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Diving Solo - Discussion

Thread Status: Hello , There was no answer in this thread for more than 60 days.
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irishlostboy

Member
Jun 6, 2013
73
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Hi All.
I want to raise the subject of diving on your own, and ask a few questions. I am pretty new to freediving and am doing my best to learn as much about it, to dive as safely as possible balancing all the variables I can. So, for perspective; I was recently in Algarve for a week, mainly to go freediving some place warmish. I did all I could to find a dive buddy. Posted up on deeper blue, trawled other websites. I called scuba stores and visited scuba stores. I called scuba guides to see if I could tag along with a shallow scuba dive, as most of the scuba sites there are pretty shallow at 10-15 meters. I got nothing. So I just had to improvise and went diving myself.
My dives were all pretty shallow, and I was being fairly conservative with time.
So, my questions are;
When in places new, how do you go about finding people to dive with?
When in places new, with no dive buddy available, what other options do you consider. Stay at home? Just go for it as best you can?
Are there any other considerations or possibilities I missed?
Cheers.
 
Hi, your questions sound like you think of solo diving to be minor, less desireble, maybe less safe version of the "real freediving" that is done with a buddy (correct me please! :) )
Different, well argumented opinions exist, about wether this is true or not.

In case one is solo diving, i think it is important to "know" for yourself this to be not true.
I believe that feeling incomplete while freediving solo, is a distraction one can not afford in such a precarious context. Also, i believe that the feeling of lacking something can be guiding the way into behavior, that leads to accidents.

I feel i should add a safety statement after writing the above...
Safety to me, is a matter of safety margins that suit your level of practical skill.
(maybe stuff in the concepts "experience", "knowledge", "integration of self", "technique", "awareness" to make the idea of "practical skill" more rich and thus be more rightfull part of a simplification, like the one i pruduced)
 
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I think at my stage of development, yes for me freediving Solo is a different thing. not lesser perhaps, cos I find I relax more alone. I recognise the dangers and have no wish to be another story of " he should have known better". Freediving alone, much like whitewater kayaking alone is recognisably more dangerous than going with a buddy, all other things being equal. I would like to do more freediving abroad though, and would like to know how people approach that.
 
1) don't do it

2) buy an FRV for an added degree of safety / self-sufficiency.
 
Yeah, that´s why i wrote my post i think. Because you get so easily confused by paternalistic instruction by people who know shit about someone.

Apneaddict, i think intimidating simple statments like this are not much better than threats and thus detrimental. (apart from oversimplifying a complex subjct)
 
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I disagree.

What I was saying is...

Don't do it.
BUT, If you are going to do it... (and at some point we all do it) - use protection.

Just like a caring but realistic parent might say to their kid re: pre-marital sex as they leave for university.

:D
 
The analogy that I like the most re: freediving alone is... That it is like skydiving without a reserve 'chute.

Sure - most times you'll be fine and that primary will deploy. Many sky divers only ever use their primary.... BUT in case it doesn't deploy or tangles / has an issue.... You sure as hell want to have that backup option to save your ass!
 
Sure, things are that simple, that even bad analogies are good enough to know what's up.

Again, this is a good example of why i wrote my first reply. Actual diving tells a different truth and things get confusing...
 
away from the safety aspect I've found i don't enjoy solo dives half as much as when I'm with someone else. when you have a buddy you have more things to see and do plus after you get out looking back and discussing the dive
 
Specificly to your questions, Irish.

Sounds like you covered it pretty well. Possible addition is contact as many freediving clubs as you can find in England, Ireland, France, anywhere else that might have divers familiar with your location. Or PM some active users of DB from your area or close. A couple of months lead time is a good idea. You may not find a diver directly, but the chance of someone knowing a diver where you are going is pretty good. Sometimes, it just ain't possible to find a buddy, been there too often.

To dive solo or not is a very personal decision, only you can make that one. You know its more dangerous than a GOOD, ATTENTIVE buddy, so you have to decide if its worth it. Personally, before I got addicted to a tight buddy system, I would have gone solo in a heartbeat, normally did, cause nobody I knew used a serious buddy system. That's the first 40 years of diving. Now, I'm not so sure. I train alone, but only tried serious diving alone once (recently) and really did not like it at all. Proper buddy diving is extremely addictive.

Good luck in your quest
 
To dive solo or not is a very personal decision,

I disagree.. it's not personal at all: if you kill yourself then it reflects badly on all of us as freedivers. The reason no scuba guides would take you is that they probably hold the popular opinion that freediving is an extreme sport and we are all nutters with a death-wish. More deaths of idiots diving alone = more hostility from scuba and other communities/sports authorities/swimming pool managers = even less opportunities for freedivers to train and dive safely.

I don't mean to sound harsh, and I understand your frustration at not being able to dive whenever you want, but I'm sure a bit of patience and you will have a large network of great freediving buddies in no time!
 
I disagree.

your problem may be solved soon. as soon as freediving is only considered to be freediving when done with a buddy, you can tell the repressive scuba divers: "he wasn't a freediver at all" and you and the repressive scubies are friends again, cool isn't it?
but that's not all! you also can stay distant to free swimmers and care about them even less than you do now, hence they are not even freedivers - what a relief!
And for free swimmers it's good too. Safety will be improved a lot as it's not considered to be false to do what one does, according to fellow freedivers, for the reasons i pointed out earlier.

So, just going a little step further than you already did it will help even more.

...or did i miss something??
 
Wow. First off allow me to apologise to Deeperblue users. My intention was not to start a thread which reads so much like a scrap.

kwtony >> I used the search function before starting this tread and pulled up no useful result. cheers.

Apneaaddict >> I had not heard of the FRV. looks like a great bit of kit. I will have to hunt one down.

cdavis >> In the specific situation with my trip to portugal, I had a post here in the correct section of deeperblue for months looking for a dive buddy or any info on the location. I also contacted dive shops well in advance. Despite my best efforts my options were spend a week sitting on my ass in Portugal (not a totally sucky option) or solo it.

to everyone else: please chill out. I would like to see this thread be a useful sharing of personal experience with respect to each other's opinion so that when the next guy comes looking with these same questions he can use the search function (as I did) and get some good perspectives.
thanks.
 
I'd like to add a little story that drove this topic home to me (yet again) just recently.

A few months ago, a man - let's call him Bob - came into our school, wanting to enrol in one of our beginner courses. We talked and it turned out that he was actively spearfishing - always alone.

As a first free lesson for his upcoming course, I asked him to please always go with a buddy from then on. The analogy of the spare parachute makes a lot of sense here. - His reply was:

"I am aware of the risk, that's why I stay extra safe and don't push."

Very few weeks later, I received a call from a mutual friend, asking me how to read the log of Bob's dive computer. Puzzled, I asked why he didn't ask Bob, to which he replied that he was trying to read Bob's last dive, whom he had pulled dead out of the water hours before after Bob had gone spearfishing - alone.

Our mutual friend is now severely traumatised, freediving is now considered a dangerous extreme sport among those who don't know better and Bob has left a Wife and children to deal with this loss. Bob seemed to have been a pretty good guy who mostly made good decisions, but only mostly.

So, is going freediving alone a personal decision?
- It is your decision.
Will your decision affect other people?
- Massively so.

Being aware of the risks does not make them go away. Diving alone will always mean that you are left without help when you need it.
 
I feel i should add to your list sanso, being specific though:

did this accident happen in the context of a freediving class in recent past, including delivering a "free lesson"?

i do not know much about what happened throughout your work with the victim...


what i do know about, are the things i wrote about earlier. e.g. a solodiver not to be able to afford to be distracted.
by opposing a rule, by disrespecting a free lessons, or not following something he was told by someone who hardly knew him (as far as i understood your text). These are potential conflicts which can bring motivations to cross. I believe this, as i wrote earlier to be a dangerous state. In particular for a solodivers' precarious situation.

I know this story is not a technicality for you. but you brought it up as an argument in a general discussion, so i produced this reply
 
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He died before he ever took a course with me.

The only 'lesson' was the advice to always go freediving with a buddy. This advice he proceeded to ignore, thinking he knew better, even though it was given by someone whom he apparently regarded as an authority in the field. (Hence his intention to take a course with me).

I am convinced that he would have changed this after taking this course. Understanding the physiology makes a vast difference in the perception of the risk taken.
 
So i got this wrong... this does not change the argument and the question i added to yours in a substantial way, actually you expanded on my argument i think: perceiving someone as an authority increases the potential for conflict in the picture i draw.
...please don´t get me wrong here: i´m not trying to analyse the case you presented, this is something you can do (again) if you find there is any sense to what i wrote. I wanted to highlight a potential example for the dynamics i pointed out ealier throughout the thread.

Theory can be benefical for sure, it can also be effectively used to scare people and let them understand that they are not self sustainable and thus lacking confidence is a reasonable state to be in. I believe confidence is crucial, not only for solodivers, and not only for safety aspect of freediving.
 
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