buddy, free, padi solo card

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tentacle13

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I have thought about diving alone sometimes, in familiar places, not too deep, just to venture out. I feel to abide by the buddy rule though. I read a pole in scuba diver magazine about how many divers dive solo. how do you feel about diving solo in your favorite dive holes? Salt water versus freshwater? At what depth would you feel confortable, 10m, 20m, 30M?

Anchor me with your opinion.

:cool:
 
Originally posted by tentacle13
I have thought about diving alone sometimes, in familiar places, not too deep, just to venture out. I feel to abide by the buddy rule though.
Anchor me with your opinion.

:cool:

This is a holy cow (direkt translation from swedish)
wich means noone wants to talk about it and noone can discuss it without getting fiersly attacked

Since the wrong attitude towards diving can kill you lets throw all morale out the window, and discuss this subject in a rational sence and meaning. This is a serious subject lets treat it like such.

First we all dive the way we want to and NOONE have the right to condemn your diving, exept search and rescue divers couse they are the guys who come in and clean up after us when we ****up ! and that goes for ANY diver DIR or not !

Almost everyone I know have made a single dive or two.
if it just a "test" in "safe" waters or real stupid fu**upstunts

When you first learn to dive almost every organisation who teaches rekreational diving will tell you "pair up with your buddy"
Its the buddy system ! The buddy way !
This teaches you out to the tips of your finger and drills you for the fact that in an emergency, Your buddy is the way to go.
WITH YOR BUDDY YOU ARE SAFE ! Your buddy is your spair air/ pony bottle /redundant air supply / helper in need / superman!
HE/SHE is whats stands between you and fights off the grim reaper.

This means that you are in no way shape or form prepared for diving alone. at any deapth. You can loose conciousness at any deapth.

when you dive alone your white knight in shape of a buddy isnt there anymore. you can call it "MMI" (Me Myself and I or "Molgan" (wich is a imaginary friend in a bedtime story) or whatever but you are alone. When the **** hits the fan, you are alone !
never EVER forget this, whether it be entanglements, OOA, SWB, CSR or any other emergency known to mankind and some others,
YOU ARE ALONE ! if YOU dont fix it noone will.
You throw all your education out the window since you are alone.
the education you have is not meant to help you in a system without a buddy. its designed with a buddy in mind.

Therefor if you will have a go at solodiving you must be prepaired for whatever emergency that comes along including while getting narked and so on.

You will need to be everything your buddy is AND yourself.
wich of course isnt a possibility at all, its more unsafe to dive solo.
redundant systems (no not double tanks thats not enough) and someone to know where you are, means to get an emergency crew to know where you are and that you need them.
all this you are to be yourself !.

Personally I started diving before I got a certification (dove my fathers gear and so on) and couse of that had to dive alone. no certification? no trips! and no buddy!. (this was down in the 80s)
:stupid:

Atleast according to me one of the more enjoyable parts of diving with buddy is that you have someone to share the moment with. oh look at that "insert favorite thing here"
:viking:

and to those who say solodiving is ok. I only have one thing to say: Anyone can dive deep, but when the **** hits the fan, and trust me on this, its a looong way home ! if you panic your ass is grass and grim reaper is the lawnmover.

In sweden we had last year 1 ONE fatality lets try to make this a year without any !

Dive safe
Dive the way you are trained for.

PS.
DIR is a good thing, BUT are so anoying with the knowitall attitude, yes thats just couse they know they have a good system and cant understand why other ppl choose to dive in an unsafer way. a littlebit of humbeling wouldnt be totally wrong there.
we are not all shaped in the same mold. what suits me doesnt always suit you and vice versa, both physically and mentally
DS.
 
First of all, PADI does not have and does not condone a solo certification. Padi views solo diving as a form of tech diving and doesn't address it much beyond that. See their web page for their published view. The divers who are best equipped and trained to handle a solo dive (call them tech divers if you want) usually don't. Even in "tech" diving, where we strive to be independent, we approach diving and dive planning from a team perspective. You can have all the redundant equipment in the world but, when alone, you have no backup for the most important piece of equipment YOUR BRAIN.

I believe it is SDI who has come out with the solo cert. Some time ago, I looked at the standards. As I remember, the course consists of one confined-water session and two dives. I don't remember the exact equipment and limits but I believe the main addition was a pony bottle.

I can't help but to view such a cert as a dangerous joke, but if it sells what the Hay! I even know of an inland dive site that will rent you a pony and let you dive alone if you have this cert. In my opinion scuba diving magazine has displayed an absolutely unparalleled level of irresponsibility on this subject. Everything is testers choice at one time or the other even solo diving. Not that I am so much against the diver who decides to make a solo dive, but I do not believe the average recreational diver should be encouraged to do so. From my observations, I would say that most divers shouldn't dive without supervision let alone without a buddy.

Choose your buddies well and you avoid all the problems of the buddy system without creating any new problems.
 
I dove solo for years. Some times I had to (retrieve lost weightbelts, etc). Got hungup a few times where I had to take off my gear to get untangled. Didn't think anything of it.

After Steve Berman died in Ginnie, I've been diving with a buddy, when ever possible. Sometimes I still have to dive solo (untangle an anchor etc) but I definitely feel differently about it now.
 
I believe in the buddy system as well. The article had shown a poll and I was curious to how many solo divers were out there. I have never dived solo.:cool:
 
When you've made, say, 50 dives, diving feels very comfortable and safe. However, you should be aware that this is not the case and down under you are in a environment which is hostile to humans.

I experienced it recently: I went diving with 130 bar in the cylinder, taking photographs. Taking photographs means you only look at subjects and your camera, not at your manometer. At the end of the dive my cylinder ran empty while I was chasing a fish. Though it was only at a few meters depth and right beside my buddy and I got everything under control, it did not feel so well not being able to breath!

I would not dive deep (say below 10 m) without a buddy! I prefer not to dive without a buddy at all, though very occasionally I do. I would not advise diving without a buddy.

Bye

Jorgen
 

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