UTD Overhead Protocols class report (6-28-2011)

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leabre

Contributor
Scuba Instructor
Divemaster
Messages
566
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Location
Orange County, CA
# of dives
200 - 499
... my dive buddy thumbs the dive at the end of the line and just as we u-turn visibility drops to zero as I reach for the line... each heart beat reverberates through my ears as I shift my primary sensor from vision to touch and audio... tha-thump... tha-thump... I hear bubbles -- lots of bubbles... Then I feel a sharp jolt on my arm instructing me to get the F* out of here... we pass two, perhaps three tie-offs before I feel the multiple squeezes of a diver who just lost his air supply... I can't see a damned thing, will everything be okay? ...


THREE MONTHS AGO

Jeff S. mentions to me I should consider signing up for Cave Week 2 in Tulum, Mexico. Until now I had not even entertained the slightest tingle of thought for cave diving. The travel, the schlepping, the training, the extreme diligence... all the things that I am not keen to engage myself obsessively into on just a whim without deep reflection into my motivations. But something is different this time. I was invited! The mere invitation generated more excitement than I could have mustered on my own! All of the sudden possibilities of exploring hidden tunnels, passageways, and labrynths seem like a reality.

Over the next two weeks I enquire about various details preparing for the event and most importantly, how to get approval from my wife. Many days pass while I contemplate how to approach this. I have many conversations with myself; such a decision cannot be made alone. In the end, I decide to invite her! The pause, the rush of anxiety, and fear that I may have to run through a list of justifications that I so maticuously scripted; I cannot endure the very brief silence, awaiting her answer, before she responds. I can almost hear the culminating climax of an action movie symphony speeding up and getting the adrenaline moving when her answer returns in support of me -- no questions asked! The music drops off with the scratching sound of a needle rubbing a record! "That was it?" I think to myself!


ONE MONTH AGO

I learn that Ela, my potential cave instructor, will be holding an Overhead Protocols class in Santa Rosa, New Mexico. Partly to evaluate her as a potential instructor, and partly so she can evaluate me as a potential student for cave training in the future, and partly because there's no other OHP classes immediately scheduled, I decide to sign up.

LAST WEEK

I arrive at Rock Lake -- a humble little body of water that more closely resembles a pond than a lake. The water appears more blue than the typical green you'd see from a lake, almost tropical. Standing over the edge of the water line I can see about 20 ft. beneath the surface into what looks like some decent visibility. The desert sun beats upon me with 110 degrees of vengeance; the air is mostly dry; and the elevation is roughly 5,700 ft. Such is my first fresh water dive and my first altitude dive.

I meet Justin, my class mate, and George and Ela, the two instructors who will be co-teaching this class. I am the only one that has not dove this site before, so we start with a briefing detailing what I need to know about the lake. The important take away: the lake is mostly a pit whos depth ranges from about 190' - 300'. There are some sloping areas, but mostly the sides are just walls. It's a natural spring where cystals are still forming, and the spring that feeds the body of water is roughly 300' on the other end and in places it could be considered overhead diving due to the bell shaped nature of the lake.


DAY ONE

Dry runs! We start by running line and practicing tie-offs, drop-ties, basic guideline usage, and blind exits. I've done -- what I would consider -- "basic" line handling from earlier Rec2 & Tec 1 classes. But nothing like this! This is the real thing! The real McCoy! The Arnold of Schwarzeneggers!

We gear up, drop, and find the first tie-off. I'm team member #1. So I tie off the primary and secondary tie-off and we begin our trek into the yonder. Oppurtunity for my first drop tie... ... #$@$ ... @#$@# ... finally, my first drop tie! I need practice at this. A few more and we're at our turn point.

All ties are along a wall. This is because the abyss is beneath us. There is some soft rock formations that more closely resemble short, stubby pinecones than rock. If one stretched arm can touch the wall and you drop something from your other arm then the object will drop a couple hundred feet below -- a lesson we learned all too well by failing to secure the screw on our 400' primary before dropping it while dealing with a stuck inflator failure. Good thing we're all well-trained and super precision Tech divers, so buoyancy is under control.

From nowhere, in a flash, I see my instructor jump into my face signalling out of air. Scared the ba-jeezers out of me! My heart nearly leaps from it's cavity before my eyes turn to saucer, ready to fly out of their sockets, when, like a well oiled Rolex, I spring into action, donoting my long hose before he signals "not me, you f-n idiot, you... YOU OOG"... I mumbled something that if listened closely enough, strongly resembled "I knew that, just seeing if you did". I stow the hose and signal OOG to my buddy and we continue with more valve drills, OOG's, and failed wing inflator drills... even missing dump valve failures!

In all we got about three hours of practice laying line and doing tie-offs and drop-ties and various failures that we mastred during Tech 1, except this time clung to the line! The yellow brick road! The life-line home!
Today we spend about 5 minutes entering and aobut 6x as much exiting! Definately need some work!

I will say this, the POWER of the SYSTEM, man, the power of the system. Justin and I never met before or dove together but we functioned and communicated as if we had dove together a hundred times in the past. There is something to be said about DIR training and its consistency. So there, I said it!


DAY TWO

More dry runs! We start by running more line and following it back blind. Then we add manifold or unfixable post failures in zero-viz. Then we add air-sharing in zero viz. Team positioning and line crossing!

We gear up and find the first tie-off. We continue to the turn point. My dive buddy thumbs the dive at the end of the line and just as we u-turn visibility drops to zero as I reach for the line hoping to cling to my only hope of reaching the surface alive. Each heart beat reverberates through my ears as I shift my primary sensor from vision to touch and audio... tha-thump... tha-thump...

For the briefest of time I felt a rush of heat cover my body as adrenaline injects into my veins. While blind, every second feels like an eternity. Perhaps only a few seconds just passed but it felt like minutes. I hear bubbles -- lots of bubbles. I still hear them! Are they going to stop? Then I feel a sharp jolt on my arm instructing me to get the F* out of here.

We pass two, perhaps three tie-offs before I feel the multiple squeezes of a diver who just lost his air supply. I turn to face him, he taps my primary regulator twice and then removes it from my mouth before I reach for my backup. Only about two seconds pass before the backup reg is in my mouth but I can already feel my lungs begging me for more air. I can't see a damned thing, will everything be okay?

"Procedure!" "Protocol!" "Training!" I think to myself! GET. IT. RIGHT... I'm a "GIR" diver right now! THUMP! I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place... as I dislodge my hand from between my naugin and a rock before me I touch-contact signal my buddy to cross the line! We continue on and for what, again, feels like an eternity, until we reach the surface.

We surface with only 100 PSI of gas in my tank! That is cutting it friggin' close. A valuable lesson learned in the need for proper gas management and execution of schedule. If you schedule for an 800 PSI entry then you want to manage your exit and failures within 1200 PSI or so or risk going OOG, blind or not, but especially blind since it has the greatest potential to slow you down. You do not want that in a cave or zero-viz.

So... five minutes in and like, 15 minutes out. There is still room for improvement but we're getting much better.
Because the rock formation is soft, we did dislodge the line from it during our blind exits. On subsequent dives if we do that we'll need to redo the drop-tie (blind) or risk entanglement since it creates slack in the line.


DAY THREE

Even more dry runs! This time we rehearse lost-line and lost-buddy procedures. I have met my match! My nemesis! My foe! The drop-tie procedure instigating the start of the lost line protocol! It only takes like 30 minutes but I finally figure out how to twist and contort my hand in all the right ways to make it appear that I understand! Plan for the day is to perform these skills in the water and then we can drop to 100' and admire the cystal growth before ending my dive day and the class.

We drop into the water and make our way to some magical spot where things will begin to happen. It is a different location than I've been before so I must increase my environmental awareness!

First, the dreaded lost-line failure. I must have spent like 45 minutes learning how to do this via drop-tie procedure blind during this dive. In the end I just put the spool through the loop for primary tie-off and do the secondary at a near by best spot for it and continued on to finish procedure (on subsequent attempts). I think on the first attempt the 1st tie off happend on it's own since I took so long. I find the mainline and tie-off and excercise complete, viz has returned.

I look up and where's my buddy? I look around for him, cover my light hoping to see his, I compute my gas needs for lost-buddy search, drop an arrow, attach my safety spool and go looking for him. I find him up on some random ledge. Once back to the safety of the mainline he's OOG! Share! Done! In a fit of panic vizibility drop to zero in the form of a blacked-out mask.

Following the line I head out. Adrenaline pumping! Heart pounding! Pulse quivering! Thump! There's that rock again, cross-line procedure, check! In a very efficient amount of time we're back to the safety of the surface!

Yep, I said efficient! So like 5 minutes in, 8 minutes out experiencing the failures! However, too much time has passed so I will not be doing a leisure dive to view the crystal growth. If I ever make the 16 hour drive to return here again then I'll not be missing such endulgences a second time.


CONCLUSION

I passed!!!!!



I'd like to thank George Watson and Emanulla Bartoni and Ocean First Divers for putting this on. I'd like to thank them again for providing a classmate last minute. I'd like to thank Justin for being a good classmate and team member. I'd like to thank Jason and James for adding me to their facebook page... while they waited to complete their Tech 2 training with same instructor after we completed the OHP dives... which they did so congrats to them!

And to thank you for reading this!
 
Very nice report. Thanks for sharing.

So happy to hear there is diving in NM. I'm moving out there in a few months and have been dreading being "dry".

Henrik
 
Henrik, Rock Lake is private. But there was a place called Blue Hole that was public. It's 81 ft. deep and about 60' in diameter, had tons of divers there. It looked beautiful, with lots of swimmers atop enjoying the day. There were other places too, it appeared. But this was in Santa Rosa. I have no knowledge of other cities.
 
Henrik, Rock Lake is private. But there was a place called Blue Hole that was public. It's 81 ft. deep and about 60' in diameter, had tons of divers there. It looked beautiful, with lots of swimmers atop enjoying the day. There were other places too, it appeared. But this was in Santa Rosa. I have no knowledge of other cities.

Thanks Leabre,

Yes, I've read about Blue Hole, which I believe isn't too far from Rock Lake. I'll be about 2 hours from Blue Hole. At least there's some place within striking distance to get wet :)

Henrik
 
Nice Shawn!

Thanks Leabre,

Yes, I've read about Blue Hole, which I believe isn't too far from Rock Lake. I'll be about 2 hours from Blue Hole. At least there's some place within striking distance to get wet :)

Henrik

two hours in which direction?
 
Nice. Santa Fe is a nice town!
 
Nice. Santa Fe is a nice town!

Yeah, we're really looking forward to it. Just gotta get some diving lined up :)
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/perdix-ai/
http://cavediveflorida.com/Rum_House.htm

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