Posted by Tribes on November 11, 2003 at 16:40:31:
Buddy Stories
Dive shops have always been a good place to tell tales about dives you have made, dives you almost made, and dives you imagined you made (all good dive shops are great BS centers).
Here are stories about buddy teams or non-teams that I have heard (most of them I think are true).
I had one of my former students come in (lets call him Peter). Peter started telling me the story about his first dive after certification. He was on a dive boat alone and was buddied one with someone (Peter had no clue about this persons diving abilities, just that he was a certified diver).
Peter ask his new buddy (lets call him SH) if he would like to do a gear and site check before they entered the water . SH told Peter to leave him alone, and jumped into the water. After recheck his gear Peter jump in too, only to find SH clawing at him (you see, Shit Head hadn’t turned his air on and had almost no air in his BC and of course was over weighted ). Peter turned on SH's air and inflated his BC.
After a short period of time (when Shit Head got his breathing back under control) they started to descended (Peter wanted to swim closer to the island, but Shit Head just wanted to go down). Again Peter followed his new buddy. They found themselves in about 80 ft. of water (lets all remember that this was Peter’s first dives after certification). They started to swim up the hill toward shore, when SH pulled Peter’s regulator out of his mouth and started breathing on it. Peter found his own Octo and got his breathing under control and looked at Shit Head’s pressure gauge and found it to be on 0 (Peter looked at his own gauge and found he had 2000PSI and then looked at his timer and found the dive was only 10 mins. old, did SH start the dive with a turned off empty tank ?). Peter got SH to start up. When they reach the surface Peter blow up SH BC and they both swim back to the boat. They made two more dives together that day (with only minor problem, but Peter will never forget his first dive after certification). Today Peter always takes his own buddy on boat dives or he dives solo.
This next story happened of the Wreck of the Valiant. One of my friends (let’s call him Berry) was diving with his buddy on the wreck (they were fanning about mid way down the wreck, the silt was flying and they were finding a few door locks and assorted bass objects). In those days most of us dove this wreck with a single 72's and no Octo’s (at that time most of us felt that the Octo movement was a conspiracy by NASDS and Dema to make us buy more unneeded gear). Berry and his buddy were getting low on air and started to move towards the anchor line. Berry saw movement out of the corner of his eye and then felt his regulator pulled from his mouth. Berry looked and saw a diver(lets call this person The Clueless One) with big bulging eyes in front of him breathing off of his one and only mouth piece (this was not Berry’s buddy, it was not even a diver off of the dive boat Berry was on, he had just seemed to have appeared out of no where ). Berry got The Clueless One to give up the regulator and they shared air up to the surfaced. When they got to the surface the The Clueless One said “hey, thanks a lot” and swam back to his boat (not the boat that Berry had been on, but another boat that had anchored after Berry and his buddy had went down).
Berry came back and got an Octo and started diving with doubles after that.
This is a story about three guys making a very deep dive that they weren’t ready for.
I was in my store one day when I had a customer (let’s call him Joe) came in wanting to rent a tank. I ask Joe where he was going and he said that he and his friend’s were going to dive Farnsworth Bank. I started to talk to him about Farnsworth and was telling him that he needed to go down the anchor line( and stay close to it or run a reel off the anchor) and come back up it. Farnsworth is steep and deep with lots of current and that it needed to be dove with some discipline. Joe said, “thanks” and went off on his merry way.
I saw him back on the following Monday and ask him how it went.
He started off his story by telling me that I was right about going up and down the anchor line. Joe and his two other buddy’s had dropped into the water and there was lots of current. They decided to descend and not swim to the anchor line. As they start to descend they were already passed the swim step of the boat. They looked down and could not see a bottom. At about 80ft. Joe still could not see the bottom and decided to go back to the surface (leaving his two buddies). His two buddies continue on down never noticing that Joe was gone. Joe’s two buddies hit a shelf at about 140. One of the buddies was unresponsive the other buddy inflated his BC and pulled his friend back to the surface. Both popped to the surface like a Polaris missile with full BC’s and no air in there tanks. Joe said that his friend’s were lucky they didn’t get hurt. I never saw Joe again after that, I don’t know if he ever went diving again.
I think that sometimes the one of our best learning tools is listing to our fellow divers war stories.
Maybe a dive shop is not a great BS center maybe it’s a great knowledge center instead.
Tribes