Posted by Clinton Bauder on July 08, 2000 at 23:20:58:
In Reply to: Re: Buddy Diving - Is three a crowd ? posted by John Walker on July 07, 2000 at 19:08:23:
Responding to this drivel goes against my better judgement but it's hard to resist.
Interesting that you bring up the oil rig incident. The divers involved were diving as a team of 3. Perhaps they did so badly but task loading is one of the downsides to diving in a team of larger than 2 people which in turn leads to more mistakes. You could just as easily argue diving as part of a 3 person team was a contributing factor in the accident. A single buddy would have been less likely to be distracted and more likely to stay with him. This is why looking at a small number of incidents and drawing sweeping conclusions from them is silly. Meanwhile none of your other examples have anything at all to do with 2 person versus 3 person buddy teams.
Likewise your worst case OOA scenario may be an argument for rule of thirds with regard to gas supply but is at best irrelevant to the issue at hand - 3 person buddy teams. If you mean to say that divers should dive rule of thirds to avoid problems after a catastrophic gas loss then fine - I actually agree with you. However reading your post you give an example where 2 divers have gone well past rule of thirds and that a third diver would be useful to them in an emergency - implying that divers in a team of 3 don't need to dive rule of thirds. Did you actually mean to say this or did your poor language skills and convoluted logic skills let you down?
As for the "nobody ever died from having too much gas argument" you again missed my point. I'm saying if you plan dives such that 2 extra divers are needed in the case of a failure of 1 diver's gas supply then you didn't bring enough gas to begin with. One buddy should be sufficient. If they aren't then you're doing it wrong. If you choose to bring a third diver who's also diving 3rds great, more power to you but they aren't necessary.
Clinton