How many of you love diving with your spouse?

[Z Gear]

I do the vast majority of my travel diving with my husband. I love the fact that he likes to dive, and likes to travel, and that he likes to cave dive. Cave diving, in fact, is the diving where we get along the best. In open water, we have different patterns of behavior. He says I follow him; I say he swims away from me when I stop to look at something or take a photograph. It's an improvement from the old days, where he dove "DFA" (death from above, the pattern of diving slightly behind and above one's buddy).

There are people (like our own Diver0001) with whom I have simply "clicked" -- our pattern of diving is just somehow instinctively the same. For me and Peter, working as a team has been very much a learned thing, and it isn't perfect.

I don't know about others but for me it is a great bonus to have your spouse as a dive buddy!

Frank G
Z GEAR - Z Gear

 

[knotical]

My wife is my favorite dive buddy. As a bonus, she is great at spotting critters.

She used to hold my hand sometimes. Turned out she got the shakes when deep. After she stopped drinking coffee before diving, the shakes stopped. I kinda miss the hand-holding.

She’s better with her air than I.

 

[Z Gear]

Frank, my wife also used to hold my hand so I know what you mean. We now have her just slip her hand into my harness (hold my shoulder strap) (suggest having her on your left side so her left hand is free). This also helps when she needs a boost (you are not towing her, you are just assisting :winky .

The slip hand into harness , I will have to give that a try. As far as towing, It only happens when there is a strong current. She'll say I need a tow and here comes the tow truck at your service!

 

[Ulfhedinn]

I love diving with my wife. I just wish she would make more free time to dive. I held her hand a lot in the caribbean.

 

[Lorenzoid]

. . . But tell me what you love or what drives you crazy when you dive with your spouse.

My wife and I are dive buddies.

I love that we made an effort to make sure our training is matched. I also love that we continually help each other maintain and improve our skills, somehow managing to toe the line between constructive criticism and getting on each other's nerves.

I love that as we continue to explore new kinds of diving we seem to find ourselves attracted to the same things. We both seem to have taken a shine to macro--the small critters.

I love that, although neither of us is much of an athlete, she has pretty good stamina for a woman her age. However, I wish she had a lower air consumption rate. She somehow burns through her tank fast even when we spend half the dive hovering in one spot over a nudibranch!

 

[PfcAJ]

I enjoy diving with my SO. She's still 'new', doesn't dive often, but none of that matters. We have a good time together underwater.

 

[Dirty-Dog]

Since we got Kim started, the three of us have virtually identical log books. Tiny differences in profiles.


Sent from an old fashioned 300 baud acoustic modem by whistling into the handset. Really.

 

[Z Gear]

I wish I could convince my wife if the wonders of scuba diving...[/QUOTE

I be a hoping to get my wife in the water this spring! She has some fear of the water and we are working thru that a little at a time. Bought her a wetsuit for the no sinking feeling and she has been showering in a mask and snorkel to get thru the water in face stuff. She has been talking to an instructor about swim lessons also. I have a ton of gear and tanks, so a ready to go buddy would be nice! Also cuts down on the explaining why I need this or that for diving,,,, hopefully!!! We will see, we already run two businesses together, so why not try the diving thingy!!

I also was hoping my wife would join me in diving. You see I was certified first and she really had no interest in going under the scary water, as she puts it. The jaws movies where ingrained in her mind for a while. I figured out a way to slowly gain her interest it was not that easy. I knew I should present to her some examples of awe inspiring video of diving. I also had to be patient and let her curiosity come to me for questions. I could share but I had hold back and let mind replace fear with beauty and wonder. There are so many cool videos out there. Even the ones that show the waters of my own back yard. There are guys who have shot some amazing video, I try and share some with her and also those I have captured myself. She would ask me:is it really that peace full down there? How deep did I have to go to see all this. I knew that this was my opportunity to gain her interest. I told that most of the videos I have shown were done in shallow water. Unlike free diving you can go down just a few feet and relax and check out all the colorful sea life in the shallows if you want to make shallow dives. The first thing I did is to take her snorkeling at La Jolla cove, so she could get used to her mask and check out what was down there. I picked I spot and day that was very calm and had great visibility. The snorkeling vest would be good for those who are very afraid of the water, but for my wife she was fine just with her mask,fins and snorkel. The day was warm no need for a wet suit so she was very comfortable and that was my main focus. Once she got the mask down and she got used to breathing through the snorkel she held my hand and we explored the whole area. She was really happy we went out. It was a home run. On the drive home, I told all that the beauty down there was what I get close to and I feel like I am dreaming or basically
like watching a movie. I told her if she could try my gear on, in the pool just to see what it was like to breathe under water, she could get an idea of what its like. We went to my neighbors pool and I put my inflated BC (with no weights) on her. I told her just to try to breathe through the regulator. Then I asked to put her head in the water without her mask and close her eyes and breathe. She got that pretty easy . Then I had her put her mask on I asked her to put her head in the water and breathe again. I told her the key is to relax. I told her that I need to take it real slow with her so she can see that there is no need to rush anything and she can see that it really is very easy. I told that today she was just going to remain on the surface and feel comfortable breathing ( no weights in the BC). The goal was to have her be comfortable breathing and comfortable with her mask on.

Frank G
Z GEAR - Z Gear

The next step is to find her a really good private instructor that you can talked to and tell him the scenario.Find out how he plans to aproach it and get all the details ironed out. It is the only way to get her to be really comfortable. The group thing doesn't really work for these type of people, they will likely freak out, have ear issues or just have a very bad experience.
If knowing the spouse is more likely to need assistance in this area it is best to approach in a way that will instill confidence and comfort. Once she has had freaked out episode , it will be really difficult or nearly impossible to undue this bad experience.

 

[freewillie]

My wife won't dive. She tried a discover scuba and just hated it. Was claustrophobic and scared the whole time.

Next best thing however would be having my 16 year old daughter as my dive buddy. Last dive out I showed her some feather duster worms. I waved my hand over them and they disappeared back into the tubes. She tried it too, and I could hear her giggle when they disappeared. She then spent the next 10 minutes over the reef trying to find clusters of the feather dusters giggling the whole time.

And she's much better as spotting nudibranchs.

 

[Redshift]

You might as well have asked who has a diving spouse also registered on Scubaboard Of course they all loooove diving together!