I've been reading/learning a lot here since our we bought our tandem 2 years ago and I appreciate everyone's point of view, but I haven't come across any posts about "bottle etiquette" on a tandem.
Typically, on rides where we don't use camel-baks, I call to my stoker wife "Drink!" - this way she knows why the bike might stray a bit while I reach down to grab a water bottle. Obviously, she calls out her "drinks" also so I know why things might get squirrelly back there. As I learned here, communication is key on a tandem!
However, this past weekend we were on a longer (non camel-bak) ride, and I was out of fluids, but she had plenty of water back there, so I'd call out a drink and she would hand up one of her bottles to me and I'd hand it back when I'm done.
In doing so, I noticed the bike doesn't wiggle much at all when I reach back to take the bottle from her, and in the entire procedure, we don't lose nearly as much speed when captain's drinks are taken this way compared to when I reach down to get, drink, and reach down to replace. Three rides later, all water now comes from the stoker. When she has an empty bottle, then, and only then, do I reach down to get a bottle. I give her the fresh one and I take the empty bottle and put it in one of my cages.
So, if you are a tandem team with your spouse/significant other, do you share water bottles? Or would you view this bottle sharing thing as me being a lazy captain who won't get his own water?
This assumes captain and stoker have similar drink preferences - i.e. water, flavored energy drink, etc.
Just curious how odd/similar our team's rides are compared to others
D