When is it ok to leave a buddy?

[60plus]

I had the experience of a buddy swimming away from me fast and too deep on only my 4th dive. I no longer followed him when my depth reached 22m. Beyond that depth I would not be confident of reaching the surface if my air failed. I subsequently got his attention by tank banging but a few minutes later he swam away fast and disappeared despite fairly good visibility. I swam gently after him for a minute or two at about 9 to 12m. When I could still not see him and my air was getting near 50 bar I surfaced. My responsibility to my family is far greater than my responsibility to an idiot instabuddy. I have even seen a diver head off on a solo dive during his first open water dive whilst under training - he got a right finger wagging from the instructor.
My local club who teach from the outset with the intention of their divers progressing to dive deep, in currents, bad visibility, weed and kelp insist on very close buddy practice, they do lap after lap of the pool continually touching each other, heads never more than a yard apart.

 

[Centrals]

It is OK to leave your buddy any time as long as both of you are back to boat/land.

 

[rabe]

This news might fit for this 3d 'They stayed together and drifted' - divers found alive

(that's a looooong drift)

 

[3arl J0n35]

Me and my posse usually use the "same ocean same day" buddy system. I know all y'all are going to winch and grimace and start yelling insults, and I understand your concern. I was a safety nazi the first year or so myself. That basically changed when I went on a night dive sponsored by the dive shop with one of the instructors and when we dropped anchor he says, "You do realize we're basically solo diving, right?" So the four of us basically yes, did a solo dive. "If your *** ain't back to the boat by 9:45 pm I'm calling the Coast Guard" LOL

This is the third instructor I've dived with who just loafed off on his own, so pretty much I've realized it's the "do as I say and not as I do" when it comes to diving.

Now me and my posse had to devise a system, (prepare to grimace again) because we often couldn't unhook the anchor from the wreck while on the boat, and if we unhooked it and then surfaced and found out the other guys weren't on the boat, the currents carried it away from the dive site. So now we leave a slate tied to the anchor. Before a guy surfaces he writes his name on the slate then proceeds on up the anchor line. If I get to the slate and the other 4 names are there, then I know I'm the last diver in the water and I unhook the anchor and go up the line. If all the other guys haven't written their name on the slate, I know there's still somebody else down here, and I write my name and come on up the line and leave the anchor hooked.

Before we used this system, during one of our solo buddy dives the anchor came loose and the boat drifted about a mile away. So when we came up the boat was gone but we saw it on the horizon. So it was a long damned swim. After that we decided the new procedure was to hook the anchor where it couldn't accidentally come off or be unhooked from the boat. Now someone has to unhook it, and it needs to be the last man out of the water.

 

[Namreg 58]

Me and my posse usually use the "same ocean same day" buddy system. So now we leave a slate tied to the anchor. Before a guy surfaces he writes his name on the slate then proceeds on up the anchor line. If I get to the slate and the other 4 names are there, then I know I'm the last diver in the water and I unhook the anchor and go up the line. If all the other guys haven't written their name on the slate, I know there's still somebody else down here, and I write my name and come on up the line and leave the anchor hooked.

.

We used to use a similar system with 4 individual tags and it worked well on familiar dive sites. However the system broke down on new dive sites when some couldn't find their way back to the anchor to pick up their tags.

Now we attach a strong strobe light about 8 feet above the anchor to make it easy to spot and we all keep each other in sight and last man inflates the lift bag to keep anchor off the bottom so the first man on the boat after doing safety stop can haul it in while the others hang around the deco line. Works for us.