Posted by Clinton Bauder on July 07, 2000 at 14:46:27:
In Reply to: Re: Buddy Diving - Is three a crowd ? posted by John Walker on July 05, 2000 at 23:16:28:
Mr. Walker,
1) I hope your dive planning is better than your spelling and grammar. Are you this sloppy when calculating your MOD, decompression schedules or gas supply? You claim to be an instructor. Do you proofread your lesson plans with the same attention to detail? What is it the WKPP folks like to say? "Tip of the stroke"?
2) 4 alleged incidents taken out of context "proves" nothing. This is a simple matter of statistical significance. Solid information about the relative safety of various styles of diving is essentially non-existent since nobody keeps good records of safe dives. Actual data on the safety of intentional solo diving or diving as part of a 3 person team versus a conventional buddy team doesn't exist since nobody knows what percentage of dives are conducted which way.
3) Listing a group of random people who died while diving has exactly what relevance again? I notice your list includes Parker Turner who died because the cave he was diving in collapsed and blocked his exit. Are you going to claim that a third diver would have prevented that?
4) Regarding your silly OOA scenario I'd point out that any dive plan which requires 3 members for adequate gas redundancy is a cluster waiting to happen. If you plan your dives that way please stay away from me when I'm in the water. A diver should have enough redundant gas to make it back to the surface safely even with a total failure of 1 gas supply. For a buddy team where each diver has a single tank that means both should have enough gas to get themselves and their buddy back to the surface. Nothing I saw in seahunt's post indicates otherwise yet you made the amazing leap to a situation with divers breathing 1 cuft/min with 900 cuft left at 100 feet. Huh?
Clinton