| Originally Posted by DanTam1 Just came back from Egypt from doing a liveaboard on the Blue Fin. Dived in two buddy pairs down the shot line on the Thistlegorm and found a lone diver pointing that he'd lost his weight belt. Off went the lot of us down to 30m to try and find it to no avail and signalled the diver to return to surface. Now, 10 minutes into the dive, found his buddy busily taking photos in the mid section of the wreck. After asking him where his buddy was, he just shrugged his shoulders, so i opted to buddy with him for the remainder of the dive, leaving my original buddy with the other two. Got to the bow, asked him for a check his gas, (I was diving twin 12's so I had plenty), he just signalled he had loads of time left by looking at his dive computer. After insisting on checking saw that he was on 60 bar!!
Gave him my spare reg and almost dragged him to the stern to go up the line to the surface. Once at the line he dropped my reg, bunged his back in, and started the swim to the surface. All Good at this point, until we reached the safety stop, again checked his gas, Zero Bar!!. Again, gave him my gas again to the surface.
After dive debrief, he wondered why I’d given him the reg and wondered why I wanted to get him back to the boat so quickly. After sounding him out about why he had no air at the end, he just responded that he’s never run out of gas yet.
On a dive the next day (I wasn’t buddying with him), his inflator hose failed, so he gave his weight belt to his buddy (which has 2Kg on it), then gave his integrated weights to another diver, and then rocketed to the surface taking another diver with him.
My normal buddy just told me to leave him next time. How should I have handled it better? As he was on air, me on nitrox could he have been narked, baring in mind that he had total dis-regard for his original buddy on the first dive, and total panic on the subsequent ones. ?
Its certainly changed my attitude when diving with a camera in my hand – what I’ve learnt from this is I’m a diver, with a camera! Not someone who takes pictures and has a blatant dis-regard to his and everyone safety.
Any hoo, rant over. Took some lovely pictures, met a great bunch of people. And am looking forward to doing another next year ! |