Full Cave Training With GDI
Or
Oh my God, they killed Ricky (again)!
Those B***ards
What are the odds?
What are the odds of two cave divers losing all three of their lights on the same day. Gotta’ be something like a billion to one, right? But that is exactly what happened. On the first dive of the day, Vickie’s primary light started to flicker, and neither of her backup lights worked properly. That caused us to have to climb out of a 30 foot hole, lugging out our double steel tanks.
That was fluky enough, but just a minute ago, my primary light started acting like a 70s disco strobe; literally blinking on and off twice a second. I was second diver in a team of four. I signaled Vickie in the lea, she saw my psychedelic canister light and my upturned thumb, “time to head out.” She returned the thumb signal and we turned around.
Little did I know that within a couple of minutes, both my (very expensive) backup lights would fail to strike. That can’t be good. This wasn’t a training exercise, it was real. Now it’s time to apply what we’ve learned to get ourselves out of this cave safely!
Finishing Up Cave Training (hopefully)
I completed my cavern and intro-to-cave course in November of 2006. Frankly, I found intro perhaps the most difficult instruction I had ever undertaken; it was tougher than boot camp; learning to pilot an air plane; skydiving or bungee diving. It was both physically demanding and required intense mental focus. I had originally wanted to go all the way through full cave at the same time but that turned out to be impractical.
So, here I am, a few months later suiting up to go back into the Florida caves with Rick from Genesis Diving Institute, hopefully to complete my cave diving instruction. I had traveled from my home in New England the day before. Because I was planning to take another course after finishing up my cave work, (no sea grass growing under these fins) I had brought three boxes of gear. Traveling was surprisingly smooth and here I was, back at The Ginnie Springs Devil System, donning a dry suit and slipping into a set of double steel 120s. I was happily surprised at how everything was coming back to me…or so I thought.
Before getting suited up, we sat at a picnic table and reviewed procedures, gas matching and the dive plan. This was significantly different from the preparation regime for the cavern or intro courses. We were planning to make jumps between cave lines, something not done in the intro course. We were going to make a circuit at Ginnie Springs, or at least as much of a circuit as one-third of our air would allow.
We did some review line work around the trees and practiced tying off a jump reel before actually getting wet. That went well and I felt reasonably confident about the coming dive. Rick from GDI was teaching the class; the other student was a wonderful woman named Vickie. Her husband Bryan is fully cave certified but as it turned out, he would not be diving today. That was a disappointment. He did eventually dive with us and by the end of the course, Bryan’s tips proved invaluable to me.
Loaded with gear, we hiked the relatively short distance to the water. Sadly, the double 120s were still as heavy as the last time I’d had them strapped to my back. I was sort of hoping they might have somehow magically gotten lighter. Of course, this is akin to taking a sniff of milk, discovering it is sour and putting it back it the refrigerator hoping it turns fresh tomorrow. Still, hope springs eternal.
We slipped into the water, and made our pre-dive checks, matched gas and did a bubble check. On the way to the “ear” (the drop down to the cave itself) we performed out of air drills. This is one of the most significant differences between cave diving and open water diving; when going into a cave, we practice the most critical emergency skills each and every time. I’ve come to believe that should be standard for all open water dives, something I’ll be discussing with my regular dive buddies. As we all know, in a crisis, it is the poorly learned survival skills that desert us first. (During training in a different course the next week, a real life incident proved how critical this training is, but that’s another story.)
Because of the nature of this course, I am not going to write about each dive. Rather, I will touch on some of the more interesting dives (and there were a couple that were very interesting) and deal with more of the philosophy of the course.
I've posted the entire report at the link below to avoid having to break it up into several posts here--JT
http://www.atomicpirate.com/Reports/2007/fullcavereport.html
Or
Oh my God, they killed Ricky (again)!
Those B***ards
What are the odds?
What are the odds of two cave divers losing all three of their lights on the same day. Gotta’ be something like a billion to one, right? But that is exactly what happened. On the first dive of the day, Vickie’s primary light started to flicker, and neither of her backup lights worked properly. That caused us to have to climb out of a 30 foot hole, lugging out our double steel tanks.
That was fluky enough, but just a minute ago, my primary light started acting like a 70s disco strobe; literally blinking on and off twice a second. I was second diver in a team of four. I signaled Vickie in the lea, she saw my psychedelic canister light and my upturned thumb, “time to head out.” She returned the thumb signal and we turned around.
Little did I know that within a couple of minutes, both my (very expensive) backup lights would fail to strike. That can’t be good. This wasn’t a training exercise, it was real. Now it’s time to apply what we’ve learned to get ourselves out of this cave safely!
Finishing Up Cave Training (hopefully)
I completed my cavern and intro-to-cave course in November of 2006. Frankly, I found intro perhaps the most difficult instruction I had ever undertaken; it was tougher than boot camp; learning to pilot an air plane; skydiving or bungee diving. It was both physically demanding and required intense mental focus. I had originally wanted to go all the way through full cave at the same time but that turned out to be impractical.
So, here I am, a few months later suiting up to go back into the Florida caves with Rick from Genesis Diving Institute, hopefully to complete my cave diving instruction. I had traveled from my home in New England the day before. Because I was planning to take another course after finishing up my cave work, (no sea grass growing under these fins) I had brought three boxes of gear. Traveling was surprisingly smooth and here I was, back at The Ginnie Springs Devil System, donning a dry suit and slipping into a set of double steel 120s. I was happily surprised at how everything was coming back to me…or so I thought.
Before getting suited up, we sat at a picnic table and reviewed procedures, gas matching and the dive plan. This was significantly different from the preparation regime for the cavern or intro courses. We were planning to make jumps between cave lines, something not done in the intro course. We were going to make a circuit at Ginnie Springs, or at least as much of a circuit as one-third of our air would allow.
We did some review line work around the trees and practiced tying off a jump reel before actually getting wet. That went well and I felt reasonably confident about the coming dive. Rick from GDI was teaching the class; the other student was a wonderful woman named Vickie. Her husband Bryan is fully cave certified but as it turned out, he would not be diving today. That was a disappointment. He did eventually dive with us and by the end of the course, Bryan’s tips proved invaluable to me.
Loaded with gear, we hiked the relatively short distance to the water. Sadly, the double 120s were still as heavy as the last time I’d had them strapped to my back. I was sort of hoping they might have somehow magically gotten lighter. Of course, this is akin to taking a sniff of milk, discovering it is sour and putting it back it the refrigerator hoping it turns fresh tomorrow. Still, hope springs eternal.
We slipped into the water, and made our pre-dive checks, matched gas and did a bubble check. On the way to the “ear” (the drop down to the cave itself) we performed out of air drills. This is one of the most significant differences between cave diving and open water diving; when going into a cave, we practice the most critical emergency skills each and every time. I’ve come to believe that should be standard for all open water dives, something I’ll be discussing with my regular dive buddies. As we all know, in a crisis, it is the poorly learned survival skills that desert us first. (During training in a different course the next week, a real life incident proved how critical this training is, but that’s another story.)
Because of the nature of this course, I am not going to write about each dive. Rather, I will touch on some of the more interesting dives (and there were a couple that were very interesting) and deal with more of the philosophy of the course.
I've posted the entire report at the link below to avoid having to break it up into several posts here--JT
http://www.atomicpirate.com/Reports/2007/fullcavereport.html
