Solo dive....plan for the really unexpected?

[r4e]

The only thing I dissagre from r4e is to have wife wait and call for help at a certain time, that puts a strain on him when finishing a dive, and my god his wife goes through that process on each dive, she my as well just be in the boat and read a book or fish.

I agree that it takes some pondering to think what is the right amount of a time buffer and there have been times I have phoned back just five minutes before the deadline.

On the other hand, if I would not be making these calls, my wife would be worried sick for the entire duration of the trip (5-8 hours vs only dive duration).

I would not mind having my wife tending the boat, but the reality is: a) she gets seasick easily, b) she takes care of the kids meanwhile, c) I go out diving more often than the weather is all sunshine i.e. it often is rainy, cloudy, windy etc, d) my boat is an open RIB boat without any shelter and e) cold weather is a challenge for her despite any/all clothing.

 

[r4e]

Earlier this year I had an experience of not making a phone call. I was supposed to buddy dive a closed quarry with a newly discovered mine entrance we were planning to survey. Unfortunately my buddy got a flu and was not able to dive. However he showed me the way to the quarry and described it comprehensively and then drove away. Since it was a warm afternoon, I relaxed and took me time in dive preparations and setting up the camera. I found the underwater mine entrance that was mostly covered by a pile of ashes and small stones. I used half an hour to widen the gap enough that I was able to slip through it. However with the remaining bottom time, I realized it was too risky to explore any further eventhough I had triple tanks with me and this would have been a once-in-a-lifetime chance of laying line first. Instead, I returned to shallower water and spent an additional 1.5 hours taking exiting pictures of the red rocks, turquoise water above and white smoky water deeper. Having still much gas I would rather have continued this fantastic photo shooting session, but, I felt a biological urgency to thumb the dive at 2 hours.

Meanwhile, without me knowing it, my friend had been trying to reach my mobile phone to ask my opinion about this new site. After many tries, he became concerned and was already driving back to the dive site and preparing to raise the alarm if he would find my car parked without me. He was quite upset when I finally returned his call eventhough I did so immediately after getting to the car.

My friend had sent me earlier to solo dive a number of shore and remote quarry sites and was expecting me to comment the sites afterwards, which I did. The difference this time was that he had a guess of dive time beginning and thus he was calculating dive time duration as well and then he became concerned of the supposed delay.

This taught me a lesson about our strong (club) dive safety culture. From then onwards I have made a rule to myself to keep informed any party who might know I am diving and might be making wrong guesses. It is better to give atleast some, even vague, time instead of no set time point at all.