Diving in threes

[newdiverAZ]

Hi i just read a post that mentioned diving in threes. I'm new to this and not certified yet, but curious if this is an acceptable practice. I ask because I'll be taking my wife and 11 yr old nephew diving and wondered what you would do in emergency situations. Is it better to have my nephew dive with a divemaster each dive?? would appreciate any insight into this




Thanx
Brian

 

[Rick Murchison]

You really pose two separate questions here. Diving in threesomes is perfectly fine, so long as you brief who's expected to do what in both normal and emergency situations.
Now, the 11 year old is a different matter entirely. As a child, an 11 year old is not a full fledged buddy - diving with one is essentially diving not only solo, but with added responsibility to ensure childish exuberance doesn't override sound and safe diving practices. Many children are excellent divers - but they are still children and subject to childish inattention to detail.
When I train children with parents, I train the child to be a buddy, but train the parent to remain a parent. Under the agency I use (SSI) an 11 year old must dive with a certified parent, legal guardian or dive leader (DM, DiveCon, Assistant Instructor or Instructor), and is restricted to a maximum depth of 40 feet. Unless you are the legal guardian of your nephew, you'd have to wait 'til he's 12 to dive with him under SSI standards.
Rick

 

[newdiverAZ]

so are you saying Rick that it would be good to have hime dive with a divemsaster together with us for a while?

 

[Rick Murchison]

newdiverAZ once bubbled...
so are you saying Rick that it would be good to have hime dive with a divemsaster together with us for a while?

Sounds good to me...
Rick

 

[redseal]

My twin 12 yo daughters and I got our basic OW back in June and have basically become a buddy team/threesome when all of us can make it to our local quarry to dive. First of all, PADI requires a parent or other certified adult diver to be with junior divers. Second, it makes all three of us feel more comfortable to dive as a team when all three of us are together for the day. Third, we've worked on (and continue to work on) alternate air source breathing, buddy breathing, navigation techniques (my oldest watches depth, I chart the course OR vice versa). And as we've gotten more comfortable as a team, we've noticed that we've been gradually able to drop some weight from our weight-belts and fine-tune our buoyancy

Now we're working on advanced skills: PPB, underwater navigation, and SAR, and quite honestly the girls are doing extremely well with those. They want to wait to do their night and deep dives until we're somewhere warm and more clear than our local quarry (Can't say I blame them!) But I'm gonna do AOW locally, just because that's where I dive most, and I know the instructors and the location better.

You'll probably find that your 11 yo wants to stay close by you and your wife; that's appropriate and IMO should be encouraged. That way you can all keep an eye on each other and not have the anxiety of wondering who's where and what's going on. If a DM is available, take advantage of his/her experience and supervision, but get comfortable together.

Happy diving!!

 

[newdiverAZ]

Thanx for the great information. My biggest concern was my wif and I being new divers also and would like to have someone around him that knows more of what to do in an emergency situation than they teach in the PADI O/W course. I plan to take rescue diver as soon as possible after my certification. I also feel that this should be a mandatory part of dive instruction everyone should know that kind of stuff. Thanx again Rick and Redseal.



Brian

 

[redseal]

Brian, I'm just passing on advice from my dive instructor/LDS owner: get AT LEAST 30-50 dives under your belt before you consider rescue diving. That way you'll get more out of it. "You don't know what you don't know until you know more" is basically what he and a couple of his instructors have told me.

By all mean, tho', dive and dive and dive, and consider some of the advanced dives, like deep, navigation, PPB, SAR, night, wreck, drift, etc. All of these will present different situations and opportunities to develop and practice various skills. Then, when you have a diverse background of dives, rescue diving could be approached. Personally, I'm hoping to take rescue diving for my own personal satisfaction/training next summer, after having at least a year of diving experiences.

Just my $0.02, but maybe some of the more experienced (Regulators?) have some words of advice to share as well.

 

[devilfish]

redseal once bubbled...
Brian, I'm just passing on advice from my dive instructor/LDS owner: get AT LEAST 30-50 dives under your belt before you consider rescue diving. That way you'll get more out of it. "You don't know what you don't know until you know more" is basically what he and a couple of his instructors have told me.

By all mean, tho', dive and dive and dive, and consider some of the advanced dives, like deep, navigation, PPB, SAR, night, wreck, drift, etc. All of these will present different situations and opportunities to develop and practice various skills. Then, when you have a diverse background of dives, rescue diving could be approached. Personally, I'm hoping to take rescue diving for my own personal satisfaction/training next summer, after having at least a year of diving experiences.

Just my $0.02, but maybe some of the more experienced (Regulators?) have some words of advice to share as well.

So you are suggesting to dive totally unprepared for an emergency for 30-50 dives and hope nothing happens, then take a rescue course just in case an emergency happens on the 51st dive? Lest's hope nothing happens on the 49th dive. Interesting concept.

 

[jepuskar]

Like most other activities involving other humans..nothing wrong with a 3 way.

 

[art.chick]

I dive in 3-somes very often, today even! Yes, new friend in AZ, it would be good if basic rescue was stil taught in OW classes. That's one we need to take up with the cert. agencies. It seems that they are under the impression that we just want it fast & dirty.

I beleive that the reason it was suggested to wait & get some dives in is that rescue is a demanding class. We all know that task loading is overwhelming & dangerous. How's this for an alternative: Instead of being "totally unprepared" for emergencies, try diving as a threesome with someone who has a rescue card already. Ask him to lead the briefing with u & your wife. You both will learn about dive planning & see what to look forward to in the rescue class. He may even have fun practicing towing you in a mock emergency just to keep his own skills sharp (my buddies & I do that while the other fiddles with a camera or somesuch.)

I hope your young nephew gets lots of encouragement to stay in the water. I know lots of oceangoing teens, & it's true that you cannot smoke crack, crash cars, or have unsafe sex underwater. they are a good group of kids & he'll do well to be among them.