Diving in Threes?

[spectrum]

Ok so what DO you do if both your buddies end up OOA? I mean this in a normal rec. sense, no caves, no wrecks etc. Octo to one and buddy breath with the other? Doable but logistically complicated and hopefullly you're not too deep.

I'm with mossym here. Yes it's possible but two doing so simultaneously and not just low on air but both OOA is within the real of possiblility but very remote. As you note there's always buddy breathing or a CESA. I would not go deep or into a troublesome location without history and confidence in the team. Also as part of the team you should be making sure air checks happen so the incident never occurs. Very scenario dependent.

Pete

 

[Charlie99]

If one (or God forbid, BOTH) of the other divers have cameras, it makes it that much worse.

Actually, one of the best 3 person buddy groups I've been in was with two women photographers. One would take photos and the other would be a fish spotter. The next dive they'd swap. I dove with them for 3 or 4 days in Cozumel. They moved at the slow pace I liked. They both had great air consumption so we had nice long dives. The spotter and I typically wandered around at fairly big buddy separation distances, but paid good attention to each other and the photog. The photog re-established eye contact after every shot. You know that everyone has good situational awareness when you spot something, and without taking your eyes off it you raise up a hand, then almost instantly there are two people hovering beside you.

OTHER GOOD 3 PERSON TEAMS:
1. Me + a couple that were very new divers. I led the dive, they stayed abreast and behind me. They kept track of each other, and I set a pace where it was easy for them to keep up with me. I'd alternately check on her, and then next time look at him. As it was around their 5th dive after certification, they stuck on me like glue.

2. 3 experienced divers, meeting each other on the boat for the first time. The dive was on an easy to navigate, very well defined spur and groove reef. Shallow, so gas consumption was not relevant. Although for each of the dives, we had a "lead diver", in reality we just agreed upon our general path and did a group wander with each diver keeping track of the other 2 at all times. It was almost as if there was a "center of gravity" to the group. If one diver got intrigued by something off in one direction, the other 2 kind of got pulled in his direction. OTOH, each diver also kind of bumped into a wall of increasing resistance as he approached the limit of visibility w.r.t. either of the other 2.

SO-SO 3 PERSON TEAM:
I'm insta-buddy to an established buddy team. They have good buddy awareness with each other. They are relatively unaware of me.


BAD 3 PERSON TEAM:
I'm insta-buddy with a husband & wife. He will lead the dive. We agree upon the general area we are going to look at. As soon as we hit the water, he takes off in the opposite direction, at a pretty good clip. Most of the dive is me and his wife more or less abreast, enjoying the dive, while he is disappearing into the haze. 3 or 4 times I fin hard, catch up to him and grab a fin to stop him. The wife stops when she hits the agreed upon turnpoint pressure. Again I have to chase him down when 15 seconds later he is going out of sight and shows no sign of stopping.
I was very happy when during the SI she told me that her husband wouldn't be diving with us on the 2nd dive. I asked if he had ear problems or something and she replied something like "No. I told him to go find a different buddy."
My guess is that he was an atrocious buddy even in just a 2 person team.

 

[ChillyWaters]

replied something like "No. I told him to go find a different buddy."

Hahahaha... but, OUCH!

You'd think if you could talk to anybody, it would be your SO. Though perhaps they had talked about buddy logistics, and nothing still had changed. Sometimes the truth hurts.

- ChillyWaters

 

[gangrel441]

WHAT?! It has nothing to do with pure statistics. Failure doesn't usually "just happen," but is usually a result of poor equipment maintenance, etc. Not always, but often.

It is EXTREMELY unlikely for 2 people, with properly maintained and setup equipment, to have a failure, not only on the same dive, but at the same time.

However, if 2 people really had a problem at the same time (perhaps a couple who both had improperly maintained equipment) when diving in a threesome, just imagine what would have happened had they told that third diver not to come!!!

- ChillyWaters

Just laying out the argument as I have seen it. Like I said, my aversion to diving in threes has more to do with winding up with a third buddy who doesn't know the buddy system from a hole in the wall or fancies himself a solo diver and doesn't bother to tell us that until we are wet.

I did state in my previous post, I believe, that 2 malfunctions is an extremely unlikely event. That said, the statistics still hold. Whether or not that is significant, I don't know.

 

[Spoon]

i do threes all the time, there is a unified effort, one always leads and the others follow. well thats how i do it at least

 

[HowardE]

Ok so what DO you do if both your buddies end up OOA? I mean this in a normal rec. sense, no caves, no wrecks etc. Octo to one and buddy breath with the other? Doable but logistically complicated and hopefullly you're not too deep.

You end the dive. Simple.

 

[DiveMaven]

We dove in a 3-some on our recent trip to Hawaii. The third person is a good friend of ours and we had plenty of time to talk about how we were going to do it prior to the first dive. We dove every morning for 8 days and by about day 3, the 3-buddy team felt natural and was totally automatic. We talked about the dive, about buddying, etc. after every dive, especially for those first 3 days.

However, after that experience I can honestly say I'd never do a 3-buddy team with someone I didn't know before. Would never agree to it with a stranger on a 1-day charter, or someone I met on the beach. It requires too much trust and constant communcation about the dives to work well as a casual thing IMO.