we both knew that we would use a pre-determined volume of gas to look for our buddy. We used that volume of gas and both began our exits at about the same time.

When I got to the point where we had left scooters & stages, he was just saddling up his scooter & stage & readying to exit.

It was a heart stopper, it was an adrenaline rush, it was freaking me out. While the decision to go ahead and start my exit was emotionally difficult, the decision was rational and obvious and I reluctantly started my exit.

It seemed like a LONG time that we were searching for one another, but later realized it was about 10 minutes.

Bottom line is---> We knew the protocol that we had been trained for and the protocol we train our students for and we stuck to it.

Divers in caves, wreck or open water with a virtual overhead should discuss in advance what the protocol for their team should be, and stick to it.

Jim did this happen to you or are you re-posting someone else's story? I can't quite tell.

 

[Capt Jim Wyatt]

Jim did this happen to you or are you re-posting someone else's story? I can't quite tell.

It was me.