Machismo and Scuba REALLY don't mix

[tridacna]

Went diving this week off Pompano Beach, Fl. Wreck in about 120 feet. Very cool diving. Water at 86F. Dove with absolute morons with whom I was buddied up with on the boat.. $10K of diving gear. 120Lb steel tanks with 30lb ponies. About 50 other pieces of sundry gear. Almost every piece of superfluous gear known to man. Spoke the greatest game you ever heard. Strutting around the boat discussing their previous exploits. One of them asks me if I would buddy up. Reluctantly I agree. No-one else available. Then when underwater -- they are completely freaking useless. Waving around like drunken seals. Hands all over the place. No bouyancy control. Blew their tanks in about 15 minutes. Up they go. I wave goodbye. I stuck around on the wreck with another group for another 20. Get back on the boat and these monkeys are puffing away on cigarettes talking about their incredible dive. I go down with them on the second dive with 36% nitrox. Supposed to be a reef at 60 max. I warn them that I'm on nitrox. They're on air. We enter the water together. Immediately they go onto the back of the reef -- and dissappear off to 120 feet looking for "bugs". Their SMB has insufficienct bouyancy (they refuse to use the one given to them by the captain), and the one moron spends the entire dive dragging the useless thing behind him at 60 feet. They blow their tanks again in 15 minutes and I take the SMB and finish the dive with another group. Get back on about 30 mins later and they say: "You're lucky YOU have nitrox, that helped you stay down longer, we're taking nitrox next time so we can stay down longer". I say, give them nitrox next time and let Darwin take care of the details.

 

[Scottri]

Yup, I see those guys every where I go. I avoid them at all costs. Usually the bigger the mouth the more worthless they are underwater.

 

[ABQdiver]

Yet another illustration of why gear does NOT make the diver!!! :shakehead :shakehead

 

[loosebits]

Now you know why some BC have 10 d-rings.

 

[TheFoggyMask]

Not their fault that OW classes never taught them anything.

 

[fairybasslet]

You know I think I met these same divers in Bonaire last week. I won't say that they were macho or anything like that, but I got tired just watching these people flail around with their hands and arms. There was one woman who didn't even use her fins. And I'm a couple of feet below someone on the reef taking photos and get hit in the head with their hand. After that, I stayed far away from anyone else on our boat dives. And at least on our shore dives, we didn't have to deal with them.

 

[SNorman]

Not their fault that OW classes never taught them anything.

I think it is their fault. It may not be their fault that nobody hit them on the head and made them shut up and listen in class, but some people are just willingly ignorant.

 

[S. starfish]

HAha, reminds me of these guys i sasw out at whyttecliff once - black jeep, death metal, smoking cigars. They took it upon themselves to hit on my friend and started talking about how dark their dive to 120ft in the silty bay had been and how next time they were going to bring lights. It makes me laugh to think of them.

 

[MarkUK]

All the gear and no idea...

 

[DiveMaven]

On the other hand, a friend was telling me about a young guy on a Catalina boat a couple of months back who had a BP/W (OMS system), bungied octo, long hose, etc., who was afraid to dive deeper than 60'. He wasn't bragging or anything, just had gear a lot of folks associate with tech divers.

She was remarking with disgust at his advanced gear and his lousy diving ability. All I could do was shake my head, say he might be new, and remark that I hoped he had a great mentor that had pointed him in the direction of his gear configuration and hadn't picked it based on some lousy dive shop recommendation.

The poor bloke was being judged based on his gear without ever saying a word.