To be honest, I didn't. But my buddy did, and it's my arrow on the end of the line.
We went to a site that had long been closed. One of the entries was from the sea. The guy we paid told us someone had told him the sand had blocked the passage, but we thought it would be fun to go and look -- there was very strong flow coming out of the entrance.
The site was stunning. It's an abandoned club/hotel right on the beach, and the sand is brilliant white and the ocean is turquoise, and today was glassy calm.
It was all I could do to stand up for gear checks, between the surge and the flow, but we got it done and went into the cave. The flow was Florida-class, and there wasn't a lot of rock in the entry, so I found that sticking my hands, blade-like into the sand would allow me to pull. I was glad Ela was running the line! There was some old line here and there, but it was often broken and lying in snarled messes. Ela did some line repair, and we kept going. We also found large logs lying across the passage in places -- how they got down there is beyond me!
There was some small but reasonable passage, and a long slot where I had to belly down to the sand, and eventually we came to the end of the existing line. There was a hole in front of us, but we weren't getting through it in backmount, so Ela decided to try an end run around the sandpile to the left. We had to go through a vertical restriction that was the first time I had to wiggle around and figure out exactly what angle I had to reach to get the tanks to pass. Then we ran maybe 75 feet of line or so, and concluded we simply couldn't get any further in the gear we had. Ela tied the line off to a solid rock projection, and as she did it, I reached into my pocket and pulled out one of my arrows. When she got done trimming the excess line, she found an arrow waving back and forth under her nose, and bless her heart, she took it and put it on the line for me. Then she shot some video of the arrow, and of me grinning like a demented idiot (I'll post it when I get it.)
It took us an hour to get there, and about five minutes to get blown back out. Once we were in the little cove where we entered, I started jumping up and down and waving my arms and yelling, "Yay!" I was irrepressible. You see, putting any new line in a cave is something I never, ever thought I'd get to do. And maybe it wasn't new line. But it was past the old EOL, and we laid it, and by God, my arrow's on it.
We did a second dive at the cenote just inland, which was also great fun, although I was tail-end Charlie through a whole lot of halocline, and consoled myself by thinking, "Well, on the way out, I'LL be the one who can see." Of course, shortly after we turned, my primary light failed . . . Everything in life has to paid for, and I guess that was my payment for the incredible joy of getting to be (maybe) the first team somewhere.
Thanks to Ela Bertoni for being my strong and capable buddy on this dive!
We went to a site that had long been closed. One of the entries was from the sea. The guy we paid told us someone had told him the sand had blocked the passage, but we thought it would be fun to go and look -- there was very strong flow coming out of the entrance.
The site was stunning. It's an abandoned club/hotel right on the beach, and the sand is brilliant white and the ocean is turquoise, and today was glassy calm.
It was all I could do to stand up for gear checks, between the surge and the flow, but we got it done and went into the cave. The flow was Florida-class, and there wasn't a lot of rock in the entry, so I found that sticking my hands, blade-like into the sand would allow me to pull. I was glad Ela was running the line! There was some old line here and there, but it was often broken and lying in snarled messes. Ela did some line repair, and we kept going. We also found large logs lying across the passage in places -- how they got down there is beyond me!
There was some small but reasonable passage, and a long slot where I had to belly down to the sand, and eventually we came to the end of the existing line. There was a hole in front of us, but we weren't getting through it in backmount, so Ela decided to try an end run around the sandpile to the left. We had to go through a vertical restriction that was the first time I had to wiggle around and figure out exactly what angle I had to reach to get the tanks to pass. Then we ran maybe 75 feet of line or so, and concluded we simply couldn't get any further in the gear we had. Ela tied the line off to a solid rock projection, and as she did it, I reached into my pocket and pulled out one of my arrows. When she got done trimming the excess line, she found an arrow waving back and forth under her nose, and bless her heart, she took it and put it on the line for me. Then she shot some video of the arrow, and of me grinning like a demented idiot (I'll post it when I get it.)
It took us an hour to get there, and about five minutes to get blown back out. Once we were in the little cove where we entered, I started jumping up and down and waving my arms and yelling, "Yay!" I was irrepressible. You see, putting any new line in a cave is something I never, ever thought I'd get to do. And maybe it wasn't new line. But it was past the old EOL, and we laid it, and by God, my arrow's on it.
We did a second dive at the cenote just inland, which was also great fun, although I was tail-end Charlie through a whole lot of halocline, and consoled myself by thinking, "Well, on the way out, I'LL be the one who can see." Of course, shortly after we turned, my primary light failed . . . Everything in life has to paid for, and I guess that was my payment for the incredible joy of getting to be (maybe) the first team somewhere.
Thanks to Ela Bertoni for being my strong and capable buddy on this dive!
