Jay (00:01)
Welcome to the dive table. I'm Jay Gardner.
Sarah (00:05)
and I'm Sarah Miller.
Jay (00:07)
So Sarah, when was the last time you went diving with somebody who you've never dove with before?
Sarah (00:14)
Oh man, I actually just made a video about this. It was in Plattel Carmen. When was that? Like two weeks ago. And I was diving in a cave with a stranger. So that was the, yeah, yeah, yeah. That was a first for me. I don't typically, like, I don't have a ton of experience as a cave diver. We know this, we've discussed this.
Jay (00:28)
Like just the two of you? Oh.
Sarah (00:41)
But I've always kind of gone with the same people, right? Like I've had a team and I always go with them. So this was new. It was weird, but it was a good experience. And we'll talk about today kind of how to vet new divers and make sure that you're gonna be in a good position. What about you?
Jay (01:04)
Oh, it's very recent, like last week and the week before that and the week before that. So it's definitely on my mind. But I.
Sarah (01:14)
You've been like developing your crew, right, in San Diego, so that's kind of a regular thing for you at this point.
Jay (01:23)
Yeah, we're trying to build a team and that's no easy task. And so, yeah, lots of new people.
Sarah (01:29)
Now.
Awesome. So what I like for me in this topic of like diving with new people, connecting, like I do it a lot because I travel so much, but also like as instructors, we're literally doing it all the time, right? Like we're taking brand new divers out, we're taking students, whatever. So I think it becomes like second nature for us, but I know how scary it could be because for me, diving in a cave with a stranger was a new experience.
Right? And it was interesting because he had more experience in that environment than I did. So it was very much like letting him know my situation while figuring out what he was, you his experience was too. So it was interesting because it's not to like be whatever braggy or I don't know what the word is, but like.
I'm usually not the least experienced person in a dive team. So that was like a really interesting experience for me.
Jay (02:35)
Yeah.
Your head just got bigger.
Sarah (02:42)
You know what I mean though, as instructors we tend to be one of the more experienced people in the group. But that was, it was good, it was humbling. The whole, I mean I've talked extensively about cave diving and I've made some videos on my YouTube channel about it. The whole experience was very humbling, it was good for me.
Jay (02:44)
No, exactly.
Yeah, that's really interesting because in my prep for this topic, I didn't really even think about the instructor side of it. I was solely thinking about my own diving and like my fun diving, I guess you can say, which is what I really want to do. Like instructor mode feels like different. I don't know. I have to think about it as we have the conversation because it's, I feel more in control as an instructor than diving with somebody as a teammate that I've never dove with before. Um,
Sarah (03:11)
Mm.
Mm -hmm.
It does. No, it totally does.
It's a different ship. Yeah.
Jay (03:32)
But then they play both ways, right? Cause new people go, Oh, well, you're an instructor. I just had this happen. Oh, you're an instructor. You, you got the scuba side. I'm like, no, no, no, I'm a teammate. I'm not an instructor here. So the likelihood my stuff is going to fail or I'm going to have an issue is just as great as yours. And so, which is also true in the student realm, but I don't know. That's interesting. Are you more switched on diving with students?
Sarah (03:43)
Mm -hmm.
Jay (04:00)
than new teammates? I don't know. That's a good question. It's a good discussion.
Sarah (04:02)
Oh, I'm for sure, and it shouldn't be this way, right? We should be as linked up as possible every time we go diving, right? But what I noticed in my, and I talked about this in one of my videos, because I have so much experience solo diving, that's what I've been doing for a lot of the last few years, because I just drive my van and dive in random places. So it's like, I'm alone. That's just the reality of it. My chip is...
very different because when I'm with a student, I'm like, okay, I'm here. I'm taking care of you. Like, this is the deal. When I'm with a team, so like one of my training dives for my cave refresher, I was like dealing with my problems by myself and not fully communicating with the entire team. And my instructor was like, you solo diver need to knock that off. Like,
Jay (04:48)
Hmm.
Heheheheh
Sarah (04:53)
Yes, I get that you can handle yourself and you're fine, but like you need to communicate these things. I'm like, yeah, you're right. You're right.
Jay (05:00)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's true. It's true. It's, it's interesting because in the team aspect of it, you are thinking a lot about, you know, how you guys are going to communicate, what the plan is, where you're going, right? What the limitations of the dive would be based on the levels of experience or comfortability of the team members, all of those sorts of things. But you're, you're doing the dive.
for the sake of enjoyment, right? You're going out there because you love diving and you're going to go, you know, I just went and we tried to find the bottom of the pier in La Jolla. You know, we didn't find it, but we went looking for it, which was fun. Versus I feel like in the instructor world, there's a task. Like every dive, except for in my world, except for the last couple of dives or last dive, the experience dives, and even those still have a task to them.
Sarah (05:45)
Nice.
Jay (05:59)
There's something that we need to accomplish, right? And so maybe it's a little bit like my brain's dealing with the cognitive dissonance between, you know, how I approach team diving versus how I approach instructor diving. And you're right, on face, it's diving with new people, but it feels different for, probably because of that distinction in my mind.
Sarah (06:02)
Well, yeah.
No.
Yeah, so I wonder, because I have, I think, a different experience than you do in this realm. How do you find buddies? How are you finding your community right now?
Jay (06:35)
It's tough. It's actually really been tough in San Diego and I don't know why. You would assume it's not. And I think it's for a couple different reasons, but typically the way I did it in Texas was really nice because we kind of built a team. We trained together. That kind of brought other people around saying, hey, I like the way that you guys dive. Can I dive with you? And that led to let's train or I'm going to go take this training. And we just pushed each other. It was a very...
Sarah (06:41)
Interesting.
Mm.
Jay (07:05)
very team -based thing. We actually formed a team with a charter and the whole deal there that still exists today. And it was much more organic. You know, we met each other through training and continued to dive together and bring new people in and so on and so forth. Here, it's been interesting because, in San Diego, because the approach has been, okay, how do I build relationships with people and just go diving? But what I found is there are a lot of people that...
either already have their, you know, people that they go diving with and aren't really, I wouldn't say they're not looking, but it's not like an open invitation. Or, you know, you're trying to hub out of a shop, which in a lot of cases, the shop situation, aren't people that dive like me or understand me in some ways. So just haven't found my tribe yet here, I think is the thing. And I've been diving with a lot of people and loved it. And I've just kind of.
Sarah (07:38)
Hmm.
Jay (08:03)
become convinced that it's time to build a team. And that means, you know, training together, uh, and, and diving in a similar compatible fashion. And the reason for that is not, you know, just the recreational side of things, but as I really want to go take more challenging dives here in San Diego, there are really cool things to go see, but I won't feel comfortable doing that. I think without a real foundational knowledge of, of that diver and their training and their ability to handle.
Sarah (08:20)
Yeah.
Jay (08:33)
team and myself and themselves under the water. So I don't know why it's been so hard.
Sarah (08:37)
Yeah.
It's interesting, yeah, because it's such an active community. I wonder if you just need to like put yourself out there a little bit more. And speaking of putting yourself out there, we are doing, we are doing a meetup. So if you're in the San Diego area, hopefully this is coming out. I don't know when this is coming out actually, but hopefully we can get this out in time. But we're meeting up on April 7th at
Jay (08:50)
Nice plug.
Sarah (09:07)
8 o 'clock at where are we going? La Jolla Shores. Yeah, so Kellogg Park. I hadn't heard of that. OK.
Jay (09:11)
La Jolla shores or Kellogg Park sometimes it gets referred to if you haven't. Yeah, Kellogg Park is the I think the landmark park in the map like in Google Maps or whatever.
Sarah (09:23)
Okay, gotcha, gotcha. But yeah, that should be really cool. Hopefully people show up. If not, we're gonna do a great dive together because we haven't been diving together yet. So...
Jay (09:34)
Multiple dives. Yeah. Hopefully we've dove like, oh, I'm in a weird spot. Not a weird, a cool spot right now where, you know, the in work transition. So I, when you're here, it just so happens to line up where I am free minus family obligations. And I hope we go diving every day. It's gonna be awesome.
Sarah (09:43)
Mm. Yes.
Yeah.
That's, I was thinking about that. I was kind of looking at my calendar and figuring that we would go diving quite a few times while I'm there. So that'll be really cool. And I will be happy to be a part of your dive team whenever I'm in the area.
Jay (10:01)
Yes, yes.
Oh, well, thank you. And I'll be happy not to receive communication when something goes wrong from you. I'll just pay attention.
Sarah (10:14)
I'll just be back there like solving my problem. You're like, are you okay? I'm like, yeah, I'm fine. Totally fine.
Jay (10:19)
Yeah, you good? You good? Yeah, I'm fine. Your bottle is falling off. You still good? Yeah, I'm good.
Sarah (10:23)
I'm such a stubborn. Oh my god. I'm so stubborn. No, I'm getting better. Like since that training, it was a good wake up call for me that I don't need to be so stubbornly alone.
Jay (10:38)
Yeah, that's an interesting topic too. I mean, we're not talking about that here, but it is interesting that, you know, sometimes people look at a team as a hindrance or can be a hindrance, right?
Sarah (10:50)
I sometimes feel that way just because of my goals for diving a lot of the time. Like, I'm making these goofy vlogs. So like, who wants to sit around and have me shoot something 15 times so that I get the right? Like, a lot of times when I'm diving with other people, I feel like I don't get great footage necessarily because I'm trying not to like slow down the team.
Cause I know that that's not what everybody wants to do on a dive. So when I go diving on my own, I feel very free to like be more creative in what I'm doing. And I like that. But what I love about like my community from YouTube and everything is that I am building an easy place to find dive buddies. So like I'm heading to San Diego and
Jay (11:21)
Hmm.
Mmm.
Sarah (11:47)
before our meetup, I'm gonna go diving with one of my Patreon supporters. He's like the OG. He and my dad were the first people who signed up for my Patreon community. Like I'm so excited to meet David and we're gonna go boat diving and like great, you know? And the same thing with like other places I go, Monterey or Seattle or whatever, like I have these people and people reach out to me and they say that they're gonna be somewhere. And for the most part,
Jay (12:02)
Nice.
Sarah (12:16)
It goes really well. I've had one bad experience where it wasn't, it was a little creepy and I had to remove myself from the situation. But I try not to let that deter me, you know, for the most part, my experiences with meeting people online has been good. And I, yeah, yeah, it's a online thing.
Jay (12:31)
Hmm.
Ah, okay, when you said creepy, I was going, okay, is that on the surface or below the surface? Because creepy is a weird word to use underwater. So I see now it's meaning someone online turned into creepy things. Okay, gotcha, yeah.
Sarah (12:50)
Yes, yes. And that's just, for any ladies out there, that's just a reality that those of us experience when we're on the internet. And it's typically men. We know, not all men, but it's, yeah, it's something that you have to be aware of. But I do find that meeting people online is a good resource. You know, like people...
for different organizations, there are different Facebook groups. Obviously we have a Facebook group, we need to be more active in it, PS, like we're terrible at that. So we need to be more on top of that, because that could be a great resource for people to meet up and find dive buddies, right? And same goes for like, I work for Reef Check Foundation, they have Facebook groups for the different locations and that...
Jay (13:24)
kidding.
Come on, producer Daniel, get your stuff together, man.
Sarah (13:45)
Also, if you were involved with ReefCheck, that could be a way of finding buddies, right? And then the whole thing that we wanted to talk about is what to do with them, right? Like how to deal, yeah, like how to deal with this brand new person that you don't know. I have my answers and I've made a video about this too, but I'm really curious what your, what's your go -to sort of like, okay, here's this brand new person and what do you do with them?
Jay (13:56)
Yes. What do you do with them?
Yeah, well, funny enough, like I said, the last few weeks I've been diving with a lot of new folks that I met. I guess one I met through my my daughter's Girl Scouts troop, Brownies troop. He's a he mentioned he's a diver. They were here. They do the meetings here at our house. And so we get to talking about diving and we went out. And then the other one I met actually through.
Sarah (14:28)
Cute. Oh my gosh. I love it.
Jay (14:43)
business actually, you know, sending out some emails. So I guess kind of online, but he had subscribed to something and I sent out an email and he hit me back and I thought we were to get together, have coffee, talk about, you know, business and, and what's next in transitions and things like that for me. And all they want to talk about was diving, which is amazing. And he has a boat, uh, which we're going to hopefully go diving off of while you're here. Yeah. So we went out exactly. Oh, it was a blast. Um, so, but, so I have a,
Sarah (15:03)
Ka -ching, like that's what you want. That's what you want.
You never want to own the boat. You want the friend with the boat, right? I say that as someone who's looking to buy a sailboat. I want to so bad.
Jay (15:17)
Yeah, don't do it. I, I, I owned a boat for four years and a wakeboard boat. So it was our COVID relief plan, um, in Texas. And it was, it was awesome because we could go out on the lake and it was a COVID friendly, you know, activity cause it was just us and it was outside. And, uh, the, the only challenge was, you know, finding a launch ramp to launch at and, uh, and owned it, loved it. And it was true what they say, you know, the happiest days of a boat owner's life or the day you buy it and they sell it.
Sarah (15:23)
Okay. Yeah.
Yeah.
Jay (15:47)
I saw that I was happy. Like I was happy that it was off of my hands and we were moving back to California. I also was a little sad. Like I remember walking away, taking pictures of it, going like, I'm going to miss you. Like you gave us a lot of fun and okay, it's time to say goodbye. Oddly enough, total side story. The guy that ends up buying it from us, why we're in Texas, it was broker through a, through a brokerage lives like an hour and a half from me now in San Diego. And we were driving out. I could have towed the boat for him. I,
Sarah (15:56)
Awwww.
Yeah, totally.
Oh, weird.
Jay (16:17)
I'm glad I didn't do it because it would slow us down, but I could have towed the boat all the way for him. He ended up, we like passed each other on the freeway at some point, you know? He was going to pick the boat up. I was driving to our new house and it was kind of funny. But okay, to the topic.
Sarah (16:24)
Shut up. That's so funny.
That's hilarious. Okay, yeah, continue. New diver with a boat.
Jay (16:35)
So I have a couple of rules for myself I follow during diving with somebody new. And they're not like hard and fast, I need to communicate these rules to somebody else. They're just things that I hold in my mind when I'm diving with somebody new. Number one is I wanna keep the dive as simple as possible. So let's go someplace that is not a challenging or at least we think it won't be challenging.
Right? Dive somewhere that's maybe more familiar, uh, that, you know, the navigation, you know, where you are, those sorts of things, not always possible, but if possible, let's do that. And just keep the, keep the dive stupid, simple, you know, let's just do, you know, uh, turn on time or gas. Let's do a simple plan. Let's not try to, you know, fit a bunch of stuff into it and keep it just stupid, simple. That's rule number one. Rule number two for me is leave all the other stuff behind.
So I like to bring a GoPro or I've been, you know, messing with cameras and you know, all the other stuff. It's like also make your gear as simple as possible. So leave the camera behind for the, at least the first dive, leave all the other stuff behind that you're going to be fiddling with or messing with. Just take, you know, the core that you need, what you need for that simple dive and go diving. So to keep it simple, not only on the dive site and location and plan, but also from a gear perspective of what you have to think about.
And then the third rule that I follow is just to leave room in the day or whatever, you know, timeframe that you have to go diving to have conversations and don't, you know, I don't like a lot of people walk in, you know, that get trained in different ways and they're like, they have their way of dive planning and you know, you should put this over here and you should move this over here. You know, your light should be on the right side, not the left side. Uh, no, no, no stuff for me. It's like, look, we're going to our first time.
It's just, Hey, how long have you been diving? When was the last dive you took? What, what, what do you really enjoy about it? Um, where did you train and how did that go? And what do you want to do on this dive and how do you usually descend? How do you usually ascend and just leave room, not for like a pick you apart questioning, are you doing it right? Cause that's how people can feel. Uh, but more just a discussion and open conversation light, you know, in the drive down.
Sarah (18:53)
Mm -hmm.
Jay (19:00)
wherever, before you jump on the boat to kind of figure out how to best adapt what you want to do and how you're trained to their training and have it in your mind, visualize what that would look like. So those are my kind of three rules that internally I follow when I'm diving with somebody new to try and keep both of us as safe as possible in what we're doing.
Sarah (19:23)
Nice. Yeah, I have very similar kind of the, I will say that I'm more willing to take that GoPro with me even on a new one. I wouldn't take like my, my camera with like the big light and everything, but a GoPro I'll, I'll take that. But I agree keeping things simple, keeping the dives easy. I think that's the way to go.
What I always tell people is like, just have that set of questions, kind of like what you described, have that in your brain, but make it conversational, kind of touching on what you said, like to make it, to not make it feel like you're interviewing this person or you're like looking for flaws. Yes, interrogating, that's a great word. So I like knowing,
Jay (20:07)
Yeah.
interrogating them. Yeah. Yeah.
Sarah (20:22)
how many dives they have, what kind of conditions they're used to. You had said when was your last dive, where was your last dive? I like that. And then I think the really important thing is how did your last dives go? Like how did you feel, right? Because that's the, you're getting an insight into their mindset.
Jay (20:39)
That's a good question.
Sarah (20:49)
and how they're feeling, how they're probably feeling today, right? If they had a great last dive, they're probably feeling more confident, their stress levels are lower. Whereas if they had something, maybe it was a tricky exit and they got tossed around a bit or whatever, like they could be, you can kind of gauge their nerve levels, right? And that gives you good information, especially if you do happen to be like the more experienced person in the dive team.
Jay (21:11)
Yeah.
Sarah (21:19)
you can be like, okay, I got you. And not in like a, not in like a judgy kind of way that that might sound like. It's more like I'm gonna take, like I'm gonna be there for you. You know, not that you need to rely on me, but I'm gonna take extra care to like check out the situation and make sure that you're doing all right. I think that's where my instructor brain comes on in this.
Jay (21:22)
Mm -hmm.
Mm -hmm.
Mm.
Sarah (21:47)
where I obviously don't want to take away somebody's autonomy or they need to be a fully functional diver, right? But I'm going to be in that mode, right? If somebody is kind of a little bit shaky.
So that's what I go with. I think knowing the how is like, how did it go? How did you feel in your last dives is a really important thing to know.
Jay (22:19)
Yeah, that's a really good point. So I think that's kind of the surface. And I mean, you can also add in there in your own head, you know, observing how they set up their gear, not like hawking them, right? Like standing there with your arms crossed, like, you know, oh, did you set that up right? But I mean, you know, you can see with your own eyes, do they feel comfortable? Are they feeling rushed? Are they feeling like, where does this thing go again?
Sarah (22:30)
Mm -hmm.
No, my gosh, can you imagine?
Mm -hmm.
Jay (22:46)
You know, how do they set up the gear? How do they handle themselves on the shore or on the boat before you're about to get in the water? It's a good indication of, of the state of mind. And I think a more experienced diver can step in if you're seeing someone get flustered, you're seeing someone kind of get out of control, like what you're saying and step in and say, Hey, like I got you. We, there's no rush. No worries. Cause sometimes, you know, less experienced divers can feel the pressure that they don't want to ruin.
Sarah (23:08)
Yeah.
Jay (23:15)
your dive, Sarah, or my dive, Jay, or the other person. So I always kind of just reassure them, look, I'm in no time schedule. I just want to be under the water. I don't care if all we do is sit on the upline. Like I'm under the water. I'm in my happy place. It doesn't matter.
Sarah (23:15)
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Yeah.
Yeah. No, that's, that's huge. That is huge because I felt that too. Like when I first got into diving in California, diving from the shore is a different beast than boat diving, you know, and there are a lot of times where, you know, you're like overheating and you're like trying to get all your stuff on and get into the water and like breathing harder. And it takes an amount of like, uh,
willingness, I think, as a diver to be like, Hey guys, I need a beat. Like, I need, I need to take a minute. Is that okay? And hopefully everybody is cool because we should be right. Like we shouldn't judge anybody if somebody needs an extra minute to, yeah, should. Um, but like that, it takes a lot of, I think it takes a lot of courage because, and I've been seeing a lot of this kind of discussion in the comments of my latest video, cause I talked about fear.
Jay (24:03)
Mm -hmm.
You should.
Sarah (24:28)
and anxiety, because I'm somebody that I've struggled with that in my life. And it takes a lot to be able to speak up and say like, hey, I'm feeling nervous or like this, that or the other thing, right? Like I had to do that with this cave dive that I did with a stranger. I let him know like, hey, I'm not the most confident cave diver. Like I've done this refresher course and everything, but like...
Jay (24:30)
Mm -hmm.
Sarah (24:56)
I'm still very new to this. I'm coming at it with this, like, I'm very new to this. And I think that can also be part of like understanding the green flags for new divers. Like if you're that nervous diver and you share that with your buddy and they come at it with like a, hey, it's all good. Like we're gonna go out and have a chill time or whatever. Or if they kind of give you that eye roll and like,
resistance, yeah, then you're like, you can pinpoint it like, I don't need to dive with you. Like this is not a relationship that I wanna have. Yeah. Yeah.
Jay (25:26)
Get your stuff together. Yeah.
Yeah. Or that, or that requires an extra beat, right? Okay. Like I need more time. Yeah. And that, and that kind of knife cuts both ways in some ways that as the more experienced diver, you can feel pressure that you need to have all your stuff together and be squared away and all those things. And you might need a minute. Right. I mean, I was just on a boat. I was literally on a boat. Like I was saying, my, my new, um,
Sarah (25:55)
That's the thing, we're all, yeah.
Jay (26:03)
you know, dive buddy or teammate that we went on. And it's a little boat and I didn't take my dramamine. I didn't remember the night before, so I took it that morning and I was fine until we anchored up and I was sitting there helping put gear together and just the rocking of the boat. All of a sudden I was just like, oh, and he was kind of ready to go, you know, about ready to go. And I was like, Hey, I need a minute. Uh, cause I'm feeling.
Sarah (26:10)
Oh no.
Jay (26:30)
a little nauseous and I'm surprised I'm feeling nauseous, but I am. And so I just need a minute and I need to get myself geared away because I know the solution to this is to get in the water, but I need a minute to get my gear on and get sorted. And I've never done it on your boat before. So, you know, all this stuff I'm in doubles and he's, you know, in a singles. And so I think, I think in general, it's really good to.
Sarah (26:34)
Yeah.
Yes.
Jay (26:56)
take that beat. We talked about being mentally fit for the dive, mentally ready, switched on. And that can switch both ways. On one end, if you're the new diver, you might feel the pressure of not ruining someone else's dive. If you're the more experienced diver on the team, you may feel the pressure to be perfect or get it all right or have all the answers. And you might need a minute. And so I think it's important to just come together in those, you know, pre -dive moments and make sure check in.
take a beat, like you say, before you're diving with someone new. I mean, you're going into a risky environment with someone you've never done it before with, and that inherently creates more risk. So I think that's good advice.
Sarah (27:35)
Yeah. I think also like we're hearing a lot of, I don't know, in this conversation of like sort of expectations, I think on both sides of like being a newer diver, being more experienced diver, like I think we all need to come into these situations with kind of trying to have sort of a clean slate.
Jay (27:49)
Mm -hmm.
Sarah (28:00)
Right? Like understanding where each person's experiences and where their mind state is, but like just giving both, both people or all of the people on the team grace, right? Because every day is going to be different. Like we both have a decent amount of dives, but we have bad days, right? So like it happens and every day is a new adventure.
Jay (28:12)
Mm -hmm.
Oh yeah.
Sarah (28:28)
So like coming into it, especially when diving with new people with this mentality of like, this is a new experience for everybody and we're all just here to take care of each other. Like, I think that's like a good way of going about it.
Jay (28:40)
Mm -hmm.
Yeah, I absolutely agree. And I think too that, that we kind of covered some of the, you know, in the truck or on the way we talk about setting up gear, trying to get in the water. I think there's also that beat once you get in the water, because at the end of the day, the water doesn't lie. I always say that once you're in the water, I mean, you tell me your whole story in five minutes of me seeing you in the water and me too. I tell you my whole story in five minutes of seeing you in the water. So, you know,
There are two things to keep in mind when diving with somebody new and diving in general, but especially when there's someone new. One is the most likely place for something to go wrong on a dive, whether it be gear or it be something else, the ears or whatever it would be is at the start of the dive. And so descending together slowly in a very controlled way, you know, having a plan for that super, super important, you know, to be super switched on for that first moment.
Um, you know, first few moments on the water and then two is, is then observing the whole diver. That was something that just kept on being pounded into me throughout all of my training was see the whole diver. And sometimes you don't, sometimes you're just looking for the, you know, the okay. And you're not observing the whole diver. You're not seeing the whole thing. And, you know, sometimes it's as obvious as, Hey, there's a big bubble leak going on, you know, and like, you didn't see it because you're just looking for the okay.
Sarah (30:00)
Mmm.
Right.
Jay (30:12)
Sometimes it's a little more nuanced where you see in the face, holy crap, you know, that, that those big eyes that fear, um, or you see just like, you know, fumbling with gear and not quite sure what button to press and things. And when you're in that state where you say, okay, we're going to descend into control manner and I'm going to be super switched on and observe it right now. Cause I need to be an observed the whole diver. A lot of what can go sideways in that dive can be caught.
Sarah (30:16)
Oh yeah. Yep.
Jay (30:39)
In those first few minutes, not everything, but obviously the majority of, or the highest likelihood of something could be caught in those first few minutes. So that's something again, I try to do is make sure I'm switched on. As soon as we say, Hey, we're going down. Great. I'm going to pace you and I'm going to follow you. And in fact, I just did this, um, with, with another person I was diving brand new with who, okay, we go down visibility was decent at the surface, five feet down. There it goes.
Sarah (30:40)
Mm -hmm.
Absolutely.
Oh shoot.
Jay (31:09)
And I'm looking and I'm looking and I'm stopping and I'm like, okay, I don't see him. I don't see his silhouette. Where'd he go? So I dropped down a little bit farther. I don't see him like, okay, either he's back on the surface or he drifted away somewhere. I don't know. So I'm going to take a, take a little helicopter turn all the way around. Take a look to see if I see him. Okay. I don't. I'm going to come back to the surface and see if he's there. And if not, Oh my gosh. And the first two minutes of diving with this guy, we lost him.
Sarah (31:38)
Oh my God.
Jay (31:39)
And, uh, and so of course I, I did that. It came back up to the surface and he was swimming back towards the boat saying, Oh, I need more weight. Okay. You know, I thought, I thought that's going be something like that. But again, I had that panic moment of just like, Holy crap, where'd he go? Cause I didn't, didn't see him. Um, you know, so the next time we, we descended, I made sure I was like at eye level with him, almost like trying to grab his hands, you know, like so I could go.
Sarah (31:55)
Yeah. Yeah.
And that, yeah, that you can make that contact if you need to, right? Not that you need to like be holding onto him necessarily, but just being able to do that. I think that's wildly helpful, especially in low visibility. That's a great point. That's a great point. The beginning of the dive is always a tricky part, especially with somebody who's maybe diving with new gear or hasn't been diving in a while.
It's also like, and I noticed this with some buddies, really important with a new buddy. And we should probably be better about this just in general. And I say this as the solo diver who probably isn't the best all the time, but we should be more like.
more aware, right? Like, I feel like there's a lot of us that kind of get sucked into whatever we wanna do during the dive, like especially those of us with cameras, and we probably drift too far away from our buddies. And so when diving, especially with new buddies, I think making that distance that you...
Jay (33:09)
Mm -hmm.
Sarah (33:16)
you know, that you stick together just in case something happens. I mean, again, we should be better about it in general so that because things can happen with people that you dive all the time with, right? Like you can have an out of air situation, equipment failure or whatever. So we should be better about being closer and paying attention to our buddies, but especially with somebody who's new.
Jay (33:25)
Yeah.
Yeah, that's a good point. It's funny because, uh, you know, it's a long story, so we could tell it on a different podcast. But back in the day, when I was first diving, um, I remember I was using a transmitter for the, the gas, right? You know, transmitted the amount of gas you had in a tank or two tanks, whatever tanks you had. And I remember, um, that being really convenient because it was all right there on my wrist.
and think about it, so on and so forth. But I also found myself becoming very internally focused on myself. So when I removed that and I started to try and train myself around this idea of a five minute groom as how I kind of think about it. But every five minutes, right in the dive, I should groom. I should start, this is kind of what I do every dive now is, okay, first of all, how am I feeling?
Sarah (34:12)
Mm.
Jay (34:35)
Am I okay? Am I warm? Am I cold? Where's my brain? Right. How much gas do I think I have? All right. Let's check the SPG to confirm. What depth and direction do I think we are right now? Let's check my compass and my depth gauge to confirm. Okay, good. And then let me just groom my gear. It's long hose straight, my lights on, my pockets closed, everything good to go. All right. Good. That's me. Now let's move to the team. Can I see the team? Can the team see me?
Let me observe the whole diver. How's the diver doing? I don't need to communicate. Hey, are you okay? Every five minutes I can just observe. And if something, you know, looks off or something, you know, piques my interest that I can say, Hey, you know, check in with that diver. Are we okay? And whatever it be. And then finally check the environment. Hey, what's going on around me? You know, like, uh, you know, as a current that picked up, you know, how's the sand if I'm on the bottom looking at sand, you know, is it still in the right direction? Um, how's the topography changed?
And it turns into a little 30 second little, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that. Okay. Good to go. And it's funny because I really tried to train myself around that five minutes, um, uh, early on, uh, in my diving. And now it's almost like a habit. It's almost like I looked down at my, my timer and it's four minutes and 58 seconds. And I'm like, Oh, yep. It's time. And I looked down again and it's nine minutes and 45 seconds. Like it just, it just happens in your brain somehow. And I think that's a good habit.
Sarah (35:39)
Mm.
Jay (36:03)
to get into, you know, regardless of what you're doing, you can be really locked into a camera for five minutes. But then when that little, you know, ding -a -lee bell goes off in the back of your head, the timer that internally is hitting you in the back of the head said, hey, pay attention. Okay, let's do a quick room. Let's check. Boom. Oh man, I'm pretty far away from that teammate. I can't see him. Hey, how do I get their attention? Or maybe I should go over there or whatever it would be. But it was a nice little trick and habit that I got into.
that's really helped me in my diving and, you know, could be valuable to others.
Sarah (36:35)
Absolutely. No, I think that's good. I will admit that I'm not that disciplined, but it's good. That's a good practice to have. I find that I'm very much into that when it comes to conditions. Again, because I am diving by myself, I'm very cautious. Like I plan my dive super conservatively, you know, looking at the tide charts and making sure that a current is gonna
Jay (36:42)
Hahaha.
Sarah (37:05)
whip me away off into nothing land. So that for me is my check. It's like I'm always watching what's going on, how the surge is feeling. If I'm in a place where there is currents, like what are the fish doing? You know, that's something I'm gonna head back to Komodo in June. I'm taking a group there, which I still have spots if you wanna join. Go to Komodo, it's gonna be amazing. But that place, man.
Jay (37:06)
Ha ha.
Mm -hmm.
Mmm, go to Komodo.
Sarah (37:35)
Woo, woo, things can change real quick. Like it's wild. And if you're paying attention, you can see it coming because the fish don't lie. You know, you'll see their direction change and you are like, okay, oh, we're like, there's a down current. Let's not go there, right? They'll just disappear from an area or you'll see them.
Jay (37:40)
Hahaha.
Yeah.
Mm -hmm.
Sarah (38:05)
you know, swimming up against it and then trying to get out of it. And you're like, oh, that's a place where I don't want to be. So, yeah, that's that's where I end up spending a lot more of my time in the checks. But I think that's something that I like, I want to develop more of, especially now that I do have a community online and I am diving with people more often. I want to be more clued in.
Jay (38:11)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.
Sarah (38:32)
Like that was my wake up call from my cave diving refresher. Like just need to be more on when fun diving because things can happen anytime. And I'm not always gonna be able to solve my own problems and other people are there for a reason. So, well, I think, yeah.
Jay (38:33)
Mm -hmm.
Mm -hmm. Yeah.
Right, right. Yeah, it's, it's a, no, just to add to, to your point there too, is the layers that get added into your sphere of, of consciousness, right? Throughout a dive, um, everything from, you know, thermal comfort to, like you said, conditions. I just got barrel rolled in a, in a nasty surge. Um,
Sarah (39:21)
Oh no.
Jay (39:22)
Because I was paying more attention to where the other teammate had gone and all of a sudden, you know that moment where you're underwater and the sun goes away. You just know that's a big wave that just crashed on top of my head. And everything just went white, completely white. It was just like, boom, can't see anything, pushing towards the wrong rocks, right? The whole thing.
Sarah (39:29)
Uh...
Jay (39:50)
And you just go like, Oh man, I'm in a bad situation here that I need to rectify very quickly. And you start like fighting to try to get back away from where the, where that current or where that surge is pushing you. And so again, that, that alertness is really important, not only for, you know, I was probably being too alert of how somebody else doing.
Sarah (40:15)
That's what I was gonna say. That's what I was gonna say. It's kind of like the rescue course where you teach your students like you gotta take care of you first, right? Because you don't wanna create more victims in an accident. So you need to check in with yourself and make sure that you're good and then focus on the other person. So that's a great point. That's a good learning lesson.
Jay (40:24)
Mm -hmm.
Yeah. Yeah. No, it was tough. I mean, cause I was, I was making sure the other person was okay. And I'm like, Hey, I'll take this side because I know this is going to push towards the rocks. And so I'll take the harder spot and I'll, you know, just thinking it through. But all I was thinking about was is he okay? And then all of a sudden, boom, there I go into the rocks and the lifeguards yelling at me, Hey, you know, get out of the rocks. Like, I know, I know I'm trying, you know, like, um, and so again, it's a good point.
Sarah (40:52)
Right.
Yeah. Oh god.
Jay (41:03)
could have created a victim, me, by not paying attention to me. So it's just kind of an extra add -on point that there's a lot to focus on on a dive. And maybe that wasn't the best location to take a first dive together, but you live and learn.
Sarah (41:06)
Yeah. Yeah.
Well, and maybe like looking back on that situation, maybe it would have been better. I always tell people slow down, like slow down. And we've been saying this in the podcast for a long time when it comes to like taking courses and everything slow down. But this also applies to diving in general, just going on a dive, like slow down. I was talking to somebody in the comments on one of my videos who had made a mistake, like newer diver.
had messed up and shot to the surface, scary. Totally fine, but embarrassed, right? Because made the mistake and whatever. But I shared that, you know, it's, you're okay. It's something that you learn from. And now do things slower, right? Because then you can be more mindful. You can be more present with like, what's going on. And maybe in that situation where you were,
Jay (41:52)
Hmm. Yeah.
Mm -hmm.
Sarah (42:17)
doing the exit, if you had just let the guy exit in the good place and then waited a little bit, watch the waves, right? Watch the series go through and then exit in the same spot, just get out later, right? So it's like a lot of our problems can also be solved just by slowing down and being really present with what's going on in the moment.
Jay (42:30)
Yeah. Yep.
Yep.
Yeah, yeah. And having the presence of mind in those situations where it was unexpected that those swells were coming in, to then, you know, it should trigger to say, okay, now slow down, think, right? You know, breathe, whatever those things are. And it's hard to do in the moment, but I totally agree with you. I think that's a really important lesson.
Sarah (42:52)
Yeah. Yeah.
Exactly.
Yeah, cool. Well, I think hopefully this was helpful for people. I feel like everybody's always looking for new dive buddies or you're on a boat and you're getting that Insta buddy sort of situation and it's good to know what questions to ask. So I don't know, I like this. I liked where the suggestions that you gave too, because I'm always learning from other people too.
Jay (43:20)
Yeah.
Yeah, maybe just to tie a bow on this one. I think the last piece of diving with somebody new as well is, is to then after the dive, talk about how it went, right? Talk about how it went. Talk about, you know, did you feel comfortable in that moment? Did I read that correctly that you were struggling with this or, or that whatever it would be and, and talk about maybe without critique, Hey, you shouldn't have done this or you shouldn't have done that. I wish you did this.
Sarah (43:37)
Yes. Yes.
Great point.
Jay (43:54)
That, that can happen. If emotionally you have a tough dive, emotions get really hot. Um, maybe after the dive, you can come across that way, but always kind of talk about it and, and try to improve, Hey, how could we have done that better? Not you need to do this better next time, but how could we have been better as a team? And that's what builds that relationship and that confidence in one another to get under the water again is the conversations that happen after. And I also think go to go to, you know,
Sarah (44:08)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.
Yes.
Jay (44:24)
pizza, go grab a bite to eat, go have a beer with the person, whatever it is that you're into. Spend time building relationships outside of just the diving. And I think that those two things go a long way to ultimately building a new team or getting comfortable with diving with new people.
Sarah (44:26)
Yeah.
Absolutely, I'm glad you mentioned that because the debriefing is hugely important. It's probably the most important part of the whole process. That's good.
Jay (44:53)
It can be, it can be. And like I said, and you have to make a decision at the end of that, at some point, whether you'll dive with them again. And that's a very personal decision. And that can be based on whatever criteria, hey, if you don't like hanging out with the person after the dive, diving is, you know, hours in the truck and gear and everything for a half an hour and a half an hour underwater type of thing, you know? And so, you know, be critical about who you...
Sarah (45:16)
Yeah.
Jay (45:20)
end up diving with on a more regular basis and who becomes part of your real team. But I would say, but remain open to diving with new people all the time, because that's how you discover, you know, new people and new joys and they open up, you know, they might be really into wreck diving and you weren't really thinking about it, but man, you'll go along and wow, I really enjoyed wreck diving or whatever it would be. So I think that slow down, calm down and be open, but also be discerning about how you move forward is really important.
Sarah (45:48)
Well, yeah, I mean, we're all out here to have a good time. So if you're not enjoying the people that you're diving with, like, why? Why keep doing it? You know, like, there are so many...
Jay (45:56)
Because I have no one else Sarah, I'm kidding. I'm totally kidding
Sarah (46:03)
desperate. I need dive buddies. We're gonna do it. We're gonna find a good community. Come diving with us whenever we're in San Diego. Do it.
Jay (46:11)
Yes. April 7th, April 7th, eight. Oh, it's good to mention too. I had someone made the comment. We'll be there all day. So if you can't make it at 8 AM, no worries. Just come whenever you can. I mean, if you show up at five o 'clock, yeah, we probably aren't going to be there at five o 'clock in the afternoon, but you know, the ceremony still be there. Who knows what's going to happen. Uh, uh, but at the very least, you know, show up, bring your gear, go diving.
Sarah (46:24)
I'll have my van.
I might still be there.
Jay (46:38)
I mean, I'm going to make sure we have plenty of tanks to go out and have fun and do multiple days of diving. No, I'm not providing tanks. I'm for me. Sorry. Yeah. Not providing any gear or any instruction or any, any, any, any.
Sarah (46:43)
But you're not providing tanks, right? Okay, so yeah, make that clear. Everybody has to bring their gear. Yeah. We're just gonna hang out. I'm gonna make some coffee and we'll just see how the day goes. But...
Jay (47:03)
And I think we're going to record an episode throughout the day. So a mobile little episode. And so if you want to be on the show, show up. We'll have our little mobile microphones out there and having some fun. It is, it's going to be wow. Who knows how this is going to go. And it might just be you and me. So here we are sitting by ourselves. We have no friends. The ocean didn't come, you know, uh,
Sarah (47:06)
Yeah!
Oh, this is gonna go wild.
It might. I'm okay with that, you know? It's all good. We have no friends. It's cool.
Jay (47:30)
the bear today because we can't go diving because of king tide. We're just sitting here in Sarah's van wishing of what could have been.
Sarah (47:38)
Hey, I have a good time every time I'm in La Jolla shores. So whatever ends up happening, it's gonna be fun. We'll fly a drone. I don't know. We'll have drinks and food and stuff. It'll be good. All right, shall we call it? You know where to find us. We have a website, emails. I guess I should actually say it, right?
Jay (47:47)
Have fun.
Yes.
It's up to you. I don't, yeah. I think we're supposed to record a whole promo for the end of this that we just, we haven't gotten to yet, but we will at some point.
Sarah (48:11)
We're terrible at this, man. Divetable .com, right? That's the Divetable .com. Reach out to us. We have a Facebook group that we're gonna try to be more active in. And I'm nailing this.
Jay (48:15)
The dive table, yeah.
This is like our list of things we wish we did better. I wish I was better at math as well. I'll just put it out there.
Sarah (48:36)
We're gonna add to this, this is terrible. We're gonna get our act together at some point. Actually, I don't know, I think it's kind of, hopefully it's endearing.
Jay (48:43)
Hopefully we don't, hopefully, hopefully we just continue down the path we're going and get better at having conversations. I don't know. But yes, go to the website, send us an email, show up in San Diego if you can. And yeah, that's.
Sarah (49:00)
Okay, I love you, bye.
