team diving skills

[tbrown]

By no means an expert on team diving, and I beleive it was aluded too, but proximity is important. If I am a long distance away from my buddy, it is much easier to get seperated, and much harder to respond quickly to a problem. Even with making eye contact every 30 seconds, alot can happen in 30 seconds and if you have a long swim to your buddy, the chance for a happy ending has decreased. I like to be close enough to my buddy that if I want/need to, I can reach out and touch them. Silt out? I may not be able to see my hand in front of my face, but I can reach over and touch them to know they are OK, and if I pause my breathing I can hear theirs. I had a buddy that stayed so close to me that I had a hard time lifting my arm to vent my drysuit. After the dive he apoligized and said that he just likes to be close. I informed him that was exactly what I wanted from my buddy.

[beeger]

Chris - it is good that you do that. I would hope all people do. What I'm personally more concerned about is what has happened to the reg since you have jumped in the water. Are there weeds wrapped around it? Silt inside of it? Has the mouthpiece come loose? Can you find it quickly enough? Has it come loose from it's connection and become entangled in something the moment you need it most? The point is you know 100% that the reg you are breathing is working.

Sorry, I'm not trying to call you out or anything. I'm just trying to explain my point better. I probably wasn't as clear as I could have been in my earlier post.

[Chris]

No problem! I'm new to the sport (just certified last spring) so any comments are appreciated. And I'm with you on this, and I guess my point also was that I do use it at least once on each dive (breathe with it for about 1-2 minutes actually) so I am pretty sure nothing is wrapped around it or inside of it It's also an Air2 so I am using it to purge air as well. But I see your point about 'at that exact time'... I guess you can never be 100% sure, but at least by using it one or two times per dive helps ensure nothing will be in the way if the time comes. Also, I get used to grabbing it and using it as well.

PS, we can save the comments on the Air2 for another thread LOL

[DRE]

One other thing about team diving that is obvious but maybe not taught during most classes (and definitely difficul to accomplish on most dive trips) is to dive with a select group of divers to create the team awareness - especially when it comes to more advanced dives. Finding one or two good dive partners who are at about the same skill level and who are willing to advance their diving in the same direction as yourself is very important. Feeling comfortable with these people on-land, sharing more time with them than just in the water, etc. will all make the team much more cohesive.
Case in point, my dive partner for most of our deeper trimix dives has the exact same consumption rate as I do. We usually hook up transfill whips between our tanks after the dive to equalize the pressure between them (we always dive the same mix) in order to remix the gas, and 75% of the time there even will be no transfer from one set of doubles to the other, which means we use EXACTLY the same amount of gas.

This doesn't mean you can never dive with any other people - I have several friends I do soke serious diving with and I will dive with much less experienced divers as well, but always within the limitations of the dive plan and the other person's skill level.

[davisj]

I have 15 logged dives. During most of those dives I would say that be buddy system failed. Of the failures, all of them were from losing contact with my buddy. No more than a few seconds after the OK signal was givin,...POOOF, gone in a silt cloud. It was the conditions of the dive that made the buddy system fail, and not the buddy.

After reading some of the posts, I look back at those dives where I lost my buddy, and can conclude that the reason for the failure was due to poor, or lack of any, dive planning. The plan, by default, was to get under water and blow bubbles. Thats it. No equipment check was perfomed under the water ( we did check equiment at the surface, however ). One thing we did do was to agree that we would end the dive with 500PSI left in our tanks. Also. it would have helped to select a "team leader", even if being nothing more than the navigator.

I can say that I have not performed octo checks during any of my dives, and shame on me for that ! I have been trained to hand off my octo to my buddy in the case of gas supply failure. Wouldn't it create a complete cluster f*** if I handed of of malfunctioning or clogged reg to a diver that really really needed some gas !!!! Not pretty.

It is clear to me that even though I have got a permit to fill my tanks with gas, I am in need of some more training or practice. I would be good for myself, and for other, to take the oportunity during one of the many "fun dives" of the season, to review, practice, and even get advice from more experienced divers, on how to perform such safety procedures a the s-drill.

Jeff

[lrmoll]

I have often been in dive groups where everyone wants to just run and get into the water, no real surface checks or underwater checks and where the concept of buddy was little more than "Same water, Same time." Or when you make them try to perform checks they act like you must be a rank beginner. Maybe it's because they feel guilty because they know they should do them and don't like to be reminded that they don't take them seriously.

[DRE]

When you encounter divers with that attittude, who don't want to perform a safety check before the dive, who don't want to follow a dive plan, etc. you invoke rule #1 and call the dive at the dock.
Why would you want to risk your own safety for someone else's stupidity?

[lrmoll]

When you lost your buddy what procedure did you follow to find him again?
Two years ago at a square lake dive one man lost his buddy The one continued his dive alone. The second when he realized he had lost his buddy the one minute search then surfaced called for his buddy (of course didn't find him at the surface) got the attention of the DM on shore where they all started to search for him.

[tbrown]

Not trying to start a conflict here, but I have always had a problem with the 7' hose on recreational dives. I will be the first to say that for tech, or even semi-tech, it is an essential peice of equipment. However, on rec dives within rec limits I have a much harder time following the arguement. For example, if you are diving with someone who drags their gear through muck, enough to plug up their safe second, due to either carelessness, or bad technique, or even because they don't care about keeping their gear secure, how do you expect this person to assist you if you have a problem? I mean, a 7' hose is not going to solve this situation. The aforementioned buddy is still a disaster waiting to happen, they just now have a longer primary to go along with their bag of poor tricks. As far as a paniced diver taking my reg from my mouth, I don't know if the 7' hose is the proper solution for that either. Firstly, I should have been paying close enough attention to my buddy to know that there is trouble long before they completely run out of air. Second, if they are that poorly trained and disciplined, what was I doing diving with them in the first place. Because (and how can I put this nicely?) no matter what hose I have on my primary, if anyone comes up and yanks it out of my mouth... well I can't think of anything nice so I will leave it at that.

[tcjtn0]

Interesting case in point:
Whether I am diving with new buddy/old buddy I always try to stay shoulder to shoulder with them. And I ask before the dive which side they would like me on (left or right). Last year in Okoboji we had a silt-out condition. I was on the right and my buddy was on the left. Within a second or two we had both reached out our hands and locked onto each other until we had cleared the silt. It seemed such an automatic thing to do.
Thanks...Jean