The soloist

[tropitan]

Well, this has cetainly been an interesting (educational, informative?) thread, which I plead guilty to have started. I want to thank everyone for their input.
I tend to agree with those who believe it is more about 'life experience' than quantity of dives. a 14 year old person with 100 dives probably does not have the lifetime experiences to handle an immediate situation under water. An older geezer like myself just might.
I think it also has to do with the environment you will dive in. For me it's a very gentle, tropical environment.
In any case, I will have many questions (gear and otherwise) related to solo diving, as that is where I am headed in the near future. Thanks again,

Bob

 

[Sas]

The post you indicated is just someones opinion and in my opinion wrong. This is the correct forum for asking those questions. What do you think the answer will be if someone posts such a question in the new diver or basic scuba discussion forums?

Well as it was in a 'Sticky' post on the forum's purpose, I read it and took it to mean that this is not the place for people considering solo diving.

If someone wants to know if cave diving is for them do they post there or in the cave diving sub forum?
If someone wants to know if DIR technical diving is for them do they post there or in the DIR sub forum?
If someone wants to know if commercial diving is for them do they do it there or the commercial diving sub forum?
Etc.. etc.. etc..

Again, this all goes back to the taboo of soloing. All of the above (not DIR but technical diving in general) aspects of diving are more inherently dangerous than recreational soloing but nobody says boo about them. If someone wants to go down that route they are just given the facts. Here's how we do it. Why not the same here in the solo sub forum. What is so different about soloing?
The reason I challenge dive counts is that they are artificial. What do they tell us? I have about 50 low vis, cold water dives, 1/3 of them solo. How does that stack up against 100 warm water, high vis, DM guided tropical boat dives? Who is better prepared to solo and where? If we want to operate safely we should focus on what we actually need to know/do/understand, the specifics. Not some vague notion of experiences that might come to us in time somehow.

I guess some of this debate probably comes down to our diving backgrounds in some ways. Where I dive, there are many solo divers (ran into five of them on one dive on the weekend). Few people kick up a fuss if you say you are going to go solo diving.

You say there is no fuss about technical diving. What?? I know plenty of people who say 'boo' about technical diving. And we are both in favour of solo diving so I don't get the point why you seem to be defending it. Also, I think whether or not one is more dangerous on the other varies *significantly* based on situational factors and the diver/s involved.

I agree that dive totals aren't the be all and end all. There are so many variables that decide on whether someone can solo dive or not (for example the person with 100 warm water, high viz dives may be much better able to cope with problems than you with your 50 low viz cold dives, who the hell knows?) I think the last place people should be looking for advice on whether one should do it, is from a bunch of strangers on the net who have no idea what the person is like in the water. That to me, shows someone who is not ready to solo dive, but again I don't know the OP so who knows for sure? You seem to get quite defensive when people say that or that experience counts, probably based on your own experience of starting to solo dive with very little experience. We both have different opinions, big deal, no need to get defensive. These threads are pointless if everyone agrees on everything.

PS. My first solo was dive 21 and I'm not dead (yet).

Umm, what is your point with saying that? You could be a terrible diver who has gotten lucky in not dying or you could be the most l33t diver in the world for all I know I have no opinion on whether or not you personally (or the OP) should be solo diving. Just general opinions

 

[DaleC]

My comments in bold

Argghh. I can't quote you like that.

I know absolutely that I will die. Are you under a different impression? For me, hopefully, it won't be diving but I can't guarantee that (even with the best of training).

I also agree with good training and experience. I just think that you don't have to necessarily wait for 100 dives to begin working on soloing if that is what you want to do. Some of us believe that soloing can be a graduated process that's all. Dive - evaluate - educate (repeat as necessary).

I refer to tech/cave diving because they are off shoots of diving like soloing that have risk involved. IMO the risk is higher in those precisely because one cannot bail out. Some problems (like a medical event) you can't work through. While you can't predict if they will happen, what is the plan for when they happen? (and don't say probably die cause I used that one).
For those things we can train for, the best course of action is to have a precise discussion about the specific problems one will encounter and to describe the best strategies for overcoming them. Telling someone to "go away" and do some more dives to gain some vague experience that may or may not apply doesn't do the job. 100 dives without an entanglement does not train one to deal with an entanglement. Only training to deal with entanglements does that.
This forum could be good if we focused more on the specifics instead of just saying "you'll learn that if you dive more". If anything I'm arguing for a positive, this is how we do it, mindset.

PS. The OP is 48. He's a big boy now so I thought I'd treat him like one.

 

[DaleC]

Well as it was in a 'Sticky' post on the forum's purpose, I read it and took it to mean that this is not the place for people considering solo diving.

I think the sticky is wrong. As in my above post I think this is the most appropriate place. Everybody knows you will not get an objective response in those other forums so why send someone there to get flamed?

You say there is no fuss about technical diving. What?? I know plenty of people who say 'boo' about technical diving.

Not in the same way that they slag soloing.

And we are both in favour of solo diving so I don't get the point why you seem to be defending it.

I'm not defending a point. I'm supporting an approach.

Also, I think whether or not one is more dangerous on the other varies *significantly* based on situational factors and the diver/s involved.

Exactly.

but again I don't know the OP so who knows for sure?

That's right, it goes both ways. If we can't tell for sure we should probably avoid making any such assumptions and focus on what we do know; the specifics of soloing.

You seem to get quite defensive when people say that or that experience counts, probably based on your own experience of starting to solo dive with very little experience.

Ah, those assumptions. I've been soloing in extreme sports (and having these discussions) since I was twenty so I'm not (too) defensive about my experience. I just think someone should be able to ask specific questions and get specific answers. Having survived those years has taught me that this is the best approach. You wouldn't believe all the questions I have asked.

Umm, what is your point with saying that? You could be a terrible diver who has gotten lucky

I could be but I doubt it. I don't believe in luck. It's a lousy survival strategy. I just added that as another vote that not everyone waits for 100 dives.

I have no opinion on whether or not you personally (or the OP) should be solo diving. Just general opinions

All's well that ends well. No hard feelings. Sometimes good things come out of a back and forth and besides, I can't hold a grudge against a girl that calls herself a potato

 

[ZenDiver.3D]

Okay, my turn. I Love to solo dive. As an instructor and boat operator, I am ALWAYS taking care of others. Solo is the only time that I can just relax and be responsible for just me. As an instructor, I am actually a solo diver with extra responsibilities. My solo diving alone is a great pleasure.

You should be able to calmly handle unforseen incidents and affect self-rescue to solo dive.

Yes, every sport has it's hazards, and if done responsibly, scuba is a very safe sport. What makes it differen, is that when it goes wrong, it goes very wrong. The possibility for catastophic injury can be much more likely than other sports. There's just not a lot of room for forgiveness here.

So. Figure yourself out. Take the Rescue Course. And gain experience in varied conditions. Know that you have tested yourself in all vis, all current, all types of Murphy's moments, and make sure that you can problem-solve in any of them. Then, go for it.

SDI puts the 100 number for dives to give you a chance to experience all the hiccups that can happen to give you experience to handle them alone. I think it's only a good number if the dives are, in fact, in all sorts of conditions. I've seen may divers with 100's of dives in only holiday crystal clear, warm, no current waters. They were still inexperienced, in my book.

Good Luck.

 

[Sas]

I could be but I doubt it. I don't believe in luck. It's a lousy survival strategy. I just added that as another vote that not everyone waits for 100 dives.

Yes I don't think 100 dives is some magical number that allows one to solo dive. I mainly base whether I consider someone experienced on the conditions they dive in (i.e. does it match what kind I dive in) and how they've handled problems in the past. I find, though, usually the more dives one has in local conditions, the better they handle problems.

All's well that ends well. No hard feelings. Sometimes good things come out of a back and forth

Yes I agree.

and besides, I can't hold a grudge against a girl that calls herself a potato

 

[seaducer]

If someone wants to know if cave diving is for them do they post there or in the cave diving sub forum?

They sure should, where I am sure they will be told to get some training and experience before going into a cave. Sound advice, which is more or less what the OP got here.

If someone wants to know if DIR technical diving is for them do they post there or in the DIR sub forum?
If someone wants to know if commercial diving is for them do they do it there or the commercial diving sub forum?
Etc.. etc.. etc..

I fail to see the relevance? Again, he came here, asked his questions and got some answers. Since one of his questions showed an apparent lack of basic knowledge, and his stated experience is almost nil, some people pointed out he may want to get more time in the water before going out on his own. I don't know why you or anyone else would have a problem with that advice? The OP doesn't seem to have any issues with that advice. Whether he takes it or not is up to him, but he seemed to consider it, which was the point of posting it.

Again, this all goes back to the taboo of soloing.

Wow, nice strawman that you repeatedly bring into your posts. The only one bringing up the idea of a taboo is you. Nobody posted that solo diving is bad evil mojo. In fact, as far as I can tell from those of us advocating more knowledge and experience before solo diving have all gone solo diving!

All of the above (not DIR but technical diving in general) aspects of diving are more inherently dangerous than recreational soloing but nobody says boo about them.

Really? Why don't you go into the tech forum and say "Hi, I have been diving for about a year, got roughly 30 dives on my belt, I think I am ready to dive to 200 feet. What kind of gear do I need?", and see where that gets you.

If someone wants to go down that route they are just given the facts. Here's how we do it. Why not the same here in the solo sub forum. What is so different about soloing?

It pretty much is the same here in this forum. In fact it is exactly the same here. Ask questions, get answers. If two of those questions are what do I need and am I ready, you get this thread. If the gear questions are what is the difference between this and that, you get a different thread.

The reason I challenge dive counts is that they are artificial. What do they tell us?

I was here more than a year before I added the dive count by my avatar. Many people on this board seem to place alot of stock that, and I prefer to have my posts and ideas judged by themselves, without any dive count predjudices.

I have about 50 low vis, cold water dives,

That is right about where many new divers are at their most dangerous. You are starting to get comfortable in the water. You are starting to gain a more intimate familiarity with your gear. You can now assemble your kit without concentrating on it. You no longer have those pre-dive jitters. You are starting to think you know all about it and can handle anything. I know, I was there once too. Then I realised I really didn't know a whole helluva lot, and I started getting serious about learning the ins and outs, and getting more experience before I attempted more technically challenging dives.

1/3 of them solo.

Good for you.

How does that stack up against 100 warm water, high vis, DM guided tropical boat dives?

I wasn't aware we were supposed to keep score.

Who is better prepared to solo and where?

See above.

If we want to operate safely we should focus on what we actually need to know/do/understand, the specifics. Not some vague notion of experiences that might come to us in time somehow.

So you think experience is just a "vague notion"? So your bouyancy, trim, awareness, compitence, all as good as someone with 10 times your experience? 20 times? Or are you saying that someone fresh out of OW class is as good as you?

PS. My first solo was dive 21 and I'm not dead (yet).

I am glad you qualified that. Clearly you either do not understand, or fail to respect the physics of diving, and the psychology of incident management. I see alot of my former self in your words. The difference is I was just a kid, and didn't know any better. I thought since I learned to dive in Jersey, and I was clearly the best waterman in my class, that the "rules" didn't apply to me either. Luckily, I got educated before something bad happened.

I hope the same goes for you. Actually I hope I am totally misreading your posts, and if I am I apologize. But seriously, you are coming across very cavalier about things. Much more than people I know with 100's of solo dives, in cold dark water. It isn't something to take lightly.

 

[seaducer]

Well, this has cetainly been an interesting (educational, informative?) thread, which I plead guilty to have started. I want to thank everyone for their input.

No worries! You didn't "start" anything, and nobody here is trying to put you down or anything. Just trying to give you the benefit of hindsight, experience, or whatever in order to help you make your decision a hopefully more educated one.

I tend to agree with those who believe it is more about 'life experience' than quantity of dives. a 14 year old person with 100 dives probably does not have the lifetime experiences to handle an immediate situation under water. An older geezer like myself just might.

Or you might not. It isn't about number of dives, but it is about a level of familiarity with an environment in which you have just begun to experience. Working through problems underwater is completely different than working through them on land. For one thing, you may not even recognize alot of potential issues, secondly we are most comfortable on land, but underwater everything changes, it becomes more difficult in some ways, completely foriegn. The more time you spend there, the more comfortable you are. There is no magic number, but it does seem that ~30 is too little. Also, most of us have gone through the "bulletproof" stage that starts right around where you are now. Just make sure that confidence you are feeling is real, not based on not knowing what could really happen.

I think it also has to do with the environment you will dive in. For me it's a very gentle, tropical environment.

That can still kill you in a heartbeat. Sometimes I think tropical seas are the most dangerous, because they appear "very gentle". Where I live, cold, dark, lots of current, looks like a scarey place. But the physics are the same, and so are 99% of the dangers. It is simply more comfortable where you live, not safer.

In any case, I will have many questions (gear and otherwise) related to solo diving, as that is where I am headed in the near future. Thanks again,
Bob

Looking forward to them

 

[seaducer]

Again with that faulty logic. I have been a fish hobbyist for 20 years and am self employed full time as a marine aquarium installer/maintainer (so I know a little about keeping fish) but I still have to ask where to buy them sometimes. I phone up the suppliers and ask if they have so and so and such and such and they say yes or no or maybe they can order them in etc... Knowing about them and knowing where to buy them are not the same thing.

You completely missed the point. Basic knowledge and research does 2 things. First, it answers basic questions (you know, the extremely vague ones), and second, it gives the person a basic tool set in order to sort the BS from the good advice. (and btw asking about which suppliers have a specific species, or will give you the best deal is far from asking how to go about buying one in the first place)

Take this specific thread. What if someone popped in and told Tropitan that a 1.7 cu ft Spare Air is all the redundancy he needs in Hawaii? I will bet you 10$ that the first dive shop he goes into on Kona will not only have one (or can order it), but will be happy to sell it to him.
Perhaps someone else here will chime in (perhaps??) and inform Tropitan that a Spare Air is only recommended for the Hoff, but how does he know who to believe? The Spare Air website is full of testomonials, and he has seen it on Baywatch so it must work, right? And it is far cheaper than say, a 19 cu ft pony with a reg and mounting hardware. And hell it will be far easier to trim the Spare Air than a pony, so cool.
And off he goes half cocked with bogus information from an internet forum. Again, this place is no classroom. It is a great place to get biased and unbiased opinions on gear, setups, agencies, resort or destinations, trade stories, share tips lessons. And yes, you can use Scuba Board for basic research, but caveat emptor. And I am sorry, but I don't think this is the best forum for that. Basic Discussions is the best place to have a 200 post thread on the topic of redundancy.

And I am sorry, but solo diving is a personal decision, and if you have to ask if you are ready, then as far as I am concerned, you are not. And I will say that every time.

 

[randy54]

Here's my take. I've had two dive lifes. First when I was 17, in 1970, when you had to work your butt off just to get a cert. On dive #2, 6 of us went out in 3 teams of 2. The buddy system was pushed then big time too. One of the other teams members started swimming erratically. The others thought he was playing, I recognized what had happened to Ray, a blown ear drumm. I swtiched off buddies, and got Ray to the surface and back to shore. I dove a couple of years, had about 25 dives total, and stopped due to some life changes.
20+ years later, I started diving again, and retook an open water class. I was shocked to see how the requirements had degraded, but that's a different rant. I started with and was happy to do buddy dives, until I went out once on a dive boat and couldn't get hooked up. So I did my first solo. The site was one I knew, viz was good, and the conditions were very good for SoCal. The first commitment I made to myself was that once in the water, if I didn't feel comfortable, I would call the dive. As it is I had a great time. Since then I've made many solo dives, and only once did I end up in trouble. At about dive 50 I became intangled in kelp, far from the boat and no one else around. After a few seconds of panic, I calmed myself and remember my training, which in this case called for me to remove my tank/BC, clear the entanglement, and move on. I've also done many buddy dives, and have found myself in trouble this way on several occasions, including another kelp entanglement, which my buddy caused, and I thought I'd have to knock him out to save us. I've also paid attention to many dive fatality reports, and note that most of them involve buddy teams that talked each other into diving beyond their abilities, because they were sure they could handle emergencies togather.
The bottom line I've learned is, it doesn't matter buddy or solo, you got to know your limits, and dive to a safer level than that. Learn as much as you can, practice what you learn, and enjoy life.