I was thinking about this, and it seems to me that if someone came up to me OOA and panicking, I'd want to hold him/her as close to me as possible in order to maintain good eye contact with him in an effort to calm him down instead of dragging me to the surface with his teeth clamped onto my reg and kicking me in the face.
Why the long hose?
I mean, I can maybe see the logic if you're penetrating wrecks with narrow passage ways, but out in open water?
You are absolutely correct. Long hoses are for one thing and one thing only, to get two divers out of an overhead environment in an OOA situation safely.
Period.
Using a long hose in an open water situation is dangerous and unnecessary.
Jeff