Morning all...I see my name being bandied about...
Firstly, my credentials: 20 years caving (horizontal, vertical, digging, mapping, photography, camping, blowing things up), 15 years cave (sump) diving. 460+ cave dives. Nitrox, trimix, scooter, homebuilt rebreather - never done a course in my life. Secretary of Welsh Section Cave Diving Group and one of its examiners. World's Greatest Stroke. However, I speak for myself...as if I had to tell you that.
Secondly, I'm not an expert on DIR but I've read JJ's book. I'm not going to preach to the converted, but from what I understand there are two aspects to DIR - a Hogarthian rig and a team-based, healthy lifestyle diving ethos. I can't pretend that I don't smoke, drink to excess and fool around with women but I recognise that a high standard of physical fitness is required for this activity. My last trip (Saturday) was a 9.5 hour "tourist trip" beyond 4 sumps (none longer than 60 ft). The first sump was 2 miles from daylight and we (4) carried all our gear (a single set of a 21 cu ft cylinder/regulator etc. each) into and out of the cave Alpine style. I don't see anyone doing that with doubles.
However, the team based approach works. We all dived solo, one after the other through each sump - in fact we had to dig out two sumps to pass them. Buddy diving would not work, but I think that you will agree that we were "Doing it Right" under the conditions we were faced with.
Now, using the above as an example, was our gear Hogarthian? We wore:
* a single 21 cu ft cylinder side-slung from a caving belt which also carried a battery pack for a headlight.
* wetsuit hood, mask, gloves, dive knife.
* dive torch (on helmet) in addition to caving light.
* 5 mm caving wetsuit, wellington boots (no fins).
* only one person wore lead, a couple of people had safety reels but to be honest you'd have a hard time loosing the line (8 mm climbing rope by the way).
I guess that you'd consider this pretty minimalist = Hogarthian.
I hope that you'd still agree that we were "Doing it Right" - under the circumstances. I've heard it said that "if you can't dive DIR then you shouldn't be there". It might not be DIR as you know it, but we wanted to be there and adopted the most appropriate strategy for getting on the with job. Just because man doesn't have gills does mean he shouldn't dive - humans have brains to enable them to build SCUBA gear. The UK style of sump diving has evolved to accomodate the particular conditions faced by the British Cave diver in the same way that the style of cave diving promoted by GUE has evolved to suit conditions in Florida.
I'm not big on records. Pursuit of glory tends to shorten one's life. I will however give due credit to the explorers of Wakulla (and also Cocklebiddy - which is longer) for finding the means to perform these feats of human endevour. There are plenty of other cave divers who have done things more extreme but maybe not as long and/or deep.
mind how you go...
Duncan
PS. I'm up for a trip to Kentucky with my mates...