No more insta-buddies

[on_two_wheels]

Okay...so maybe "no more" is exaggerating but definitely more selective.

My two friends and I get hooked up with a guy on a boat. My two friends are both female and spoke to him asking if he was diving alone. He said he was but prefers having a buddy. So they invited him to join us. As it always does, experience came up. He claimed about 200 dives. My 69 dives was second most amongst the 4 of us. Now the diving begins.

Dive one, not bad except insta-buddy frequently strayed from the group. Pre-dive we suggested he take primary nav responsibilities since he had most experience. Of course, I did my own nav which was a good thing because he took NO control of what we were doing underwater. No "go this way" or "check air" etc. No communication except when he was asked something.

Dive two was more of the same except, as he was trailing the other three, he saw one of the boat crew freediving. Knowing that the crew member was probably close to the boat, he ended his dive without telling anyone. We backtracked for about a minute, did our stop and surfaced to find him climbing the ladder. We had an average of 900 psi remaining....lots of time at the 30 fsw we were at. Instead, we ended the dive because we had to find out "buddy."

Last dive....more of the same. Simply wandered off one time and I had to swim fast to catch him and turn him around. Hate using extra air for that stuff. Not that hard to stay with the group.

On all three dives it was common to find him kicking me or coming up directly below and getting face full of his bubbles. Annoying as hell. Also common to all 3 was the dog paddling. If he's on here, reads this and recognizes these three dives, great!! Know your limits and acknowledge them. People will often assume a diver with that many dives will have skills commensurate to the dives. If you know you're still lacking, admit it. There would have been a lot more pre-dive communication that way. Lesson learned.

Edit: As an individual, his skills were admirable. Drysuit diver with good buoyancy. It was the communication, situational awareness and group dynamic I thought were seriously lacking.

 

[TSandM]

I've dived with a fair number of relatively unknown people, and fortunately, most of the experiences have been reasonable. But I have to say that one of the things I love the most about the system within which I dive is that I can get in the water with someone who is totally unknown to me, except for a single training class, and I can pretty much guarantee that things like you describe won't happen. It's a nice feeling.

 

[kathydee]

I've dived with a fair number of relatively unknown people, and fortunately, most of the experiences have been reasonable. But I have to say that one of the things I love the most about the system within which I dive is that I can get in the water with someone who is totally unknown to me, except for a single training class, and I can pretty much guarantee that things like you describe won't happen. It's a nice feeling.

As someone who did over 150 dives with instabuddies before finding the same dive system - I can't agree more. Standardization of training and equipment makes diving with "strangers" within our system a very easy and pleasant experience.

 

[fire_diver]

Even for plain old open water dives, a standardization of training would be nice. I wish a dive card meant knowing the basics of diving, not just how to breath underwater without killing yourself. I have seen divers like the OP talks about, thankfully they weren't my buddy.

 

[Bubbletrubble]

Thanks for sharing your story. I think we've all been there.

Insta-buddies are a lot of work...but it opens up the possibility of growing your circle of dive buddies. That's worth the trade-off in my opinion.

After you asked the insta-buddy how many lifetime dives he had, did you get any other details regarding his dive experience?
I like to inquire about the conditions under which those dives were conducted (cold/low vis or warm/high vis), how many of those dives were done recently, whether he's trying out any new gear, what kind of gas consumption he has (typically how long his dives last and at what max depth), how fast he likes to move through the water (I'm a slowpoke with a camera), if he'd really like to see a particular critter, etc.

Did you guys discuss turn-pressure during the pre-dive conversation?
Did you talk about how often gas-checks might be done (if at all)?
Planned profile?
Reasonable gas reserves for the planned profile?
Did you establish explicit buddy pairs within the foursome?
Buddy separation distance appropriate for the conditions?
Did you go over "lost buddy" protocol?
Air-sharing procedures?
Location of weights (ditchable and non-ditchable)?
FWIW, I'd ask these questions whether the insta-buddy is fresh out of OW class or has 1000+ dives.
Interestingly, on the subject of experience, I've found very little correlation between a diver's experience level and whether I enjoyed diving with that person.

What other questions during pre-dive discussions do you think you should have asked?

I have learned that it sets up everyone to have a great time in the water if all this stuff is discussed explicitly before the dive begins. It turns into a pretty long conversation, but it's worth it. I'd also like to add that, for me at least, the pre-dive familiarization with an insta-buddy is not limited to what we talk about. Every chance I get I'll take the opportunity to watch my new buddy setting up his gear. Under the auspices of discussing dive gear (and who doesn't enjoy talking about his gear, right?), I learn what kind of gear he's carrying and check whether I know how to operate it. If he's my dive buddy, I inspect whatever alternate air source he would provide me in a LOA or OOA scenario. I check out whether the mouthpiece is secured properly on his octo and actually breathe off of it (to get an idea of cracking pressure). Unfortunately, some divers never breathe off of their octos during their pre-dive checks. I also give the insta-buddy an opportunity to practice-breathe off of my donated reg.

 

[GrumpyOldGuy]

I find diving with a pair allows you to compensate for an instant buddy with poor skills (not great, but tolerable).

When in groups of 3, it becomes impossible and I avoid it like the plague.

 

[on_two_wheels]

Did you guys discuss turn-pressure during the pre-dive conversation? Sort of...we discussed out and back profile with turn pressure being 1000 psi (just under half), depth of current site. One dive took a bit longer as the current when we started wasn't the current back, i.e. ended up facing current partially both ways. I made an adjustment in depth (45-50 became 30 fsw) to account for the added work.

Did you talk about how often gas-checks might be done (if at all)? No....but I checked everyone often and this is not, has not been an issue. Actual frequency isn't determined so much as by time, conditions and depth.

Planned profile? See first question

Reasonable gas reserves for the planned profile? See first question

Did you establish explicit buddy pairs within the foursome? No...good point. This did end up occurring naturally but pre-planned would have been wiser.

Buddy separation distance appropriate for the conditions? No.

Did you go over "lost buddy" protocol? This is where prehaps my assumption of what is norm. The women and I did not yet when the solo guy took off, we all immediately turned back. After a minute I signaled surfacing and all gave thumbs up. We all were on the same page.

Air-sharing procedures? See previous question. Note: I did point out to all to grab regulator out of my mouth (long hose/necklace combo) and we made note of each octo, the rest were all standard set up.


Location of weights (ditchable and non-ditchable)? Everyone else had clearly marked ditchable weight except me. I made that clear to all.

 

[Captain12Pk]

Matt,
Listen to the advice that Lynne and Kathy are quietly offering. Come to the dark side.

 

[Bubbletrubble]

@on_two_wheels: Wow! I didn't expect you to answer all of those questions.
Those are just things that, through experience, I've found are best discussed with an insta-buddy before the dive. Some of those things I learned the hard way.

Since you were diving in a foursome, another topic for pre-dive discussion is what happens if the two buddy pairs get separated.

FWIW, I would have been extremely pissed off that my dive buddy was exiting the water without finding me first (provided that he didn't have a medical reason for re-boarding the boat). It was a really inconsiderate move on his part.

 

[Dyno Bill]

I believe that when you are placed with an unknown dive companion on a boat someone has to take charge within the group be it a pair od more. I always have taken the lead and had a brief conversation with my new best friend. It goes like this, we do this and that one way or more exactly my way. If the person has a problem it makes no difference to me, I just tell the DM on deck and go off and do my own thing solo. It's not my responsibility to see that another diver has a wonderful day diving but if I enter the water with someone else who expects me to be his or her dive buddy their welfare becomes my responsibility and I take that serious. Never lost or got another hurt and always got them back to the boat with enough gas to be safe. Thats how I deal with the subject.