Bonehead dive buddies - Share your stories

I saw the thread title "Bonehead Moves - Sacrifices to the Dive Gods", from reefseal and it inspired me for another "Bonehead" thread. Please share any bonehead stories of you or your dive buddies doing something monumentally stupid.

I'll start:

Bonaire Night dive. My Dad (~150 dives), two of my college buddies (5-10 dives each), and I (~120 dives) went on a night dive as a group. Even though we were a group of 4, we still practiced the 2 person buddy system. We had been diving all week and my dad and I always paired with one of my buddies because they were less experienced, but this being our 10th in Bonaire so far, I felt confident in their ability after observing them for a week, so I paired them as buddies for this dive. All 4 of us spent the dive together. No two buddies went off on their own. Before the dive, I laid out a plan, told them where we would enter, where we would exit and how long we'd be under for.
The dive went great. As we reached our time limit, I circle the 4 of us together and signaled to head back to the dock. Everyone gave the okay... and we made our way back underwater. After about 5 minutes, I looked behind to make sure everyone was keeping up, but one of us was missing. I asked the missing person's buddy where his buddy was... and just then he realized... oh crap, my buddy is gone. We spent a couple minutes looking for him and his light, then I had my Dad and the other guy stay below and continue searching, while I surfaced and checked above water. It was dark, we were about 200 yards from the dock and I was looking for a bobbing head and calling his name. No answer. After 10 minutes, the other two came up and said they couldn't find him. At this point all the scenarios are going through my head. I was worried I'd just lost one of my buddies. I was thinking about what I'd have to tell his mother, etc. We looked for underwater lights on the surface... nothing. Then, after about 20 minutes of searching and worrying, we hear him yelling at us from the dock "HEY! What are you guys doing?"

Long story short... when I signaled to go back to the dock, what did he do? He surfaced, swam back to the dock, stripped of his gear in the locker area and wondered where the hell we were.

Damn guy nearly gave me a heart attack.

Now your turn!

When I had something like 12 dives I was on the boat @ John Pennekamp and got paired up with a "buddy".

The second we hit the water, he took off like racehorse out of the starting gate, headed east and completely missed whatever we were looking for (might have been a "wreck") and kept going.

I surfaced and came back to the boat, and the captain said "Where's your buddy?" I said "If you give him a few days, probably England."

I got a new buddy for the next dive and my first "buddy" got to sit on the boat.

That said, it's much more difficult to lose me now, since I'm always within grabbing distance. The same trick would not work again. However at 12 dives, the idea that my buddy would simply leave hadn't even crossed my mind.

Terry

Web Monkey: Had the same problem with a diver about a year ago. I was leading, turned around and no one there. Did the standard wait and search routine, gave up and headed for the boat. Captain and I searched the horizon for about ten minutes when, there he was, about 200 yards from the boat. He'd go down and bob up about every two or three minutes till he made it back. Captain checked his air and he had about 150 psi. Diver was from Paraguay and Captain was a Cuban. I speak Spanish pretty well but some of the words the Captain used were completely over my head and of course a lot of arm and hand waving went on. I was diving alone (with another couple) on the next dive while the wanderer warmed his a** on the boat. I'll bet that was a chilly hour for Mr. Paraguay.

What was your role in your dive buddy doing unexpected things? Did you discuss staying together as a team, and buddy separations procedures prior to the dive, or go in with the expectation that the plan was obvious? After the dive did you debrief and discuss the things that did not go as planned, and what you would do the next time? Anyway if you discuss what you want to happen, get agreement, and then still have problems then you may not have a compatible team. Unfortunately most people skip over the pre and post dive communication and blame their buddy for not intuitively grasping what the uncommunicated plan was. It takes two to be a good buddy team.