Archives: Buddy

Picture the people in your life. Father, Mother, sibling, lover.

Then there’s the dive buddy. 

I think that non-divers (muggles) sometimes just don’t realise how much a dive buddy is trusted with your life. Essentially, it is someone that you defy humanity with! Through sign language and body language during training, it is someone you have got to know purely in an underwater sense. You know what frightens them, and vise versa. You know how fast they breathe air underwater, and their favourite marine creature. Underwater, you wouldn’t want anybody else.

 

Solo trips. Some might say interesting. And although you may get paired up with a kindred spirit, you usually get paired up with one of three buddies.

1. The rookie/cowboy.

2. The mamas boy.

Or 3. The knowall.

The rookie/cowboy swims here, swims there, doesn’t wait for you and doesn’t look at you once. I could be stuck in a giant clam for God’s sake! But instead, he’s racing after a stingray. He also has the post-dive potential to be wearing white bonds trunks under his wetsuit.

Wet white bonds trunks = not forgiving (even though he thinks it’s impressive).

The mama’s boy chows down his air at the sign of a yawning fish and clutches your ankle the entire time. You wanna go up? But we just got down!

And the knowall just doesn’t care. He just goes through the motions with you. Like a bad date. Like ‘mehh.’ You point at something; he nods. You sign you’re cold; he nods. You sign shark; he nods (He says swap buddies; I nod).

 

So in an industry where body language is essential. I find comfort in the fact that my dive buddy just ‘gets’ me. That we can dive together only once or twice a year and just jump straight back into that easy diving, with no awkward - handshake/who’s gonna lead/you, no you/I’m scared of fish – conversation. Because he already knows my ‘I’m cold’ face, and the buckle that I sometimes can’t quite reach gearing up! I know that he hates dive reels with a passion (it’s a looong and tangled story), what the code word ‘pizza’ means, and how important his mares hat is to him.

We only know our underwater selves.

(Pic – Buddies watch the sunset at Byron Bay, Aus)

 

I learnt to dive in Australian Cool/Temperate waters.

These reached a glorious low of 14 degrees during Winter. I believe that experiencing diving in cold water, with so many other elements to consider and obstruct your learning process, makes for a diver who can enjoy both types of diving. I think I would have struggled with the cold more, if I had learnt say – in Fiji, and then been dipped into freezing, currenty, poor viz water and expected to know how to deal with that change.

So the ’6 Reasons Why Learning To Dive In Cold Water Will Make You A Better Diver’ Are –

1. Difficulty Levels. Tasks are more difficult to achieve in cold water and bad viz. Thick gloves, hoods and wetsuits hinder movement and make you a better diver in the long run. You learn to realise your body’s limits to temperature, and a different skill set in dealing with serious things like hypothermia; and annoying things like trying to do up a buckle underwater with numb fingers.

2. Quality Time. Meaning more time and attention from intstructors. People would generally take the ‘warm tropical dive followed by post-dive cocktails under a palm tree’ option. This means smaller classes/less students in cooler water climates.

3. Qualification. Dive charters in the tropics often only give patrons a ‘Try Dive.’ This (though fun) gives you no proper qualification, and is usually a one-off fast money spinner for the charter itself. You get your ‘Open Water Certificate’ if you endure a proper course.

4. Gear. Cool water diving involves a whole new set of gear to get used to. heat packs. Hoods and gloves. And dry-suits and semi-drys, which alter buoyancy and get you used to weight belt changes during preparation etc.

5. Warming Up! Huddling over a mug of hot chocolate post-freezing-dive, is like sensory overload! A hot choccy in the tropics just doesn’t have the same meaning. My other favourite reason is getting to wear humungous hoodies after!

6. Appreciation. Diving in the tropics for the first time, having trained for two years in cold water, was soooo eeeeesy!! I was able to appreciate where I was. And having learnt the skills in difficult conditions meant using them without being complacent to their value was awesome.

(Pic – buddies hooded up at Tasman Hauler site, Eden, Aus)