to buddy check or not

[dkerr]

Lately I have been doing a lot of diving with recently certified divers, This has made me a lot more diligent about doing a thourough buddy check. I spend usually .5-1 hour explaining the dive site, communication, and equipment (theirs and mine). I admit that I was pretty lax about this before, but now it is necessary and part of my routine again.

 

[diver30]

Mostly i just have a quick look to check everything looks ok on the other diver. but if ive never dived with them i do have a good check or if i havent dived with him or her for a while ill also have a good check.



diver30

 

[Rockhound]

on my last trip, with a "boat buddy" I got on the ride out, I checked his gear thoroughly.

Good thing, too. He had forgotten to bring weights or weightbelt (I had an extra belt and we found enough weight on the boat). He didn't have a timing device of any type. He had a brand new BC (just rigged that morning), which he did not know how to use.

Prior to jumping in the water, I made sure his air was on (it was not) and that he had a good fill. I watched, he never even looked at his pressure gauge, and didn't see me check it.

I then showed him where my weight release was located and the positioning of my octo. "Why'd you show me that?", he asked. I explained, and he seemed satisfied.

I do this with any new buddy, although I don't follow a formal procedure or checklist. I may just look and see "how they are set up", or I may ask them if I have a question about what they are doing or a preference that they might have......

With my "reggler" buddies, I usually just ask, "You get a good fill? Didja fergit anythang? Let's go!"

Btw, after 25 years, I have missed things I shoud have done that a good buddy check would have caught. I once made an ascent to 70' in a wicked current while thinking, "Man, this is tough", only to realize I had forgotten my weightbelt. I have also back rolled off a boat in heavy seas without my fins (hey, the spearfishing was hot that day! We were excited..."

Anyway, all of us make mistakes, and buddy checks can at least mitigate some of them......

 

[JamesK]

I dive with the esact same people all of the time. We are also configured identical. We do however go over an in water check of all of our gear to make sure it is functioning properly, and do air share drills before the dive. This is on cave dives only though. For open water dives, we really don't do anything except to check each others air. We each triple check al of our gear, so we know we have what we need.

 

[Narced]

I always dive with the same buddy (wife), I always insist we do air checks and make sure our regs breath with no fluctuation on the spg and also that our bc's seem to be holding air.

beyand that I do not check anything, she know my equipment and I know hers, if anything changes we both are aware of it.

 

[sheck33]

I must say the replies so far are pretty interesting. First i must say that i think i myself should be more strict in doing a check, having said that i have to say i did expect an overwhelming 'yes i do all the time' response. But then maybe a very strict check is overkill when you dive with the same buddy over and over in 40ft of water......................you know, somehow writing that sentence doesnt feel good. Strict buddychecks should be done on every dive all the time no matter who you dive with........yes, that sounds a lot better. I should stick to it too

:bonk:

 

[Former FLL Now MSP Diver]

Originally posted by Kaffphine
How about adding one for "almost never"?

The handful of people I dive with regually we do a "you ready? yea" buddy check.

I had started to get this lax too with a "regular" buddy, but have recently gone back to doing a full check of everything after she jumped off the boat, and couldn't figure out why she couldn't descend. Seems she forgot to put her weight belt back on between dives!

I've also seen people who have jumped into the water without their air turned on!

 

[Ranz]

I do because my buddy is always my fiancee. I tend to be over-protective of the ones I love. =-x
Ranz

 

[CuriousMe]

Ok, I chose sometimes, but after reading through the responses I might have chosen always. I don't do a formal check everytime, but if I'm diving a regular buddy, I do my air check and ask about theirs (if they haven't told me thiers and asked me about mine first)...and as someone else mentioned, if I have something new in my kit...I've already shown them and they heard about it before we got on the boat, if for no other reason then the gee whiz factor of it.

If I'm with someone new...I also make sure to point out where my Octo is, how to release my weights on my BC, if I'm carrying a knife, or a slate, or anythign else they might find interesting. And if I don't find/see/understand something on their kit as I look at them, I ask them about it. I chat with them about hand signals and OOA procedure. And yes they are sometimes surprised as I do this.

What I don't do on a regular basis is the formal buddy check I learned in OW, where my buddy and I stand if front of each other and go through the acronym outloud.

(on a side note, I noticed that my boat buddy last week in Cozumel had his Octo around his neck on some surgical tubing....now I've heard about this here on the board, but never saw it. So, I took the oportunity to ask him about DIR stuff. The guy had no idea what I was talking about. He was OW certified for less than a week and his instructor had his Octo that way and told him to do the same...the guy didn't know why, or that there were other ways to do it. I showed him where my octo was and told him that that would be the one he used, and asked him to please not take my primary....while we thankfully didn't have an OOA situation I was still real glad we had the conversation.)

 

[astrofunk]

I'm embarrassed to say that I checked "sometimes".

The good news is: when in California, I dive exclusivley with my girlfriend, and we have an informal ritual in which we check and double check our gear, talk about our plan for the dive, check our fills, and go over hand signals and contigencies. We've also recently added surprise OOA drills (thanks mainly to posts I've read on this board).

The bad news is: when I take work trips to Kona, I often end up alone on a dive charter. Though the dive master does a check before you jump in, I almost always end up diving within the loosely knit group from the charter, rather than with a specific buddy. Though I tent to stick pretty close to the dive master (mainly to see the cool things he or she points out), I think the situation is non-ideal. If someone in the group had an OOA emergency, I'd be comfortable if they snatched my primary from my mouth (that's how I practice with my girlfriend in California). On the other hand, if *I* had on OOA (which should NEVER happen, as I am cautious and conservative with air), I guess I'm am expecting that other divers would be comfortable with me doing the same. And of that I have no guarantee.

Any advice on how to overcome the social inertia which prevents me from approaching someone to specifically buddy up, and then doing a thorough buddy check?