Posted by Randy Medaris on December 17, 2001 at 13:14:37:
In Reply to: Dive Partners seem to be the only real limiting factor posted by Chris Kleffman on December 17, 2001 at 10:35:58:
After a while I decided to just take my chances by signing up on a boat and seeing what happens. The boat's crews have always been happy to help find me a buddy. So far of about 8 randomly assigned buddies, I have found no one to be particularly bad and only one that tended to wander off. Last Summer, I decided just to go ahead and take the boat trips I was interested in and see who I get buddied up with. Since then I have done a lot more diving and now time is my limiting factor.
I'll second Maciek's recomendation of the Sandeaters Group for beach diving if your in Southern California. I've only done 3 dives with them, but they all seem to be good buddies and some of them have many years experience diving and really know the beaches well. They have an email list and they often arrange dives on weekdays and other times besides the scheduled place on Sunday.
There is also a "Boat Diver" Email list on Yahoo, but it does not seem very active.