Have You Saved A Buddy While Ab Diving????

With all the talk about diving with a buddy I would like to hear some first hand stories from people who have actually saved/rescued their buddy from a life or death situation while ab diving.
Personally I like to dive solo. That way I only have one person to worry about. The only people I have ever had to help are inexperienced or out of shape or both. I didn't even set out diving with them. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time for them.
When I do dive with friends all are extremely experienced. We swim/paddle out together, work the same area together but rarely see each other until someone is swimming/paddling back.
If you are new to diving DEFINITELY go with someone. If you have years of experience and are realistic about your abilities in diving and evaluating the situation you are in then I say diving alone is OK.

Not yet. Wanna go?

No but Fuzz did try to help me find my lost snorkel on my first time out.

Tote you have dove with me....and I am inexperienced and out of shape. 

-Brian G

no, but got lots of back country skiing tales of rescue to tell, myself being dug out once, always glad to have experienced people with me, but i am usually a solo person, water or frozen water, just the way i have been, must be an only child trait,  , cameron

Tote you have dove with me....and I am inexperienced and out of shape. 
-Brian G

Yea I remember.
Here's a pic of you, Abman and me diving "together".
I think I saw the both of you as were were paddling out and back in.
Except when I was resting on my yak and heard Abman yell out that he found another treasure that day.
Even though we were "together" we were all essentially on our own.

Tote, I've never ab dove, but I love that picture.  Captures so much of what I enjoy about being on the water on a yak in the California coast.

I never claimed to have saved a life but ten years ago while diving at still water north I cut a friend out of some fishing line that was keeping him about two feet from the surface. It was a super clear day and I had seen some Flo yellow line snagged in the rocks in about 10-12 ft water and watched from the surface as my buddy swam along the tops of some rocks and just as he turned to come up a loop of line caught his fin strap buckle and he kicked and kicked to go up and the mono just stretched  and tugged him back down until I swam down and cut him loose and then called him a "dip chit" for not watching for fishing line that glowed in the sun line a Chem sick in the dark.

Visibility is usually too poor to have sufficient awareness of your buddy to help them out if they get in trouble underwater.  I have retrieved a number of weight belts and freed a stuck anchor, but the person was not in danger...  

I have one about a buddy of mine that was working on a ten incher in about 15ft of water and when he finally surfaced with it and took his first breath he imadatly started to black out and go under. Thank god I was there to witness this happening. The first thing that stood out to me was when he surfaced his eyes had a weird look to them and once he took that first breath they did a loopty loop and out  he went and started to go underwater. I was right close so I just stuck my hands in his armpits and held him above the water and talked to him till he came back to the planet. I have another one that happend to me while I was scuba diving with a buddy up in mendo. A little back round on when me and my budds scuba, we hit the bottom and do the buddy check then go our own way. With that said We were started out in 80ft of water but mainly workered and hunted in about 65ft of water speering and had ben down for about 25 minutes, and all of a sudden I feel a bng tug on my fin as I am about to shoot a big red vermilion, so in a scared panic I turn around expecting to see a seal or wrose but to find one of my buddies with eyes the size of half dollrs giving me the no air sign ! so I pass ed him my octo and we headed up

I've never saved anyone while diving, although i have done that a few times as a surfer.

Tote, I'm glad to read that someone else has the same freediving habits as me.  I go solo often...and enjoy it.  Even when I go out with folks, no one really knows where I am...and I'm not that good about knowing where they are.  I try to keep an eye out, but i suck at it.  Adult attention deficit disorder.

I'm not a very good buddy.  i'm good while SCUBA diving though.

I'm not a very good buddy.  i'm good while SCUBA diving though.

Ditto. I dive WAY different while SCUBA w/a buddy although I have gone alone then too.
Some great points have been made here on both sides of the arguement.
The one that stuck with me the most though is getting caught in fishing line. I no longer wear a knife because that was the one thing that always gets caught on the kelp no matter where I wear it.
It did get me to thinking tho. What if I got caught up in some line I didn't see?
Solution....I made a line cutter on my ab iron. I know somewhere in the regs it says you can't have a sharp edge on your iron but I think this would be OK.
I took a chain saw file and put it in my drill. Below is the result and it cut some tuna line with no probs.

I have never saved a life out there. Helped calm down a few situations though. I dive with a flag so my homies know where I'm at and vise versa. See you out there?