team diving skills

[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