Lost Buddy Marker

[Cave Diver]

Naturally, this is what I meant. Lost line (+lost buddy) and just lost buddy situations are different. The reel marking is no use if I am on the line to start with.

Correct.

I might be willing to carry extra back up lights for leaving in emergency but I am not gonna start carrying extra spools and reels to dump as markers to pull this into a joke

Personally I don't feel that it will be necessary to carry extra lights in the event of having to drop one. If I have to leave a light behind, I'll verify my other backup works first. If I'm on the line searching for my buddy and my primary fails, I still have a backup. At this point, I have the line, I have one backup and I'm going to pass my second backup on the way out if I really needed it.

If I've already started my exit, I still have the line and a working backup, so I will proceed to OW.

If my backup fails too, and I lose the line or don't have sufficient gas to exit in touch contact, then I'm having a really bad day and I'd like to think that the odds would be stacked a little bit better in my favor than that.

 

[Cave Diver]

I slip this question here (sorry for the hi jack) but would I be committing another capital crime in some people's mind if I was passing those double arrows at the same site (P1/Olsen), and to reinforce my own exit my team would drop arrows on the P1 side?
(Keep in mind again, I am not cookie-trained, so I am not dropping no cookie...yet).

I don't see an issue placing an arrow indicating your exit before they switch directions.

From this:

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To this:
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[Capt Jim Wyatt]

Would you run a refresher course for someone in need of cookie special ed? I am going to have to get my cookie knowledge up to speed. I would be very interested. I was looking at your web site, and looks like you are pretty busy when we are heading down to Fl in Nov though :depressed: Is that calendar pretty much up to date?

Yes we can do that. My calendar stays up to date.

 

[PfcAJ]

I had a situation where it took about 20 min to clear up ..... Could not read my gauges, let alone a note. Light was SO diffused, there was just one hue around me. I was on a rebreather and had hours of time to wait for it to clear up. An OC diver with increased SAC could find that 20 min is not enough anymore.

I still think that any special marker for lost buddy needs to be recognizable in complete silt out (i.e. by touch)

Agreed about the time issue. However, most siltouts (not all, but most) will clear in a bit. And for this obviously personal arrow (as indicated by being extremely close to a cookie) to really be an issue, we'd have to be in a terrible siltout, BE the lost buddy, in a system where there are reversed arrows, and confused as to where our exit is. Isn't that a little much?

This is right up there with losing both posts simultaneously while being at max pen in a no flow system with light failures. If we try to plan for every conceivable contingency, we'd have to sit at home all day. It just gets wholly unrealistic.

What I'm gathering from this conversation is that some feel that no directional marker should be placed because someone might come along and get confused in a total siltout that won't settle, so we should just book it and leave our buddy without a solid clue as to his exit from his own team. That just sounds outrageous.

I've never swam into a siltout (at least one I didn't cause , and if I pass a suspicious arrow (which has happened, as well) it gets some heavy scrutiny (and a solid mental note and probably a cookie) as to why its pointing a way that I didn't anticipate. Worrying about the lack of situational awareness of another hypothetical team is a poor excuse for not giving your dive buddy every bit of information you can to help him get out. If I were lost, seeing my buddy's arrow confirming my exit direction would make a nice, warm, fuzzy feeling all over.

Jim, I'm liking your safety spool/reel clip thing, however.

 

[piikki]

What I'm gathering from this conversation is that some feel that no directional marker should be placed because someone might come along and get confused in a total siltout that won't settle, so we should just book it and leave our buddy without a solid clue as to his exit from his own team. That just sounds outrageous.

I've never swam into a siltout (at least one I didn't cause , and if I pass a suspicious arrow (which has happened, as well) it gets some heavy scrutiny (and a solid mental note and probably a cookie) as to why its pointing a way that I didn't anticipate. Worrying about the lack of situational awareness of another hypothetical team is a poor excuse for not giving your dive buddy every bit of information you can to help him get out. If I were lost, seeing my buddy's arrow confirming my exit direction would make a nice, warm, fuzzy feeling all over.

I so very much agree with what you are saying above &#8211; not that it necessarily counts for much with my level of experience. I do understand that one needs to care for what is going on around them and I want to care for others too. Yet, I am getting this growing uneasy feeling that people are putting first these HYPOTHETICAL teams, who are very unlikely to arrive exactly THEN, and get into trouble while there is a temporary stray arrow placed - instead of worrying about the team that is actually in acute emergency, trying to solve possibly a life threatening problem.

I want to learn ways to do this so that nobody else needs to get any extra palpitations, especially if it was my muck-up but geesh how things seem to me like priorities should be fairly clear. Just like you, I would think any other team arriving at the incident site should be in way better frame of mind to sort through any inconsistencies if encountered, and hopefully, by that time, any environmental hazards and inconsistencies would have already ceased to be/been removed anyway.

I am such a newbie, I Ok every darn arrow I see still, so if I encountered a conflicting arrow I am sure I would be right on my heels checking my decisions. But maybe this is different for less OCD people I was taught to keep tabs on these things until I learn where the heck I am, and it makes sense to me in alien environment.

 

[Capt Jim Wyatt]

I Ok every darn arrow I see still...

Good on ya!! No need to ever quit doing that either.

 

[Kevin Carlisle]

I had a situation where it took about 20 min to clear up ..... Could not read my gauges, let alone a note. Light was SO diffused, there was just one hue around me. I was on a rebreather and had hours of time to wait for it to clear up. An OC diver with increased SAC could find that 20 min is not enough anymore.

I still think that any special marker for lost buddy needs to be recognizable in complete silt out (i.e. by touch)

This makes the most sense to me. I think most lost buddy situations will probably have something to do with NO viz.. How are you going to read a note in that. I come out of Twin cave once where the cavern was blown out. I could barely make out my own light on my hand, no way I could have read a wet note.

 

[Cave Diver]

This makes the most sense to me. I think most lost buddy situations will probably have something to do with NO viz.. How are you going to read a note in that. I come out of Twin cave once where the cavern was blown out. I could barely make out my own light on my hand, no way I could have read a wet note.

I would advocate that once you secure the line and follow it out of the siltout, that you place the light and note there. As close as possible to point of separation.

 

[UCFKnightDiver]

This makes the most sense to me. I think most lost buddy situations will probably have something to do with NO viz.. How are you going to read a note in that. I come out of Twin cave once where the cavern was blown out. I could barely make out my own light on my hand, no way I could have read a wet note.

Oh my bad I was trying to go through that more sidemount friendly opening in my double 108's

 

[Kevin Carlisle]

Oh my bad I was trying to go through that more sidemount friendly opening in my double 108's

Sorry I cant let you take credit for my work . That was a day when I had a total drysuit flood right in the middle of the silt bed in the cavern. What a fun experience..

CD I like that idea. That makes more sense. A lot of what I had read sounds good if it is best case scenario. I think worst case scenario would be better to look at. Now what if you dont find clear water?