Three man buddy teams

[novadiver]

If that diver turned up dead, the other diver and myself would have been blamed for the fatallity. I think if you dive a charter boat that you should sign a DIVER CODE OF CONDUCT. that way everyone is on the same page. But with the absense of scuba police , this will do very little to inprove the industry. It's funny , when I dive solo ,I never deveate from the plan and always have better dives. The three diver team may work for teams that have dove together , but it doesn't always work on make up charters. So I'll let the debate rage on, and go about my diving the way that works for me.

 

[FatCat]

Three-man diving is WRONG. If you can't figure out why, feel free to re-read your OW textbook.

:lol3:

Now back to being serious. All of the remarks about chance teams and so on apply to two person teams as well.

Buddy diving doesn't work if there is someone in the pair (or threesome) who doesn't want to take on the responsibilities that go with buddy diving.

With the obvious exception of absolute novices during training, every diver who wants to dive with others should accept the consequences of the buddy system. Consequences may include babysitting a beginner.

If not, there are two options: dive solo or stop diving.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

well gratefull has hit another question, we've all had boat buddies that listen on the boat ,but as soon as they reach depth their gone. even after the team makes a plan.

Should the two left follow the origanal plan? or should they chase down the one and add lib a plan after that? either way , there are some violations of dive protocall that is going on. like " plan the dive dive the plan" and don't leave you buddy(s)

Now this has happened to me and I'll be the first to say that I left that diver to survive on there own. Does that make me a bad duddy? If it happened in a cave or inside a wreck I would say yes but it happened in 80 feet of open water. In the end we all met on the anchor line and I was very suprised that no one said anything about it during the SI.

That's just one of the reasons I went for a solo cert.

This can just as easily happen with a two-person team, as I found out on the one boat dive I did on Bonaire without my regular dive buddy.

I got hooked up with a fellow from Germany. When he asked to buddy with me I explained this was my third dive of the day and I wanted to limit it to a max depth of 60 feet. Two minutes into the dive we passed that depth, and he continued down. At 80 feet I gave him the thumbs-up signal and he ignored me. At 90 feet, I indicated to him that I was going up and proceeded to do so. At 60 feet I leveled off and looked down, and he was continuing downward to the bottom of the reef (still don't know why ... there's not much down there). I proceeded back to where I knew the DM was with another dive team and joined them for the remainder of the dive. My former dive buddy eventually came up to join us.

After the dive, I told the DM and boat captain I wouldn't dive with that gentleman again ... and the next day when he asked to join me and my regular dive buddy, I said no.

Any team, whether two or three divers, will only work if all team members decide to approach it cooperatively.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

:lol3:
With the obvious exception of absolute novices during training, every diver who wants to dive with others should accept the consequences of the buddy system. Consequences may include babysitting a beginner.

In my experience, beginner divers are usually more cooperative than divers with just enough experience to think they've got it all figured out ... and often make far better dive buddies.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[voop]

:lol3:

Now back to being serious. All of the remarks about chance teams and so on apply to two person teams as well.

Buddy diving doesn't work if there is someone in the pair (or threesome) who doesn't want to take on the responsibilities that go with buddy diving.

With the obvious exception of absolute novices during training, every diver who wants to dive with others should accept the consequences of the buddy system. Consequences may include babysitting a beginner.

If not, there are two options: dive solo or stop diving.

To me, every dive with a "buddy of circumstances" is a solo-dive: I'll look out for her/him, but I do not expect her/him to do the same for me and I plan my dive accordingly. I'm then plesantly surprised, from time to time, which is how BoC's becomes "buddies".

 

[Marek K]

I got hooked up with a fellow from Germany. When he asked to buddy with me I explained this was my third dive of the day and I wanted to limit it to a max depth of 60 feet. Two minutes into the dive we passed that depth, and he continued down. At 80 feet I gave him the thumbs-up signal and he ignored me. At 90 feet, I indicated to him that I was going up and proceeded to do so. At 60 feet I leveled off and looked down, and he was continuing downward to the bottom of the reef (still don't know why ... there's not much down there).

Bob--

He probably thought you meant 60 meters. Really. Or at least, maybe more likely, he didn't have the slightest idea of how deep "60 feet" was in meters.

*sigh*

Language fluency?

Or maybe it was the same guy I had for a buddy in the Red Sea...

--Marek

 

[voop]

In my experience, beginner divers are usually more cooperative than divers with just enough experience to think they've got it all figured out ... and often make far better dive buddies.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

Yep, what Bob said! The worst of the worst are, in my experience, newly minted DM/Instructors, who think themself immortal and without need for briefings/instruction.

Mind you, it doesn't apply to everyone, but I've had some bad experiences in the past.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Bob--

He probably thought you meant 60 meters. Really. Or at least, maybe more likely, he didn't have the slightest idea of how deep "60 feet" was in meters.

*sigh*

Language fluency?

Or maybe it was the same guy I had for a buddy in the Red Sea...

--Marek

That may well be ... but I believe the hand signals for "level off" and "go up" are pretty much universal. To my concern, the greater transgression is ignoring a buddy's signal to stop descending ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Marek K]

That may well be ... but I believe the hand signals for "level off" and "go up" are pretty much universal. To my concern, the greater transgression is ignoring a buddy's signal to stop descending ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

Yeah...

You said you refused to dive with the same guy the next day. But didn't you discuss the incident with him right after the dive? Too POed?

Would have been interesting to find out what he was thinking. Or wasn't thinking.

He just looked at you when you signalled... and... ignored you?

When I had my German run-away "buddy," I unfortunately didn't talk with him about it after the dive. I don't know why... I certainly should have... My German is pretty good, but not for chewing someone out fluently. Or maybe I was just relieved everything turned out OK.

--Marek

 

[RiverRat]

If you're a "single" diver like me you've got to learn to look out for yourself. My wife does not dive and I haven't hooked up with a buddy to travel with (almost impossible). I do have "local" buddies I dive with but that does me no good when I go tropical. For the most part I've been fortunate in that most "unknown" buddy pairings have worked out. I went to Bimini in Dec. and hooked up with a couple that turned out to be awesome buddies. They had their own system of communication (slates, hand signals etc.) and I just merely adapted to their system. We planned our dives and dived our plans. When a dive was called we all ended the dive. In this case I thought the 3 man team worked out exceptionally well. Now that's not to say how things would have gone in a real disaster or OOA situation. But we stuck close together so I felt we were all there for eachother in the event of a problem. I went wreck diving in NC over the summer with a LDS group. I was the odd man out of course as everyone started buddying up. When I asked the group leader (an instructor that led the trip) about "how should I approach this" he basically said something to the effect of "let's not make a big deal out of this". I was taken back a bit by this attitude to say the least. Especially from an Instructor and group leader. How hard would it be to gather the group together and say "hey" we gotta buddy this guy up somehow? It was obvious he just did not care. In any event I found a pair of divers that let me "tag along" on the dives and it worked out ok. They were actually looking out for me and accepted me to their "team". I've also been with other divers that just blow you off under the water and solo dive. I'm glad I took Rescue training and solo training may not be a bad idea.
Although one should strive for a good buddy team it's good to know you can handle things on your own.