Was it the Right thing to do?

[Degenerate]

This part is a little more concerning. Your NDL/deco time is your responsibility. If you weren't diving a computer, you should have done some table planning ahead of the dive. This should have been covered in your OW course.

Not sure how table planning would help unless you have a way to measure time and depth...

 

[scrane]

This part is a little more concerning. Your NDL/deco time is your responsibility. If you weren't diving a computer, you should have done some table planning ahead of the dive. This should have been covered in your OW course.

Unfortunately, a lot of people don't do this and just follow the DM, which is never a good idea. I got into a debate in a FB group recently where a new person was asking about acquiring a dive computer and one of these resort divers came in and said that she had 100+ dives, never carries a computer, and only blindly follows the DM and that's what the new diver should have done. No no no no no.

It used to be, when computers were not so commonplace, that the DM would instruct everyone without a computer to stay at his level or above. I see no problem with this procedure.

 

[Altamira]

Welcome to the real world of diving with insta-buddies. Unfortunately, what you experienced is not at all uncommon when diving as a singleton from a dive boat. I have been in your situation on more than one occasion, and did essentially what you did. When my dive buddy takes off on his/her own without notifying me or waiting for me in the descent, they have broken the buddy contract as far as I am concerned, and is no longer my responsibility. I view it differently if the vis is crappy and my buddy is trying to be a good buddy, but you get separated anyway. In that case, I will do as trained, surface after a minute, and try my best to locate the buddy. Two years ago, on two typical drift dives in Coz, my insta-buddy who had two cameras (oh yeah!), took off in every direction chasing whatever wildlife that caught his attention. I kept an eye on him but only chased after him when he tried to join up with another dive group. On the SI, I told him and the DM that if he took off again, he was on his own. Unfortunately, it was like talking to a piece of coral because he continued to chase after whatever caught his attention. I consider myself to be a self sufficient diver so I just stayed with the group and enjoyed the dive. Luckily my insta-buddy did not have any problems that required assistance because he wasn't close enough to anyone to get help. If this had been a multi-day dive trip, I would have told the insta-buddy to find someone else to dive with for the remaining dives. Luckily, I just had to deal with this dumb ass for two dives.

 

[johndiver999]

It used to be, when computers were not so commonplace, that the DM would instruct everyone without a computer to stay at his level or above. I see no problem with this procedure.

It is a plan if all goes as plan, but what if the DM has to chase an errant diver to 150 on the wall? Does everyone else with no timer or depth gauge just follow the leader?

 

[mi000ke]

This sounds similar to most dives and dive ops I experience here on Grand Cayman. I also dive mostly as a single. We always have the option of diving on our own with our own buddy, e.g., if we are diving with friends, but also are always given the option to follow the guide (which most do). The biggest difference from your experience is that I have never been in a group with any dive op where there were more than 8 divers per guide and almost always less. Often we'll get two DMs for the group.

About half the dive ops I go with will buddy us up before the dive and we're supposed to stay buddied up for the entire dive. The other half will just have us follow the leader as a group and when we get back to the boat will buddy us up based on amount of air left and we just cruise around the boat until low on air. Most of the instabuddies I've had assigned before the dive have been pretty clueless in my experience (they usually just take off on their own), so like you I just try to stay somewhat close to the DM and the group - and as the DMs usually turn around to check on us every minute or so, it's pretty safe. (I used to dive with a pony tank just to be safe, but gave that up a couple of years ago.) When I get buddied up under the boat with that style operator, I always indicate to my buddy for them to lead and that I will follow them. At least I know we'll be in close contact. And being under/close to the boat in relatively shallow water is pretty low risk, so I'm way less concerned about who I'm diving with.

I think you handled the depth gauge issue well. As long as you were on a guided dive you were not going to go too deep, and assuming you were not on nitrox, the depth is not that big a deal. As long as your computer was working and you could track NDL you were ok. I would, however, have had a nice conversation with my instabuddy during the SI if we were to do the second dive together, to make sure you were both on the same page. I do realize, however, again given my experience, that if they were that irresponsible to you the first dive, that conversation might not make a difference.

One thing I have found that works well sometimes is if I am diving with an "instabuddy operator" I will look for other singles on the boat and engage them in conversation to try to suss out if they would be a good buddy. If so, I'll ask if they want to buddy up and will then make sure we're on the same page as to how it will work. Interestingly, I had this situation on a dive last week and had one of the best buddies ever. We both immediately agreed to buddy up for the second dive.

 

[saxman242]

It used to be, when computers were not so commonplace, that the DM would instruct everyone without a computer to stay at his level or above. I see no problem with this procedure.

Would you recommend diving one computer, coming up for your surface interval and changing to a new computer for your second dive?

 

[scrane]

It is a plan if all goes as plan, but what if the DM has to chase an errant diver to 150 on the wall? Does everyone else with no timer or depth gauge just follow the leader?

No.

 

[Calmseas]

It is a plan if all goes as plan, but what if the DM has to chase an errant diver to 150 on the wall? Does everyone else with no timer or depth gauge just follow the leader?

That is a good point. My depth control and staying at the same depth leaves much to be desired so there was a point after I came out of the swim through I was close to the DM And we were at 102 feet. A few minutes later, for no reason I know of, I had floated up the side of the wall to about 80 feet and the DM and a few other divers were still leveling along at 102. The DM flipped over on his back and asked if I was OK and I shot back that yes I was. I was happy as a clam checking things out but it may have looked like I was up and down in the water column quite a bit...I was. I will get the hang of it at some point.

 

[Calmseas]

Would you recommend diving one computer, coming up for your surface interval and changing to a new computer for your second dive?

The computer he handed me at depth was also in meters and not feet as the DM was from spain so I really had not clue unless I wanted to do some math in my head.

 

[saxman242]

The computer he handed me at depth was also in meters and not feet as the DM was from spain so I really had not clue unless I wanted to do some math in my head.

The point I was trying to make was more with treating the DM as your computer. No one would ever recommend switching computers between two dives in the same day, yet it is very common in these follow the DM guided dives to have a different DM on the 2nd dive of the day in my experience.