Buddy Love

The equipment you use must be in good working order, the dive site conditions must be safe to enter, your goals for the dive must be set and your training must compliment your goals. These are all elements to consider when it comes to planning a safe and fun dive. If all of these considerations are met then you have a good start, but there is another aspect that is extremely important and I feel, sometimes, is over-looked: you must have a safe and compatible dive buddy. Not having a safe and compatible person to dive with can be anywhere from inconvenient, if you and your buddy do not have similar objectives for the dive which causes your dive to be an unenjoyable experience, to outright dangerous, if that person does not have safe diving practices.

I have been lucky in my dive lifetime because I currently have a wonderful dive buddy and have dove with great buddies in the past, but I have heard the horror stories about buddies who are not so lovely. One buddy-related issue I have heard many times is the “buddy” being too focused on his or her own agenda to be a valuable partner. This situation either ends in the diver spending the whole dive trying to keep up with said “buddy” or it ends in the loss of said “buddy” and, in the best situation, a successful lost buddy procedure and, in the worst situation, an unnecessary search for a diver who was not in need of rescue but who failed to noticed their buddy was gone. The most recent story I heard involved a diver partnering up with two other divers to form a trio. When the diver became low on air, which means all divers should go to the surface, she was sent to the surface to then struggle alone in a monster current back to the shore. I had these stories in mind when, last Sunday, I was helping to couple up divers into buddy pairs.

Last Sunday was this month’s Scuba Squad club dive and I was part of beach support. At club dives, if a diver arrives without a buddy we help them pair up. Scuba Squad is an excellent resource because all of the members are safe divers so there is no risk of pairing a diver up with someone who is reckless, but you can never be sure the two divers will be compatible. All of the necessary considerations were met and everyone seemed to enjoy the dive, but it was difficult to tell, just by observing, if buddy satisfaction had been achieved. After the dive, while reading Facebook comments, Cheryl said, “There is a lovefest going on on Facebook.” I asked her what she was talking about and she said everyone who had gone diving that day was posting comments saying how much he or she enjoyed diving with his or her buddy. This, above all else, confirmed for me that the club dive was a success, because even if your equipment is working great, conditions are perfect, and your dive goals are met, loving your buddy is the best way to ensure a great dive day.  

If it looks cool, I’m sold.

Some guys want a pure black wetsuit in all SCUBAPRO fashion and some want a yellow stripe here and there, and some girls want a reg that can be fitted with a purple cover plate or that has a colored shiny finish and some girls want “a stealth, rugged, nylon fiberglass case and a dark anodized aluminum ring.” I have been working at Pro Scuba for about two months now and there is one thing, in particular, I have noticed. Despite Dave’s advice in his basic scuba courses, that fit and comfort should be your prime concern when choosing gear, color and style are what really hook someone on a product. A customer will find a mask that has zero gaps, hits all the right places on his or her face, and seals nicely on an inhale, but the fact that it comes in a black and bronze frame with a mirrored lens is the clincher. I’m not saying they will throw the fit and comfort rule out the window but they might choose the second best fitting mask or wait a week for the preferred color to come in over just choosing a neutral mask.

At the shop we just got in the new G260 Tactical second stage and, as you may have gathered from the name, it is just cool. It has all the incredible features of the normal G260, including the air balanced valve, diver adjustable inhalation effort, diver adjustable VIVA, superflow hose, super comfort high flow mouthpiece, and the left/right hose attachment that the techies love. Those components mean you will have the maximum air availability at maximum depth and can customize as needed, which is what you want as a diver. But, here is what got my attention: it has a stealth, rugged, nylon fiberglass case and a dark anodized aluminum ring and a stealth design knob and nut. Those elements mean it is strong and abrasion resistant, but from the moment I heard the word “stealth” I had to see what it looked like. It did not disappoint; with its black nylon fiberglass case and anodized aluminum ring it epitomizes _________. If James Bond were going to choose a regulator it would be this. It also has the added bonus of coming with the swivel attachment, which means as you move your head you are not inhibited by your regulator hose, and that attachment on its own costs over $150. I thought I held true to choosing gear based on Dave’s rule of fit and comfort, but I must say this regulator proved me wrong. If it looks cool, I’m sold.  

There is a Phenomenon Surrounding Divers

If your sport is basketball you can pretty much play at any time and not have an increased risk associated. The rain could be pelting down and yes, you would get wet and you might have to watch your footing a bit more to avoid slipping, but it isn’t any more life- threatening to play basketball in the rain as it is to play with blue skies. Basketball does not require you to monitor the weather days before you go to the court to be sure it is a good b-ball day. The same can be said for the majority of sports. I have watched football games on TV being played in blizzards and the players seem to be having a blast. They slip and slide around a bit, but the game goes on without any more injuries than is normal for the sport. There is no such thing as frequent days where you cannot go play football or basketball because if you did you would put your life in jeopardy.

This is not the case with diving. Our fun is at the mercy of the ocean and, by extension, the weather. It would be nice if the ocean cooperated and was always flat, calm, and clear and if the weather was always mild, but that is not how it works. I would be willing to bet most divers have CDIP or some similar site bookmarked on their computer and that the weather channel website shows up frequently in their search history. We all know the routine of refreshing the CDIP page on a daily basis hoping the green seas that indicate seven to fourteen foot swells will somehow magically go back to that deep dark blue color we all love. Some days are better than others for diving. There are days when you just plain cannot dive because of the rough ocean and the inclement weather, and if you did get in the water you would be risking serious injury.

Sunday was one of those poor dive days. I had been watching the charts all week hoping green would become blue but I had no such luck. The dive was scheduled for Point Lobos, which is normally an absolutely gorgeous location. It is one of the favorites of Central and Northern California divers because it often has great visibility and the marine life tends to be huge because Point Lobos is a marine reserve. It was going to be a treat to be able to do a boat dive at Lobos because we could dive sites that are inaccessible from shore without a kayak. We arrived at the site and the water was green and murky inside Whalers Cove, which is where you enter the water and swim out to the boat which then takes you to locations around the perimeter of the reserve. On the outside of the cove waves were crashing against the rocks and sending spray into the air twice the height of the rock. Hoping the appearance of the ocean was deceiving and we would descend into some calm, we all swam out to the boat and rode around to Blue Fish Cove. In the past month or so there have been a number of videos of the four Giant Pacific Octopuses who have taken up residency in Blue Fish, and so we were all quite hopeful we would have a run-in with one. Members of the group were starting to turn as green as the ocean with the rocking of the boat so we jumped in almost immediately after the boat anchored. The depths were calmer than the surface and the visibility was about fifteen feet, but the life seemed to have fled the rocking seas. We saw a number of jellyfish, a monstrous cabezon, and a few pretty nudibranch but nothing like the normal menagerie of Lobos. It was a chilly forty-minute dive and then we found ourselves back on the boat. 

Despite these conditions, Sunday was great and I believe everyone left happy. We had a fun group of divers, a helpful boat crew, and we were able to get in safely, and that is all it takes. It is thrilling to have an amazing dive day but there is a phenomenon surrounding divers and that is this: we like to be in the water. The visibility can be terrible and the water freezing and the life nonexistent and we would still be happier in the water than out of it.