razorbackdiver
Contributor
When did you learn to buddy dive? I pose this question in response to a thread labeled solo diving. In this thread the poster gives reason for wanting to solo dive and wants some internet instruction or advice.
My personal story is I didn’t really learn to buddy dive until almost a year after my OW cert and then it was just by luck that I got buddied with a good diver on a Blackbeard’s trip or I probably wouldn’t be doing it properly today. Just a bit of background, before the Blackbeard’s trip I was approaching 50 non training dives and had the following certs: Navigation, Nitrox, Deep Diver, Equipment techniques, and Stress and Rescue.
The content of my being train to be a good buddy to that point consisted of being told to never dive solo, if I do lose contact with my buddy I was to look for them by rotating 360 degrees twice and if they haven’t shown in a minute, surface and look for them there, and if they are not there get out of the water. No discussion about one of us being a lead diver, where the non-lead diver should be or any other buddy related instruction.
Now in the interest of full disclosure, I was not actually trained by an OW instructor. The agency I got my OW cert with allows dive cons to instruct students under the supervision of an instructor. I was given the option to wait for the start of the next class or have one on one instruction with a dive con at no extra charge and start right away.
Since at the time I didn’t know what I didn’t know, I did not know to ask for more. If I hadn’t bump into this guy on the Blackbeard’s trip I might never have realized that there is more to buddy diving than just keeping a loose eye on my buddy.
So, was my OW training typical? If so it might explain why we read about so many bad buddies on this board. Perhaps, it’s just a matter that they were never taught correctly.
My personal story is I didn’t really learn to buddy dive until almost a year after my OW cert and then it was just by luck that I got buddied with a good diver on a Blackbeard’s trip or I probably wouldn’t be doing it properly today. Just a bit of background, before the Blackbeard’s trip I was approaching 50 non training dives and had the following certs: Navigation, Nitrox, Deep Diver, Equipment techniques, and Stress and Rescue.
The content of my being train to be a good buddy to that point consisted of being told to never dive solo, if I do lose contact with my buddy I was to look for them by rotating 360 degrees twice and if they haven’t shown in a minute, surface and look for them there, and if they are not there get out of the water. No discussion about one of us being a lead diver, where the non-lead diver should be or any other buddy related instruction.
Now in the interest of full disclosure, I was not actually trained by an OW instructor. The agency I got my OW cert with allows dive cons to instruct students under the supervision of an instructor. I was given the option to wait for the start of the next class or have one on one instruction with a dive con at no extra charge and start right away.
Since at the time I didn’t know what I didn’t know, I did not know to ask for more. If I hadn’t bump into this guy on the Blackbeard’s trip I might never have realized that there is more to buddy diving than just keeping a loose eye on my buddy.
So, was my OW training typical? If so it might explain why we read about so many bad buddies on this board. Perhaps, it’s just a matter that they were never taught correctly.