Solo dives

[danvolker]

GUE helped bring the concept of high standards to the mainstream dive community. Why does solo diving preclude high quality training such as is provided by GUE, just by another agency. Surely the team diving concept and standardization isn't why GUE is so high performing--it just adds to what makes GUE such a great place to learn DIR diving.

I dont do solo diving, and I dont plan on doing it any time in the future--i tend to love team diving. However, I dont know why, even as a team diver, i wouldn't want to be solo competent. In fact I do, and I want really great education in solo as well to achieve that goal.

If you are diving the big dives, you should be by definition spectacularly competent in a solo situation---exploration divers need to have all skills perfected. However, if you are doing the big dives, you want to have a clone of yourself, or better, as a buddy, to increase the safety factor, and increase the adventure potential.

 

[DaleC]

What is the drive that some people have to try to tell others what they should or should not do? If you're not into it, you're not into it (which is fine) but all the pronouncements on how to do it by those who don't is pretty :bored2: to those of us who do.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to a cave diving thread to offer my advice...

 

[knowone]

Because we profess the family oriented society and are bred to avoid external predation
despite far greater than eighty percent of said predation coming from within such family.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm of to the backyard to put away some bricks I used as
a prop for a photograph I took for another thread where people don't get it...

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

You don't have to be solo to be reckless. I have met plenty of OW / AOW card holders that frightened me just as much. Its just when you do something stupid when solo, you're alone. Then again the first time time I needed my buddy on a dive, I showed her the problem I was having, she flashed me an OK hand sign and swam off?

I never suggested that recklessness has anything to do with it.

What I'm suggesting ... well, I'll just come right out and say it ... is that these classes aren't being taught properly. Or the wrong things are being emphasized. Or there isn't proper "vetting" of students when determining someone's ability to solo dive safely.

What I've seen suggests that the people teaching these classes look at it more as another revenue stream than as introducing someone to a totally different way to "think" about how to approach their diving.

Solo diving isn't ... at all ... about reliance on a pony bottle ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

GUE helped bring the concept of high standards to the mainstream dive community. Why does solo diving preclude high quality training such as is provided by GUE, just by another agency. Surely the team diving concept and standardization isn't why GUE is so high performing--it just adds to what makes GUE such a great place to learn DIR diving.

I dont do solo diving, and I dont plan on doing it any time in the future--i tend to love team diving. However, I dont know why, even as a team diver, i wouldn't want to be solo competent. In fact I do, and I want really great education in solo as well to achieve that goal.

It can be ... it should be ... and if the class were taught by people who, themselves, were primarily solo divers, it WOULD be.

The class materials and goals are sufficient ... but the classes are mostly being taught by instructors who have been trained to rely on a buddy system.

The reason GUE's taught at such a high standard is because the people teaching it are completely committed to the system. They don't go off and dive some other way when they're not teaching. Most people who teach the SDI solo class aren't committed to solo diving ... it's just another class to them ... and not the way they dive when they're not teaching ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[knowone]

Those that conquest and speak of such are likely to conquest less.
And if you fail to understand one until you do you can not be one.

 

[ScubaFeenD]

If you are diving the big dives, you should be by definition spectacularly competent in a solo situation---exploration divers need to have all skills perfected. However, if you are doing the big dives, you want to have a clone of yourself, or better, as a buddy, to increase the safety factor, and increase the adventure potential.

In my humble, newbie opinion you are spot on about big dives needing self sufficiency.

I am no where near doing big dives yet. I am still learning to dive as a team mate and for now that is fine. However, I dont know how someone would become solo competent without taking some sort of training from a body of people that have thought about it and can impart their wisdom. Perhaps I am mistaken, and experience over the large amount of time needed to work up to big dives should be enough. However, I feel like developing self-sufficiency while still diving within a team can be based off fundamental principles too, and cultivated over time while remaining a fully committed team diver. I would be interested to hear your thoughts on this, because you are a much more experienced and accomplished diver, for certain.

Maybe GUE could teach something along the lines of a self-sufficiency course so that they remain committed to the principles of team diving while still addressing and recognizing the need for solo competency within a team while keeping standards and education quality very high.

Addendum: I am not saying GUE should change their curriculum or should accept solo anything, just throwing the idea out there as one possible solution to a severe lack of coherent high standards. It is clear by the words of some instructors on SB and of those i know personally that there are some very highly qualified, dedicated solo instructors that require extreme competency and proficiency before granting certification.

 

[Trace Malinowski]

If you are diving the big dives, you should be by definition spectacularly competent in a solo situation---exploration divers need to have all skills perfected. However, if you are doing the big dives, you want to have a clone of yourself, or better, as a buddy, to increase the safety factor, and increase the adventure potential.

In my humble, newbie opinion you are spot on about big dives needing self sufficiency.

I am no where near doing big dives yet.

How do you define "big" dives?

 

[knowone]

Every dive is a deco dive.

 

[danvolker]

In my humble, newbie opinion you are spot on about big dives needing self sufficiency.

I am no where near doing big dives yet. I am still learning to dive as a team mate and for now that is fine. However, I dont know how someone would become solo competent without taking some sort of training from a body of people that have thought about it and can impart their wisdom. Perhaps I am mistaken, and experience over the large amount of time needed to work up to big dives should be enough. However, I feel like developing self-sufficiency while still diving within a team can be based off fundamental principles too, and cultivated over time while remaining a fully committed team diver. I would be interested to hear your thoughts on this, because you are a much more experienced and accomplished diver, for certain.

Maybe GUE could teach something along the lines of a self-sufficiency course so that they remain committed to the principles of team diving while still addressing and recognizing the need for solo competency within a team while keeping standards and education quality very high.

Addendum: I am not saying GUE should change their curriculum or should accept solo anything, just throwing the idea out there as one possible solution to a severe lack of coherent high standards. It is clear by the words of some instructors on SB and of those i know personally that there are some very highly qualified, dedicated solo instructors that require extreme competency and proficiency before granting certification.

Self sufficiency is not the word I would use, because it is misused too often.
If all of your skills are masterfully perfected, and you have mastered all of the skills used for exploration level diving, then YOU ARE, in "your terms", self sufficient, but the idea is NOT to use these skills for diving solo ( even though they would work exceptionally well for solo).
GUE would not need to change their curriculum at all, because if a typical recreational diver was to go through fundies and pass, then they have achieved a skill set far beyond anything currently being taught by the major agencies. Their ability to be safe if "some improbable scenario suddenly removed their buddy (from no mistake of either buddy) would be far beyond the skill sets of the "major agency" trained solo divers--either in preventing the emergency in the first place ( this being huge) and in dealing with multiple failures.