What to do with an inexperienced instabuddy?

[FoxHound]

We use blanket statments across the board for diving...you need so many dives to do this, to take this course etc....

Well i do agree that there are some people that pick it up very quick, most cant. There is enough on their plate at the beginning. And as seen from the senario shown here....it was def too much for the diver....they ignored many things including the "up". Leave it at home until you get some experience

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[Indydiver2]

If the buddy is very inexperienced, I typically try to inform the DM (if there's a DM/guide on the dive) and they normally "spontaneously" change some buddy teams around.

On the 6th-8th dive of my life I was at a dive resort in the Philippines that I've never been to. My buddy was with me but he had about 40 dives under his belt already. The dive shop realized how inexperienced I was compared with the other divers on board and paired me up with a DM that looked after me during all of the dives for the day. I thought that was pretty legit. I know dive ops are ran much differently in the US compared to other places and often times there won't just be extra DMs hanging around a shop, but I appreciated the gesture. And everyone else got to dive within their comfort zone and not be haggled by ensuring a newbie was going to be ok.

 

[bergersau]

A few people have asked about the submarine the OP was diving,
so:[video=youtube_share;0xKCc43Xaf0]http://youtu.be/0xKCc43Xaf0[/video]
It's a WW1 Sub scuttled in 26m water in Bass straight a short distance outside the entrance of Port Phillip Bay.
The J4 submarine is generally not a guided dive with the local operators. In Melbourne on a 'single tank' dive the charter boat usually acts as more like a ferry to get you to the site, they'll give a site briefing including the preferred procedures for that boat. They normally drop a shot line onto the wreck and keep the boat live due to the vagaries of the local conditions. Divers are expected to carry and use DSMB's on ascent and to come back up along the shot line if possible.

This was the 'deep' dive during my AOW course and my first wreck dive and it's a lovely site in good conditions. As the video shows it's also a site that can be strongly affected by surge, silting and sometimes large swell on the surface. Inside it also has plenty of hazards for the unwary or for the inexperienced and untrained. I will not enter it. 'The Graveyard' wrecks in Bass Straight can be challenging in all but the calmest of weather for both new and experienced divers alike.

Frankly I'm surprised that the operator (and I can take a pretty good guess at who the operator was) allowed a novice with only 12 dives to take that dive without a planned buddy or instructor. In good conditions with a pre-planned and hopefully more experienced buddy - no problem but as an instabuddy on a less than ideal day - not so good...

PS: Not my video footage..

 

[Storker]

I kinda don't like blanket statements and DEFINETLY don't like specific dive numbers to be a gauge of anything but how much spare time you have on your hands.
Some people are very comfortable in water, having played around in it their whole life before taking up diving, which come natural to them and get dialed in quick - others are the opposite. There is no "you have 32.7 dives so you can use a camera" textbook answer, unfortunately.

Ay-MEN!

I started to bring a camera below the surface shortly after my OW course. Heck, I even brought it on my last OW course dive, the 6th where we plan and execute the dive and are only supervised by the instructor. The camera lives on my BCD like my backup light and manometer (well, OK, my AI Suunto Cobra) do.

Now, I'm one of those who snorkeled a lot and swam regularly through all of my childhood and youth. I've always been comfortable in the water. I've also been photographing since I was a teenager, the camera I started to do UW photography with was a simple P&S set to auto mode and I was pretty conscious that the photography task was going to be at max my third priority during the dive ("Wow, cool! *click* OK, where's my buddy?"). My photography never took precedence over buoyancy awareness, gas and depth monitoring and buddy contact. And only when I had worked up enough routine to delegate some of those tasks to the back of my mind, I got myself a more "serious" camera rig and allowed the photography task to take up significant space in the front part of my brain. And it's still only second priority WRT my diving.

I've never had complaints from my regular buddy about my photography taking precedence over my diving. Except when I spend too much time at one single subject and he has to wait too long for me OTOH, I've dived with people who, even without a camera, are a lot worse than me in buddy contact, gas monitoring, bottom time monitoring etc. Even when I'm in full-blown photography mode...


EDIT: What I'm trying to say is perhaps that IMO it all depends on how task loaded you are by just diving, and how much of your mental capacity you allow the secondary task (be it photography, scallop harvesting, spearfishing or other "stuff") to occupy. If you're comfortable in the water and trained enough in the technical aspects of the secondary task to delegate it to the rear part of your brain, I believe you can start doing "stuff" underwater pretty early in your diving career without compromising safety.

 

[fnfalman]

At the end of the day, I tried everything I could to be a good buddy to her, but she was just too inexperienced to do the same.

She wasn't too inexperienced to be a good buddy. That wasn't the issue. The issue was that she was a selfish, ignorant jerk who decided to do things her way instead of following the lead dive buddy.

I'm not an instructor and don't see it as my responsibility to teach her good diving practice beyond what is necessary to keep us both safe when buddying, so I left it at that and vowed never to buddy up with her again.

Yep. When your advices and inputs go unheed, leave those people be. It ain't your problem.

I'm by no means perfect, but I genuinely felt that I tried everything I could to keep us both safe, however she put us both at risk. As well as telling the tale, I'm hoping to get constructive feedback on what I could have done differently. What would you have done in the same situation? Unfortunately instabuddies are a fact of life where I dive and if you want to get into the water, you have to team up with them. Had I decided not to go on the second dive, the only person who would have missed it was me!

Thoughts?

AM

I personally would be as calm and collected as possible while doing a dive debrief. I'd tell her that I'm the dive leader and that she needs to follow my cues. If that is not amenable to her, then she's welcome to find a different dive buddy right now.

And you did right by not being her dive buddy afterward. I had to do that before too. Actually my experience was very close to yours with the exception that my instabuddy was a ten years diving veteran with hundreds of tropical dives (according to her). I told her that we're just not working out and that she should consult with a dive master for a new buddy.

 

[R-balljunkie]

in the Army, we have a saying....buddy is only half a word. im the worlds worst dive buddy. sorry, you are on your own. i paid my money, and i dont work for the dive outfit. Yes, i'll keep a loose eye out for my instabuddy, but the responsibilities for "inexperienced" or loose cannon divers are on the dive charter/dm. i didnt pay to babysit someone for an hour or two.

c

 

[Tigerman]

if you dont accept responsibility for your buddy team, then say so before the dive and go do a solo dive, if they allow it and youre qualified to do it.
If you accept to be a part of a buddy team, then be the best buddy you can be. If the best buddy you can be is the worlds worst, then its your diving thats the problem and not anyone elses..

 

[Qasar]

May be I will start a fire, but no-one mentionned the PADI certification as being a root cause? A lot of you mentionned that 12 dives are not enough to go to 30m. I fully agree with that, but that's PADI clearance. You can be authorised to 30m with around 10 dives!
I have seen that many times on boats with fresh AOW wanted to dive inside their qualification, but not really within their capabilities....
PADI AOW certification is not enough demanding on the experience of the diver, it's just how to make money as quick as possible. Having said that I'm not challenging professional instructors that are doing their job pretty well, but the best instruction will not replace experience.

 

[bowlofpetunias]

It does not matter what certifying agency you use. IMHO if people go directly from OW through a succession of courses without taking the time to dive and build experience you are still inexperienced. On too many courses the student is not taking responsibility for their dive they are "Trust me Dives" with the Instructor and DM's "in charge". Courses are vital but so is a build up of experience within the comfort/skill level of the diver.

I am not saying courses are not worth while.. they certainly are.. but they give baseline skills that divers need to go away and practice during independent diving.

 

[Redshift]

But there are agencies that force divers to have a higher number of dives before being able to progress than others.