Fascinating thread.
I have 4 situations I dive in:
First, in a pool or quarry working with student. In OW it can be very stressful, but I enjoy it for what it is, and the reason I became a DiveCon.
Second, I often lead short trips for the shop, where many of the new divers get their experience. I usually plan fairly shallow, easy dives, especially in our quarries (low to very low viz and cold), and really work at pairing appropriate divers up. I usually take the least experienced diver as my buddy. In this situation, how are they suppose to get better unless they dive more? And that is the service we are providing. Often we are lucky enough to have several DiveCons, so it can be a learning experience. As mentioned before, we talk WITH the new divers, not at them, and engage them in conversations about the dive planning and later about how the dives went. Hopefully we are presenting them with good examples.
Third, I often dive in the local ocean with an group from our shop, instructors and fellow Dive Cons (often former ly associated with the shop), and the very active divers associated with the shop. They are usually deep dives, and end up for the most part being solo dives, as we all carry appropriate equipment to solo dive and some of us photograph, and many spearfish.
Fourth, I frequently travel around with my non-diving wife, so I always am with an Insta-buddy. I have been quite lucky to date, the most common problem is I come up with half a tank. The end of last month I was in Key Largo for a week diving the wrecks. The first 4 days I dove with extremely skilled and experienced divers, and the dives were fabulous and easy for both of us, even with strong current and mediocre visibility. The 5th day I dove with a gentleman who was less experienced, but a good attentive buddy. The biggest issue was when we were on a 45 foot reef, he had a major series of throw up attacks. While he kept looking at the surface, he let me guide and calm him, and after several minutes of this activity, followed my instructions to fully clear out his regulator then clear his mask. At 50 dives, I found he must have had very good training not to panic. We headed back to the boat for a non-eventful conclusion to the dive.
Now the 6th day. I ended up with a "dive master" (not affiliated with the boat) with 150 dives, and he fiddled with his equipment and talked non-stop. When I finally butted into his soliloquy, I talked with him about the various dive planning issues. We were headed to 90-110 feet in strong current, I was on Nitrox, and he was on air. I mentioned that I would follow his lead on turning back since his NDL minutes would be shorter than mine at depth. He corrected me and mentioned we could be on the wreck 45 minutes. Very interesting... I pulled up my computer and showed him at those depths at EAN30 I would only have 29 minutes of NDL time. He on air would be considerably shorter. He debated this with me, in a friendly manner, and in the end, he hesitantly agreed. Well, the dive went okay, but I ended up constantly checking his air and NDLs, and by constantly questioning him on each, determined it was time to turn the dive, which did bring us up considerably faster than 45 minutes. He was like a puppy on the dive, letting me lead and following me tight, so it ended up a fairly satisfactory dive (as opposed to chasing him around.
I have had great dives with people with 20 dives and lousy dives with people with 200 dives. Guess my longwinded discussion is watch your buddy set up, have a good conversation with them studying their mannerisms, throughly discuss the dive plan with them and don't take any claims of experience and/or achievement as set in stone.
Terry
