jbomb001
Contributor
So after having been dry for longer then Id like I decided to book a charter. Knowing I would be given an insta-buddy I got there a bit early so id have all my gear setup and ready to board asap which would give me a bit of time to "size up" my possible dive mates. As I stood around waiting for the rest of the divers and crew to show up I went through my standard assembly routine did my checks and rechecks. So now I am all set to board. About 20 min gos by and another car pulls in and the driver gets out and starts walking around then another and another show up and we all start talking, "this whole time im thinking to my self why is no one getting gear out and ready..." the oldest of them all says he has been diving for years but has not been in the water in about a year another of the younger ones says yea this is my 5th dive and another says I am on #7. meanwhile im still wondering where is all the gear? come to find out the older experienced diver had 25 dives "a couple a dives a year for x number of years" and none of them owned a piece of gear not one item.. they said the crew was bringing it for them. No biggy. people rent and do "vacation dives" all the time. So now im thinking ill be stuck with a poor buddy. then rolls in one last truck before the crew shows and he gets out and starts unpacking his kit. so I look over what I see him carrying and he has his own everything. perfect! I have a competent looking dive buddy. The crew shows with the dive shop truck and the other guys start picking out there gear and we all load up the boat. My self and the other guy that had his own gear start talking and agree to buddy and make a dive plan. Now we get to the first site and and hit the water we start to descend and he cant equalize so we go up we try again this time we get down. we hit 50 feet and give the ok and start the dive. He takes off like a bullet swimming along as fast as he can so I do my best to keep up and be a good buddy because that was the plan on the boat was to dive as buddies. So I spent my whole dive trying to keep up with this guy rather then enjoying my dive. Now we get back on the boat and gear down. I say to him what is the rush ? he says oh that's just how I dive... So now its time to do the 2nd dive I say before we splash lets take it slow. he says ok. We go down again and next thing I know hes on speed swim opposite the way we agreed on and not looking back so I fallowed him to make sure he made it back to the boat as a good buddy should when I got ahold of him he gave me the ok sign and we dove together for about 15 min when I looked over at him and noticed his gauge read 500 psi... now I have this A hole that has not only ruined my dive but is now at 70 feet with 500psi because he wasted all his gas speed swimming! I grabbed his spg. showed him his pressure "his eyes got big as dollar coins" and signaled up, we did a slow accent and did a stop at 15 feet for 3 min and when we got back on board he had about 80 psi left. Now I am mad. almost throw him back in the water mad. but I kept my cool told him he is lucky to be alive and would never be a buddy of mine again. for what its worth I had 1000 left in the tank on the 2nd dive and 1320 on the first. his first dive he had 300 when we got back on the boat and I told him then the dive op wants no less then 500 so be carful to watch your gas. it just goes to show that looking like a diver don't make u one or at least not a good one. its worth noting this guy said he had roughly 80 dives before we paired up....Anyone else feel safer alone. Oh I almost forgot the other guys that were on the boat said they all had a great dive TOGETHER rented gear or not I would have likely been better off with anyone of them.
