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Buddy System Breakdown
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Keeping your buddy by your side takes communication--before
and during the dive. We all promise our buddies to stay
by their sides almost till "death do us part," yet buddy pairs split up every
day. Something like this happens:
You're following your buddy who's barely visible ahead when you glimpse
something incredible in the murk off to one side. An eagle ray? You fin hard for
a closer look, then it's gone. So you reverse course to the reef --but where's
your buddy? Presumably he missed the apparition and continued ahead without you.
You chase hard, but after a minute or so you haven't found him. Now what?
By all accounts, buddy separations like this are a daily occurrence at most dive
destinations. "Buddies enter the water together and return to the boat
separately all the time," one boat operator told me. Another captain put the
number of separations at close to 50 percent on his boat. It happens in lousy
visibility and in clear water too, where divers cruise farther apart to begin
with. It even happens in guided group dives because it's less obvious when one
diver is missing out of eight or 10--"Hey! That's not my buddy, it's the other
guy with blue fins." Buddy breakup leaves some divers frightened, some angry,
some sadder but wiser.
Can This Relationship Be Saved?
There are as many kinds of buddy separation as there are buddy
relationships. There are the new divers so absorbed in this exciting new
experience that they temporarily forget their partner's needs. Often, they don't
even know each other well yet. There are the buddies who've been diving long
enough to lose their initial excitement and become comfortable, complacent and
even a little bored. They intend to stay together but take each other for
granted--until one is tempted by an interesting shape in the dark and strays.
There are buddies in name only, with different values and goals and no real
desire to stay together longer than is convenient. Sometimes they enter into the
relationship in good faith, assuming compatibility but never discussing it, and
just drift apart. Other times they buddy up only for the sake of appearance, to
avoid criticism. Or because a divemaster has insisted on a "shotgun wedding."
Then there are the cases where one buddy skips out without warning.
How can you keep your buddy by your side? It takes lots of communication, both
before and during the dive. And it takes effort. You've got to work at the buddy
relationship.
Talk the Talk
Planning the dive is more than deciding on maximum depth, bottom
time and direction from the boat. You've also got to agree on ground rules for
your buddy relationship. Will you in fact stay together always? How close? How
will you communicate? Who decides where to go? What will you do if you do
separate? In other words, what are your "vows" to each other?
Some divers prefer what might be called an equal relationship. They swim
side-by-side so that whatever they encounter, they encounter together.
Communication--by touching a shoulder, for example--will be easy, they suppose.
If one partner changes direction, the other is likely to notice. When a decision
is called for, they will discuss, negotiate and decide together.
But there are disadvantages to side-by-side equality. It's not really as easy as
you'd think to watch each other constantly because your limited peripheral
vision means you have to turn your head to see your buddy. Sometimes, when both
are in charge, nobody is in charge. And sometimes the terrain is too narrow for
side-by-side swimming. For these reasons and others, many divers assume leader
and follower roles. That way, at least one of them (the follower) should always
be able to see the other. But discuss it a little first, because what seems
natural may not be smart.
For example, the less-experienced diver often takes the follower role. But this
is backwards, since the more experienced diver should be following and watching
the less experienced. "I'd rather follow any day," says Linda Van Velsan, a PADI
course director. "By keeping somebody in front of me, I can decide whether
there's a problem."
Hunters and photographers teamed with sightseers should lead too. They rarely
make good followers because they are distracted so easily and stop so often. In
these cases, the sightseer needs to follow and join the enterprise as spotter,
bag-holder or model if the two plan to stay together. Likewise, the diver who's
absorbed in a new computer, BC or dry suit might be a better leader than
follower--if he pauses while scrolling through menus, the leader may be gone
before he looks up again.
No one likes to be a follower all the time, so trading roles halfway through the
dive preserves a sense of fair play. Leading gives the novice a taste of
responsibility, while following gives him a chance to learn from a better diver.
The experienced follower may be less likely to wander off if he knows he will be
called on to lead later.
Whoever leads and follows, you each have specific duties to the other that
should be stated and fulfilled. You need to not only repeat your vows but act on
them. This is where the work comes in. The leader's first duty is to not lose
the follower. You should swim as slowly as you possibly can, says Bill Kendig,
an instructor with NAUI, PADI and NASDS. "Buddies separate when the follower
stops to look at something and the leader keeps kicking. If you're swimming
fast, you get separated a lot easier," he says.
Remember to stop wherever you change direction. "When you're going along a wall,
there's really only one way to go. It's where you have to make a choice whether
to go left or right that people get lost," says Kendig. Likewise, when you reach
an open area after transiting a swim-through or a channel through kelp, stop and
let the follower catch up. Make eye contact before moving off again. Finally,
look back and check on the follower not only frequently but on a schedule--say,
every 10 kicks--so it becomes a habit like checking your rearview mirror.
The follower's primary duty is to not go off on his own, to not chase that eagle
ray before getting the leader's attention, for example. One way would be to
agree on a tank bang signal that means "Look at me" before giving chase. The
follower also needs to control the pace so the leader does not swim
uncomfortably fast. That may mean staying close enough to tug a fin. |
