Fresh diver OOA

[UnderSeaBumbleBee]

If your buddy would have had a hose blow, free flow, got entangled, etc, he put you both in a position where you did not have the resources to solve the problem. Who knows what lessons this person might want to teach you down the road. And next time it might not work out so well.

 

[Bombay High]

What Dumpster Diver said.

Get a new buddy and a new instructor.

He was your buddy on that dive and should have behaved as such.

He deliberately endangered your life.

 

[Bob DBF]

Now we all know what a "trust me" dive is and why it is not encouraged.

Jim is right on point about the quality of training. Training says to stay within the confines of your training and experience but when diving outside the cove you were trained in you have to know what questions to ask and how important the answers are, a good instructor should get you ready to make those independant dives with your buddy. The "more information on how to be a good diver will be in your next class" will not make you a good diver, it will make you dependant on instructors and other authority figures to plan your dives and keep you safe. Look where that can get you.

Over the years I developed a way to learn from my "interesting" experiences.
First I say to myself "It's all my fault".
Next I go over the entire event and figure out what I could do differently for a better dive.
I do not blame others for a dive I agreed to do, however I have used a hand signal when asked to dive with some of them again.
Then I move on, trying not to replicate stupidity.



Bob
---------------------------------------
A man's got to know his limitations.
Harry Callahan

I may be old, but I’m not dead yet.

 

[Imla]

I have one question though...
You call this a "trust me dive". And I disagree to the term for this dive. THe one thing I feel was lacking in this dive, was the information when I spesifically asked if there were any other considerations needed to be taken on this dive. Considering both the instructor and DM had dove there before, I feel that the information about getting back to point zero was prudent. As I was in the belief that I could safely surface at any time, I was under the impression that I had good control of the dive.

Can you really not trust the briefing of an instructor and a DM on a new divesite? And how can you dive new sites if you can never trust information from your fellow divers?

Now, I DO take responsibility for this event, and I will take every precaution to make it not happen again, to either me or my buddy.

 

[TSandM]

I don't think it's fair to call this a "trust me" dive. What it was was an inadequately briefed dive, but you didn't know what questions to ask. I have to say that it would not occur to me to ask of someone doing a local dive briefing, whether it was safe to surface at any point during the dive. That's something that's pretty much assumed, unless someone specifically says otherwise, because it's at the heart of the definition of recreational diving.

I HAVE done dives in places where there was shipping traffic, or at the mouth of a marina, where part of the briefing was to be aware that that hazard existed, and the importance of getting back to the boat before surfacing, if at all possible. Omitting this type of information from a dive briefing would be, to me, a major lapse.

 

[Imla]

I don't think it's fair to call this a "trust me" dive. What it was was an inadequately briefed dive, but you didn't know what questions to ask. I have to say that it would not occur to me to ask of someone doing a local dive briefing, whether it was safe to surface at any point during the dive. That's something that's pretty much assumed, unless someone specifically says otherwise, because it's at the heart of the definition of recreational diving.

I HAVE done dives in places where there was shipping traffic, or at the mouth of a marina, where part of the briefing was to be aware that that hazard existed, and the importance of getting back to the boat before surfacing, if at all possible. Omitting this type of information from a dive briefing would be, to me, a major lapse.

Thank you for the input. This has been my opinion of the instigating event for the dive. However, that does not relieve me of my own responsibility to Dive my own dive.

 

[k ellis]

that does not relieve me of my own responsibility to Dive my own dive.

You sound like your already off to a great start with a great life long adventure in diving Just remember always while you have a responsibility to dive your own dive its always a blast to have a good lifelong dive partner you can count on and trust. I hope youll be on Scubaboard for many years to come as dedicated divers are always appreciated in the forums and welcome to debate topics and in time help new divers learn from experiences you will have aquired!

 

[Imla]

Well.. I got "sold" on my very first pooldive... I live in Norway, and had my first dive on 23July. I work in emergency dipatch, and anything that can make you "forget" all about the massacre just by getting your mask under water has to be pretty fantastic.
My first dive ever was in 3feet viz water with a fantastic young instructor (Not the one in this incident). Because of the poor viz he did the dives one on one. Amazing guy! I saw a lobster that day, and was hooked...
so... i just need to unwrinkle this incident, and learn a lot more!

 

[divin'dog]

Keep learning from your experiences. However, I think that the "lesson" your buddy was trying to teach you at the time was unwarranted. You're a new diver and I would have been more careful taking you out to a place that (I agree w/TSandM) has a virtual overhead... AND a current to take into consideration. If you had to get to the surface with one or more boats going by, what would you do? Very hard to know where the boat is coming from when underwater... and then all of a sudden they could be right on top of you... and for the most part, they're not looking for divers in the water. Also, a current can compound the problem of avoiding a boat or coming up where it is safe. You only had 14 dives and that should have been seriously taken into consideration. He should have known better. To me, that was poor dive briefing on top of an ill-conceived dive lesson that was created on the spot with no foresight to what could have happened if "all the wheels" fell off. I think it was irresponsible of your buddy and was a potentially dangerous way to teach you a lesson. Others said to pee in his car, but you should have kicked him in the groin after the dive and said "Ok... here's your lesson!"

 

[Hatul]

Reminds me of a book I read (The Last Attempt) about the death of Audrey Mestre, a champion freediver in her 20's, who fell for and married an idiot named Pipin. He purposely left her pony bottle empty so she would be unable to ascend from a record deep dive, with the intention of doing a rescue and saving her. Needless to say the rescue failed and she died