Underwater Navigation

[MXGratefulDiver]

My friend Bob Bailey has an absolutely diabolical dive in his AOW class. As a buddy pair, you descend to around 20 feet, so that you cannot see either the surface or the bottom. You then swim a preset, polygonal path with sides of varying lengths, with one person watching heading, and the other watching depth and time. You cannot take a bearing on a rock, because there are no rocks, and there are no visual references for depth or attitude, either.

When I tried to do this dive, it was a disaster. I ended up completely head down in the water at one point (wondering why my much more experienced buddy was vertical, when in fact he was horizontal and fine, and it was I who was out of kilter) and couldn't maintain depth when it was my job to do that, because I had to watch my gauge every minute, and couldn't look at my buddy without rising or sinking.

So yes, I'm one who had problems with buddy contact during a nav dive! Thank goodness, the average nav dive is much easier, and keeps you in visual contact with the bottom or with structure, where the compass is not the only resource.

Well, to be fair, the purpose of the dive is to train divers how to maintain buoyancy control and buddy communication while achieving a goal ... navigation just happens to be a convenient goal to choose to teach these skills. It's well beyond what most folks will get exposed to in their AOW class ... but then again, I'm trying to train people how to stay together and work together to resolve issues in what can often be very challenging conditions.

To address the OP's question ... positioning and communication are key to keeping together when one or both of you are navigating.

If one of you is doing the compass work, the other needs to assume the role of "communicator". It's your job to maintain yourself in a position where your buddy can see you with little to no effort. Lead-follow doesn't work ... particularly if the follower insists on being "above" the leader. You need to be side-by-side ... no more than about four or five feet apart. If your buddy is concentrating on the compass, it is you who should be keeping track of what else is involved ... depth and travel time, for example ... or fin kicks if on a class dive where such measures are being used. You need to have a way to get your buddy's attention when it's time to change heading, or if something doesn't seem right ... for example, if you think you're straying off course, and you want a "sanity check". You do this by swimming in a position where they can see your hands if you reach out (toward their mask, where you can get their attention).

Also, swim slowly and do things methodically. People who rush through the exercises tend to "forget" things. People who swim fast don't take long at all to swim off course, or to get separated. It's not a race ... be methodical. Maintain a buddy position that allows both of you to see the other without having to constantly turn around or move your body off the plane of the course you're trying to take.

If you can manage it, it also helps to draw a little "map" in your head of about where you are at any given time relative to where you started. In the navigation course I teach, I use a half-dozen flags to define a course. Each flag has a heading on it to the next flag. They're arranged in an irregular pattern ... similar in some respects to how people typically will dive. The final flag simply says "Home" ... telling the students that they now need to find their way back to the starting buoy. If they noted their initial starting depth, and kept a mental note of where they are relative to their starting position, it's a simple matter to swim to that depth and then turn left or right ... maintaining that depth ... until they see the buoy.

Good underwater navigation is all about awareness ... be methodical and keep track of where you've been, and you should always know how to find your way back. Stay within sight of your buddy and it's almost impossible to "lose" them ... even in poor visibility.

That's really all there is to it.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Saudi-Diver]

When I did my Nav dive I had been warned by my Instructor he expected great things of me as I climb mountains, so he gave myself and my buddy a route that was pure compass work and we had to do our depth keeping with depth gauge and feeling the pressure changes on our ears, we deserved the route we got between 3 Mooring buoys because we had been cocky and over confident during training and needed bringing down a peg or two.

We allocated who was going to look after depth and count the fin kicks and who was going to do the lateral Nav. It worked very well, so the key is communication before you even splash in at the start of the dive. I have never ever done real world navigation as hard. You usually have a contour or a lateral feature to follow.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Oh ... I also wanted to address this comment ...

Right or wrong, after my buddy and I flunked the first skill, I pretty much ignored him while I was doing the skills, relying on the instructor to keep an eye on both of us.

Well, first off, any time you ignore your dive buddy, you are acknowledging that you don't HAVE a dive buddy ... there's just someone near you who you are trying to ignore.

I would caution against this, unless you are intentionally trying to solo dive ... because you are training yourself how to be a bad dive buddy. And relying on the instructor to keep an eye on you is training yourself how to be dependent on another diver. Those are both very bad habits, and should be avoided from the get-go.

Instead of ignoring your buddy, make an agreement before the dive about what each of you should be doing. Diving with someone else is easier if you both know what to expect of the other, and you both decide to stick to the behavior you agreed to.

Defining "roles" helps quite a bit.

Chances are your buddy and you had issues because you were not clear on what to expect of each other. Fix that problem first ... then life as a dive buddy gets much easier.

And never rely on an instructor to "take care of you" ... because once you're done with class, the instructor won't be there. Only you are responsible for your safety. Class is the optimal time to practice taking charge of your dive. I often tell my students to "Pretend I'm not here. My job is to evaluate what you're doing ... your job is to execute the skills as a team."

Whenever you dive with a buddy, it's always helpful to start by thinking of the dive as "our" dive ... not as "my" dive. Everything gets easier when you start with that frame of mind ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[windapp]

I should clarify that by ignore, I mean I didn't go in the wrong direction when he went in the wrong direction. I did look out for him on the way, and at the turn points, and re-established proper contact at the end of each skill.

I really didn't feel very good about the whole thing, but I had spent a lot of money on the course and I wanted to finish it.

 

[Teamcasa]

Ahh, the Nav class. First let me state that I think the PADI AOW navigation class is a joke. Go out and swim a square and hopefully, you end up where you started.

If it was up to me, and I recognize that it's not, a navigation cert would involve having to actually navigate. I would make it a two part class with the first being a mixed direction course with at least 6 way points and then a navigation without a compass course where observation and notes would replace a compass and kick cycles.

As to the OP, I would recommend that one buddy handle the direction and the other pay attention to the compass diver, timing and communication. Switch roles and courses for the next diver.

 

[flw]

I'm not sure how you could organise a dive with 2 trainees both navigating together and maintain proper control - the chances of at least one going astray are very high - it's not a long skill to complete, just have one, then the other complete the same or similar courses

 

[flw]

Ahh, the Nav class. First let me state that I think the PADI AOW navigation class is a joke. Go out and swim a square and hopefully, you end up where you started.

If it was up to me, and I recognize that it's not, a navigation cert would involve having to actually navigate. I would make it a two part class with the first being a mixed direction course with at least 6 way points and then a navigation without a compass course where observation and notes would replace a compass and kick cycles.

As to the OP, I would recommend that one buddy handle the direction and the other pay attention to the compass diver, timing and communication. Switch roles and courses for the next diver.

I dunno, I rarely use a compass on most dives, unless it's a direct in and oout to the reef and back with pilotage in the middle. Wrecks, once you've some sort of understanding of them are far easier to navigate using pilotage anyway

 

[Jim Lapenta]

That is a poor reason to to finish a course. Had you done this with your buddy in my AOW class you both would have failed the class. If you had to re-establish contact at the end of each skill you did not have proper contact. I have two students coming over in about an hour and half to do the second half of classroom for their UW Nav course. This will involve some work out in the yard with compass and reels. The first thing they will learn is how to communicate and decide who will do what. Following their UW Nav they will do AOW in a few weeks.

In my AOW course nothing is more important once they are in the water than proper buddy position and procedures. Every dive requires it. Lose contact once and we redo the dive. Lose it twice and course is over. If you did not stay with your buddy when he went in the wrong direction you went in the wrong direction. The instructor should have had you both communicating more effectively.

Navigation in the beginning when divers are starting to develop the skill is a team effort. It is possible to develop the skill on your own once you've been shown how but in my case doing that took about 40 dives doing nothing but working on Nav skills for much of the dive. In all fairness though I have seen other OW and AOW classes where the instructor did not bother to assign duties or have the buddies assign duties to each other. The result was similar to pulling the trigger on a sawed off shotgun. I;d be willing to bet few learned much other than to rely on the the instructor to lead them around and tell them where to be.

That you don't feel good about it is a good sign. It was screwed up and you know it. Now what are you going to do to see that it does not happen again?

 

[Teamcasa]

I dunno, I rarely use a compass on most dives, unless it's a direct in and oout to the reef and back with pilotage in the middle. Wrecks, once you've some sort of understanding of them are far easier to navigate using pilotage anyway

I agree, piloltage (navigate by observation) is probably the most common method I use but so many just never get the hang of it.

 

[haumana ronin]

If the Nav AOW dive is not that useful, will the full class be much better? Will it turn me into an UW orienteering expert? Some sort of a dive boy scout? Or maybe an UW IFR(in pilot-speak) diver? I assume there is no "under the hood" time offered if my local area has good visibility most of the time.

:zen: