Keeping Track of Buddies

[Bubbletrubble]

for example - when i did my first deep dive to 140, i was following the DM to the point where we were going to stop and do some math to display the effects of narcosis, etc...

@ding dang: Is this true? For a deep dive cert or AOW, the "DM" took you to 140 fsw. Interesting. Was it a tech dive class? That's beyond the limits of recreational diving...

 

[GrumpyOldGuy]

Herk Man,

I have been in exactly the same situation as you (my teen sons are my buddies).

The simple solution (borrowed from my Boyscout experience) for me is to assign one of the boys as the team leader. First, this makes it easy for me, I get to relax and enjoy. Second, they get to learn to plan and lead the dive and make the decisions, very important for them as young divers so they can develop their skills. It is simply amazing watching young people develop skills when we (as adults or parents) give them some room.

I am still there to keep them out of danger, but in a passive way.

 

[Guba]

I'm just tweaking what has already been said, I think...

When two buddies and I dive together, we use the "wing man" formation, just as several posters have described. However, we tend to make it a habit for the "wings" to fly only about a foot or two back (wing head to elbow of the leader) and usually just a bit higher in the water column. It seems to make it easier for the wings to track the leader, and the leader doesn't have to crane his neck quite as much to see the wings. This formation is useful when traveling along...when we're conducting a search or one of us is taking pictures, that takes a much different set of protocols.
Have fun, and enjoy your family dives.

 

[TSandM]

The optimal positioning for a three man team depends on the environment in which you are diving. If you are diving on a wall of reef, or the hull of a ship, then three abreast doesn't work very well. The people on the outside don't see much, or they crowd the inner person into the structure. In that case, a modified single file works pretty well, with each diver at an angle to the structure, looking toward it but also looking head. It then becomes very much the responsibility of the divers in the back to keep up, or to signal promptly if they want to stop and look at something or need to execute a task.

I actually think that good teamwork is more difficult in bright, sunlit water, since you can't use high intensity dive lights as a distance communication method there.

As far as your sons' objection to swimming up on your shoulder, they don't need to be precisely even with you. If they swim up enough that you can see their hands out in front of them when you turn your head, that's good enough, and that's dropped back far enough for them to pick up your changes of direction.

When you find something particularly interesting, like a big clump of coral with a lot of critters on it, you can separate a little and mill around, using the structure to define the parameters of your wandering, and then when the leader has seen enough, he can signal the rest of the team that you are moving on, and you can get back into formation.

This all works really well, once you've had a bit of practice with it. We don't even think about it most of the time; it just happens. One of the keys is that no diver can get totally fixated on anything for too terribly long -- you have to look up every thirty seconds or so and check the position of the rest of the team.

 

[Herk_Man]

Ahhh. The joys of threesome diving. In low vis situations, it's best for the leader to be in the middle and the other two to be in flanking positions on either side of the leader at the same depth. This is pretty tough to do with inexperienced divers.

The configuration in which your kids were on the reef-side with you on the outside would seem to be the best solution. If your kids were "fighting to stay off the coral," then they need to really work on their buoyancy control. Have them practice in a pool at home before the next trip...or enroll them in more advanced training. As you know, neutral buoyancy only gets easier with practice. It is possible for beginner divers to have good buoyancy control -- usually this is determined by the quality (and duration) of instruction.

The majority of my diving is done in a threesome. All three divers, however, must have the skill and the proper attitude to make it work. No one should ever be placed in the position of "monkey-in-the-middle" with the other two divers swimming off in opposite directions.

Have fun out there...

Staying off the coral was not a buoyancy issue, it was a space issue. I was naturally tending to move toward what I was looking at and because they were not in my peripheral vision, I did not realize I was pushing them into the reef laterally. My sons have excellent buoyancy control to the point that they can sit motionless in the water column and control their depth with breathing. That's not the issue.

 

[Herk_Man]

for example - when i did my first deep dive to 140, i was following the DM to the point where we were going to stop and do some math to display the effects of narcosis, etc... my dad was following us the whole time. when we touched down on sand, the DM pointed back and my dad was literally nowhere in sight within the canyon. i pretty much **** my pants, because i was narced. i eventually found him directly above me and relaxed, but calmed down because i remembered that he had done this plenty of times. basically, you have to take care of yourself and understand that others can do the same, regardless of age.

The fact that someone was fine one time when you were freaking about them being in trouble does not negate the need to monitor your buddy, regardless of their experience level. It's a basic principle of buddy diving that you stay close and monitor each other so that any malfunction or emergency can be handled quickly and properly BEFORE someone goes into panic mode.

 

[Herk_Man]

Herk Man,

I have been in exactly the same situation as you (my teen sons are my buddies).

The simple solution (borrowed from my Boyscout experience) for me is to assign one of the boys as the team leader. First, this makes it easy for me, I get to relax and enjoy. Second, they get to learn to plan and lead the dive and make the decisions, very important for them as young divers so they can develop their skills. It is simply amazing watching young people develop skills when we (as adults or parents) give them some room.

I am still there to keep them out of danger, but in a passive way.

Yep, as I mentioned in my original post, I frequently made them the dive lead, but as has been noted, being the dive lead has responsibilities that lessen the fun somewhat, so Dad took that responsibility from time to time. I started this thread to determine if there was a better way to position buddies to mitigate the effort required to monitor two people, whether I'm the lead or someone else is.

Leading dives is one the best leadership tools I've had the opportunity to utilize with my sons. A great experience for sure that will make them more responsible and capable in other areas of their lives as well.

 

[Bubbletrubble]

Staying off the coral was not a buoyancy issue, it was a space issue. I was naturally tending to move toward what I was looking at and because they were not in my peripheral vision, I did not realize I was pushing them into the reef laterally. My sons have excellent buoyancy control to the point that they can sit motionless in the water column and control their depth with breathing. That's not the issue.

It's good to hear that your sons have good buoyancy control. I guess I misunderstood your description of the situation. I'm not 100% clear on what you mean by "pushing them into the reef laterally." I suspect that they were paying more attention to your position than to where the reef was. As you got closer to the reef to check out stuff, then they would end up bumping into the coral. With practice/experience, they will have a better sense of space. They should be able to adjust to this (not you). Perhaps on this particular Bonaire trip, they were devoting "too much" attention to you.

Have fun...

 

[paddler3d]

So is there a better way to orient ourselves to make keeping track of each other easier? To caveat that question, we did try some other configurations. But any time they were farther up where I could see them, they said they had difficulty being able to see me well enough to know when I stopped or changed directions. And I also frequently passed the lead responsibilities off to them so they could get some experience leading dives. They expressed the same issues with keeping track of followers that I did.

All polite responses welcome. :cool2:

This was a skill, which I'm still working on, that I had to work on during DM.

If I was leading the dive and the vis was poor and I had two divers, I would have them buddy up and I would lead in front of them.

Kick, kick, turn, kick kick turn, kick, kick, turn, so on so forth.

Newbies tend to hang just above and behind. So I'd do a gentle roll to my left and look over my right shoulder.

I instructed them to simply grab my flipper if they needed me.

I would also use the good ole frog kick so as not to kick up the bottom.

If the vis was unusually good, not often, I put them on either side of me.

Why not have them take turns leading and you follow? You're right behind them. If something is not going well, you can likely do a couple of strong kicks and you are there. You can also give them feedback on how they look as divers. Anyway, you've had a lot more dives. Time for them to figure it out for themselves.

 

[Herk_Man]

It's good to hear that your sons have good buoyancy control. I guess I misunderstood your description of the situation. I'm not 100% clear on what you mean by "pushing them into the reef laterally." I suspect that they were paying more attention to your position than to where the reef was. As you got closer to the reef to check out stuff, then they would end up bumping into the coral. With practice/experience, they will have a better sense of space. They should be able to adjust to this (not you). Perhaps on this particular Bonaire trip, they were devoting "too much" attention to you.

Have fun...

Ya, you've got it. I basically meant that I had "hot chick syndrome" so when I saw something I liked on the reef I tended to move closer to it, reducing the amount of room my boys had between me and the reef. So as Dad moved over, they had to maneuver up or back to avoid getting pushed into the coral. And I think the opposite of your last line was probably true. They also wanted to look at the fish and coral so when Dad crowded them out, it was almost too late for them to react because they didn't see me coming.

This thread has been useful though towards thinking about my original question. One thing I didn't want to do was imply to either of my sons that the dive leader did not need to be attentive to those he was leading. But I think I'll talk to them about it and for 3 person dives in the future, we'll make the dive leader's primary job to lead the navigation portion of the dive while the two followers act as a buddy team.

That way if the lead gets in trouble, he has two buddies to help. My sons are both very responsible and we were all able to handle situations we actually had to deal with easily (mask or reg kicked off/out) so the two followers will be primary buddies to each other. The leader won't ignore his followers but will make his main focus, leading the dive and won't have to look back as often as we were doing on our dives this trip. I think that's a reasonable tradeoff that still honors the buddy system for all divers and improves the enjoyment of the dive for whomever leads.

Thanks for all of the input.