Here's what happened to me today, that gave me a really scary little reminder of why that rule applies until BOTH buddies have their feet dry.
I met up with a dive buddy (not on the board) at Mukilteo T-dock this afternoon. My buddy occasionally dives solo, and has told me so, though I try to dissuade him, I'm not his parents, nor the SCUBA police. He always wears doubles, and always slings a 40. We geared up, and had a fairly uneventful low tide 63 minute dive up towards the refueling pier and back. I mention the TDT, because like a moron, I had not taken advantage of the opportunity to ah... "use the facilities" before the dive.
![pale :pale:](./../images/smilies/icon_pale.gif)
We surfaced and swam towards the beach. The tide had come in some, and standing depth water put us right into a large amount of basketball sized rocks just south of the T-dock. I was having a lot of trouble getting some footing to get upright and get my fins off, and kind of drifted south a bit. I was somewhat motivated to get out of my drysuit and off to the head, and this is where I lost focus on my dive buddy.
I had drifted maybe 10-15 yards away in waist deep water while fighting to get some footing. I looked away from my buddy trying to find a decent spot to stand up. When I looked up my dive buddy was face down in the water thrashing around like crazy, as the doubles and slung 40 were difficult for him to manage.
My only thought was "Holy crap I killed him. I wasn't there. MOVE!"
I'm not sure I've ever covered 15 yards of water that fast in my entire life. Definitely not in SCUBA gear. By the time I was half way to him he kind of rolled a little upright and I could see the Reg in his mouth. Talk about a "Thank God moment".
I got to him, grabbed him, slipped a bunch more on the rocks before we both finally got upright and balanced. We then took turns steadying each other to get fins off and climb the rest of the way out.
It ended ok, but if he hadn't been holding his reg in his hand, or had panicked when he fell sideways, it might not have.
Anyway that's my story and my wake up call for today. Never leave your buddy. Not even in waist deep water.
So for those of you that I dive with occasionally, expect to be annoyed with me hovering over you, offering to help you with your fins or whatever at the end of a dive from now on. You're just going to have to put up with it.
Be safe out there folks. The S- hits the fan rather quickly.
Jake