Who was your best insta-buddy?

[TimAZ]

I've seen plenty of posts on bad insta-buddies - and have had my share. What were some good experience? My best was a young woman who told me she had never dove with someone wearing a drysuit and asked about potential problems and how she as a buddy should assist. I've been on enough "solo dives with company" that her attitude really impressed me.

 

[dlndavid]

this blonde swedish lady in Coz

 

[ams511]

The guy from Switzerland that grabbed me and pulled me down as I floated up slightly wondering what was that strange sound I was hearing. It was a boat.

 

[charlesml3]

Last time I was in Coz there was a German guy on the boat with us and we just ended up buddies because everyone else already had one. This guy was the BOMB! Coincidentally enough we both had the same "style." We both moved slowly and let things come to us. We had great hand signals right away and almost exactly the same air consumption. I'd dive with that dude again in a second.

-Charles

 

[Crawl79]

I travel alone allot and usually get setup with instabuddies. I have had some good and bad but most of the time good. And I always feel good at the end of the dive when we come up and they complement me on my diving and I usually do the same for them. When you first jump in the water with a new buddy you never really are sure what you are going to get and they are probably thinking the same as you.
Back to question at hand. On my first dive in Rio most of the divers on the boat spoke English but there was one guy who only spoke Portuguese. Just so happen that this guy was going to be my buddy. I was a little worried because it was hard to communicate with him before the dive but with a little of my broken Portuguese and some traslation help from other divers we jumped in. Once in the water there was no need for translation our underwater communication was great. After a 45 minute dive we called the dive due to us both being cold but came up with with about 1200psi. And back on deck our communication was great we were both smiling from ear about the great dive we had.

 

[airsix]

San Juan islands with my LDS. DM is a friend and asked me to buddy with one of his AOW students who was doing checkouts. The young man had only been diving for less than a year and had around 15 dives. Best diver I've ever been in the water with. ROCK SOLID buoyancy. He asked me to lead and no matter where we went or what we did he stuck on my 10:00 like I was holding him on the end of a stick. Never bumped into each other and never more than about 3 feet apart. Great communication too. I'd happily dive with him again any time.

-Ben

 

[drbill]

She was a lovely Japanese woman who held my hand the entire dive (making it difficult to operate my inflator since my camera was in the other hand). However, as soon as we were back topside, she released the hand... for good.

 

[Web Monkey]

I've seen plenty of posts on bad insta-buddies - and have had my share. What were some good experience? My best was a young woman who told me she had never dove with someone wearing a drysuit and asked about potential problems and how she as a buddy should assist. I've been on enough "solo dives with company" that her attitude really impressed me.

I really liked the annoying b****** I got stuck with at John Pennekamp. He had a knife on his leg that was bigger than my Chef's knife, no wetsuit and a non-stop mouth that was complaining about everything he could think of.

As soon as we hit the water he took off at about 3 knots in the general direction of Europe and I didn't see him again until he came back to the boat.

It was a great dive!

Terry

 

[rookers]

I dove Blue Grotto twice in November with an excellent diver from Ohio that I hooked up with in the changing area. He was GUE trained and had tremendous team awareness and buoyancy skills. I would dive with him again in a moment.

 

[DiverBeth]

I did a liveaboard last May and wound up buddying with the woman I shared my cabin with since we were both by ourselves. She was an excellent diver and great buddy.