Posted by Wayne on October 29, 2001 at 14:54:02:
In Reply to: Top 10 Reasons Why The Fundamentals Of DIR Class Is A Real AOW Class posted by msblucow on October 29, 2001 at 13:28:31:
I thought I owuld put my head on the chopping block here and see if a conversation erupts.
Friday night at the elementary school's halloween carnival, I ran into my neighbor who was about to free dive below a cliff in PV for bugs. I persuaded him to dive with me instead (I prefer another person on board to facilitate anchoring activities). He agreed and we did Portugese Bend. We geared up and did our pre-dive briefing. We each discussed where the reef was and oriented our compasses.
We agreed on buddy procedures as follows:
If I lose him, I will not look. If he loses track of me, he will not look for me. After all, we are looking for bugs. 5 minutes into the dive, I had no idea where he was. At about the 30 minute point we passed each other and waved, so I knew my buddy was fine.
We both came to the swimstep within 2 minutes of each other. We both had about 600 psi and the bottom time was 1:30 with a depth of 30ish feet. A good dive, and we were back at the dock by 11:00pm.
So we did not dive solo, we were buddied up. And this greatly enhanced the dive experience as Richard deployed and pulled the anchor while I drove the boat. And I cooked Sunday dinner for the family that featured lobster!
Wayne