I love that example, because it's a perfect place to have the conversation.
I'd be royally ticked at a teammate who did that. That's NOT what diving as a team is about! So many people seem to think that team diving means you take a lax approach to things and just hope your team is there to bail your butt out of the trouble you get yourself into. NOTHING could be further from the truth. Team diving is about meticulous planning and being absolutely sure your own skills are up to par -- and that would include solving a freeflowing regulator within a few seconds, and without any assistance from anyone. It is extremely easy to shut a post, and if it isn't, you work at it until it is. Had I not been able to shut a post promptly and easily, I would never have been passed forward to do ANY technical instruction with GUE.
Once the post is closed, one can try reopening it and playing with the reg, or the team can simply decide to exit. If the diver with the freeflow somehow ended up losing a significant amount of gas (i.e. the problem occurred at max pen) then he's sandwiched on exit, so that if, in the end, he needs some gas from a buddy to get to his deco gas or to the surface, it is absolutely trivial for someone to provide that. And since the closer you get to the exit, the bigger everybody's reserves loom, it's not an issue.
Maybe this is the difference between deep wreck penetrations and cave diving. I don't know, but I don't think so.
I think the primary disconnect is between people who dive with a random assortment of buddies, and people who do their edge-of-their-personal-envelope dives as a team. I don't blame John Chatterton for being bemused by a team having to go over gas-sharing protocols prior to a very deep or penetration dive. I wouldn't do those dives with people with whom it was necessary to review signals or emergency procedures. When I do tech dives, I do them with people who already know exactly what we are going to do and how we are going to do it, and how we are going to deal with any of the common issues that might occur. If we don't have that much in common, we don't do any dive where I think the risk is very high. I would not have done Mr. Chatterton's Doria dives at all; I don't think that way. I don't dive solo, even if it's in the presence of other people, except on dives I WOULD do solo if there were no one else there . . . and those are pretty simple dives.
We talk past one another, because we live in different worlds and we see everything through completely different lenses. If you hand-pick your companions for strong skills, solid planning, conservative attitudes, and a spirit of teamwork, it's DIFFERENT from trying to do big dives with people from widely varying backgrounds and with whom you don't have enough experience to predict what they are going to do. I still don't think I could push someone out of gas away from me and tell them to breathe their deco gas and tox. It's not in me, which is why I don't put myself in any position where I might ever have to do it.
I'd be royally ticked at a teammate who did that. That's NOT what diving as a team is about! So many people seem to think that team diving means you take a lax approach to things and just hope your team is there to bail your butt out of the trouble you get yourself into. NOTHING could be further from the truth. Team diving is about meticulous planning and being absolutely sure your own skills are up to par -- and that would include solving a freeflowing regulator within a few seconds, and without any assistance from anyone. It is extremely easy to shut a post, and if it isn't, you work at it until it is. Had I not been able to shut a post promptly and easily, I would never have been passed forward to do ANY technical instruction with GUE.
Once the post is closed, one can try reopening it and playing with the reg, or the team can simply decide to exit. If the diver with the freeflow somehow ended up losing a significant amount of gas (i.e. the problem occurred at max pen) then he's sandwiched on exit, so that if, in the end, he needs some gas from a buddy to get to his deco gas or to the surface, it is absolutely trivial for someone to provide that. And since the closer you get to the exit, the bigger everybody's reserves loom, it's not an issue.
Maybe this is the difference between deep wreck penetrations and cave diving. I don't know, but I don't think so.
I think the primary disconnect is between people who dive with a random assortment of buddies, and people who do their edge-of-their-personal-envelope dives as a team. I don't blame John Chatterton for being bemused by a team having to go over gas-sharing protocols prior to a very deep or penetration dive. I wouldn't do those dives with people with whom it was necessary to review signals or emergency procedures. When I do tech dives, I do them with people who already know exactly what we are going to do and how we are going to do it, and how we are going to deal with any of the common issues that might occur. If we don't have that much in common, we don't do any dive where I think the risk is very high. I would not have done Mr. Chatterton's Doria dives at all; I don't think that way. I don't dive solo, even if it's in the presence of other people, except on dives I WOULD do solo if there were no one else there . . . and those are pretty simple dives.
We talk past one another, because we live in different worlds and we see everything through completely different lenses. If you hand-pick your companions for strong skills, solid planning, conservative attitudes, and a spirit of teamwork, it's DIFFERENT from trying to do big dives with people from widely varying backgrounds and with whom you don't have enough experience to predict what they are going to do. I still don't think I could push someone out of gas away from me and tell them to breathe their deco gas and tox. It's not in me, which is why I don't put myself in any position where I might ever have to do it.