Posted by MHK on March 19, 2001 at 17:59:52:
In Reply to: Re: To DIR: an apology posted by AADIVER on March 19, 2001 at 17:42:57:
In Reply to: Re: To DIR: an apology posted by MHK on March 19, 2001 at 16:55:03:
how does a basically good diver turn a bad buddy into a good one?
You spend time with them above and below water. You discuss ahead of time what is expected, what you are looking for what you are willing to tolerate and what is unacceptable.
You then dive with them ( hence the self-reliance notion, in case they are a cluster f*ck) you keep the dive shallow, you keep the dive in very friendly conditions and then after the dive you de-brief and you do so in an honest way. You should see us de-brief after a dive. I consider the guys that I dive deep with amongst the most qualified guys in the world, but yet afterwards ( and frankly beforehand as well) we are all 100% honest with each other. We are up front about what we expect, we do not tolerate personal preference crap and we ALL undertsand that we operate as a team. For example, Walker, Kendall, Terry are my primary deep diving buddies, Bob, Colin, Fred and a select few others I'll go farily deep with and they all know of me as I know of them, we won't be off doing our own thing to the detriment of the team. If Kendall is gone, or if Walker is gone, or if Terry is missing the rest of my dive is spent searhing for them and they know it, as I would expect of them.. I'll break 1/3's if need be and I'll search to the final second that I could, if it turns out I put myself in danger because they decided ad hoc to go off on there own I can promise you they would never dive with me again...
Fortunatley, I know these guys well enough where that is simply not going to happen and should they be missing, or if I'm off the line it's a safe bet that something isn't right and we'll abort our dive and try to help our teammate. If someone doesn't understand that then I'm not diving with them...
However, by the same token we recognize that not everyone shares our view but yet wants to dive with us and see what we are up to. When we escort someone on our dives our mindset is somewhat different. I know fully well that they don't share our views at that point so we'll have more direct contact, we'll generally sandwhich the new diver between two of us. For example I'll lead and Terry will be # 3 so it's very hard to loose the diver. We'll do more frequent buddy checks, we'll be shallow and we'll be cognizant of his/her air supply, we'll spend substantial pre-dive briefing and then we'll do a brutally honest post dive briefing...
Later