The OOA thread...

[in_cavediver]

Originally Posted by Grin

For anyone who thinks they have it all wired tight, or only dive with buddies they can trust.
It is not just that divers think "others will save me", many don't realize that their buddy can KILL THEM.

Makes Solo diving seem a little more sensible doesn't it?


Your thinking like me now! I feel much safer solo diving than buddy diving! And it is so nice being relieved of the fatc that when you are buddy diving you need to track your buddy 100% of the time. Remove that and your dive is all the more pressure free. You only have one person to keep track of (Yourself). When your new to diving I see buddy diving being neccessary. But once you get comfortable diving, I think buddy diving might actually be less safe in most situations. you get comforable and stary from intence locked arms buddy diving more and more and then one day you have a situation that you trusted buddy diving to solve. That is unless you dive with virtually lacked arms as if you just made your first dive. Doesn't sound like fun to me.

There is one more advancement to this - self reliant diving. I dive with my wife in completely self reliant modes. Call it solo diving with a friend or whatnot. It gives the self reliance we seek with the enjoyment of companionship to share expierences. We have expierenced the issue shown in the video WAscuba posted - in a cave no less. THe result - I carried out the lost mouthpiece because I caught it when she swapped regs. (we were already exitting so no need to turn the dive). A non-event for a broken zip tie.

[Grin]

I couldn't agree more! That's the way to do it. Best of all worlds!

[Jack Hammer]

I'd like to clarify what I meant by what I said earlier about mostly diving with people I "trust." The "trust" I'm refering to is the trust in their ability to self monitor their gas supply and not dive above their skill/training levels, thereby possibly endangering me with their stupidity or causing me to have to spend my dive "babysitting" them. Yes, we still check with each other to monitor gas supply, but I don't have to physically look at their gauges and monitor it for them, nor do I have to stop them from going places they shouldn't be.

As far as relying on them to help me, I try to be as self reliant as I'm able. If a situation arises I'd like to be able to resolve it myself but that's not always the best or quickest solution (sometimes buddy can see what you can't and resolve issue quicker). Solo diving can be great, but don't confuse feeling self reliant or having crappy buddies to being the same thing as diving solo, cause it ain't.

[WaScubaDude]

Originally Posted by Jack Hammer

...snip... Solo diving can be great, but don't confuse feeling self reliant or having crappy buddies to being the same thing as diving solo, cause it ain't.

In fact, for a very experienced diver, diving with a less experienced diver can be more dangerous than solo diving.

[Jack Hammer]

Originally Posted by WaScubaDude

In fact, for a very experienced diver, diving with a less experienced diver can be more dangerous than solo diving.

While I agree with you and like that you used the word "can" instead of is. I find a lot of statements tend to be interpreted differently by those with differing levels of experience. So an experienced diver makes a comment that may be correct for their diving and unique situations and that may be clearly understood by those with similar experience levels, however that same statement may be very misleading and possibly dangerous to a newer diver. A newly certed OW diver might read statements about diving solo being "safer" and decide to forgo training and just dive on their own because "that's what experienced divers do and they say it's safer." See where I'm going with this?