I saw a quote in another thread that said "you shouldn't be holding hands underwater at this point (after your OW class). Rather than hi-jack that thread, I thought I'd take a poll here. First, I'll make you suffer my thoughts:
My wife and I are both pretty experienced divers. After diving together for 14 years, we still somehow even like each other. When we're underwater on a leisure dive, we usually hold hands. We hold hands when we walk down the street and when we walk up the stairs after breakfast. It's natural for us to do so underwater too.
Here are some of the other benefits we get: We are never searching for our buddy to say "I'm low on air" or "look at that!". The one of us who is 'leading' the dive just has to gently turn the hand to change both diver's direction. Depending on how hard the squeeze is, tells me how important something is. No time is wasted - the moment that hawkeye sees something, I do too.
One of the reasons that I bring this up is that I mentioned this to an instructor recently. Although he has never been diving with either of us - but he knows our experience - he said "obviously one or both of you are still pretty insecure underwater and you might want to take a course to get over the problem". We were polite and only laughed when he was out of ear-shot but what do you think?
My wife and I are both pretty experienced divers. After diving together for 14 years, we still somehow even like each other. When we're underwater on a leisure dive, we usually hold hands. We hold hands when we walk down the street and when we walk up the stairs after breakfast. It's natural for us to do so underwater too.
Here are some of the other benefits we get: We are never searching for our buddy to say "I'm low on air" or "look at that!". The one of us who is 'leading' the dive just has to gently turn the hand to change both diver's direction. Depending on how hard the squeeze is, tells me how important something is. No time is wasted - the moment that hawkeye sees something, I do too.
One of the reasons that I bring this up is that I mentioned this to an instructor recently. Although he has never been diving with either of us - but he knows our experience - he said "obviously one or both of you are still pretty insecure underwater and you might want to take a course to get over the problem". We were polite and only laughed when he was out of ear-shot but what do you think?