On Tuesday, May 28, 2002 12:12 PM, Richard Blackburn wrote:

> > Richard!  I just have to ask:  Where was your buddy?  :-)

> Just went through this on rec.scuba ;)  I did not trust my "assigned"
buddy
> much anyway.  I was glad to see him surface ahead of me ;)

Mate!  An "assigned" buddy can take all of the fun out of diving - and, to
my way of thinking, *can* be potentially far more hazardous than diving
solo! :-)

It seems to me that far too many operators, hung up on the "buddy system",
overlook exactly what the term means and put an unfair onus of
responsibility on one or other of the divers in order to pad out the bottom
line in their cash till!  :-)


Strike