Cavern course completed with Jim Wyatt

What an amazing couple of days in my dive life and a great way to end this dive season. I had the opportunity to take a cavern course with my buddies Kate and Patrick from Mr. Jim Wyatt and we all feel that we came back better divers for doing so. There is so much I could type here about the course but I will have to keep it brief since I have to get to work soon.

We have been diving as a 3 diver team this year. This course taught us how to work together and communicate better as a team and become better divers individually. Overhead environments are completely different from the open water diving we have been doing in Va/NC. Although we have been doing deeper dives with light penetration on some wrecks the thing that I took from the class about line work and zero vis practices, none of us had ever learned before. I felt my trim, buoyancy and kicks were there but diving in a flow really opened my eyes to stuff I had never experienced. Running and reeling in a line in flow I had to work extra hard to keep things together and I still futzed up the reel. Fortunately not bad enough to jam it, but still not perfect.

Being an old dry caver and getting to experience the weightlessness and freedom of diving in a cave, made me remember why I enjoyed it so much. I am continuing on until I hit full cave certification with Jim and I am very excited about being hooked .......again.

Big THANKS Jim for opening my eyes to the complexity and dangers of cave diving and how to dive caves safely. I can extend my dive season to year round diving now instead of when the weather and sea gods allow me to dive.

Randy, I totally agree that we greatly increased our knowledge base, became better divers, and a better diving team after the class with Capt. Wyatt. The cavern course was one of the highlights of my diving career and also the most demanding and beneficial course I've taken. The line work, combined with the flow, definitely put me through the paces as well. While I've always been confident in our team's ability to work through any problems we may encounter, being able to demonstate this really boosted my confidence in how we work together.

Anyone who has the opportunity to take a class Capt. Wyatt teaches will learn a great deal. Thank you Capt. Wyatt, it was an honor having you as an instructor.

Glad you guys had fun -- cavern is a fantastic learning experience, and I have never heard anything but good things about Jim as an instructor. (Several friends here in Seattle have taken classes from him, too.)

I could not think of another person I want to learn to cave dive from, especially after taking a course with him. I've been fortunate to have a good instructor for my tech class training and have seen some really bad ones as well that friends have used.

IMHO....He is worth every penny!!

thanks for the good words!! You guys were great....

Congrats Randy and glad you're going thru Full Cave.

BTW, it's a long hike from VB to FL, isn't it? Best get use to it, lol!

Thanks Bill. Yeah it's a haul but only a day drive for me. I am making the run to S Fl a couple times a year already and it sure is shorter than doing that. Plus I have a few friends that have been bugging me to go full cave, so I can dive with them as well. I am really looking forward to this new experience and what it will do for my diving.

Great news, Randy. You'll make an excellent cave diver.

Now if we could only get you on Facebook. It's the best way I know for us to keep up with our trips from here to there (VB Tech Divers), on what's going on with Cave Country Dive Shop, Jim Wyatt's adventures, etc. Wishful thinking on my part, I know.

Thank you for the vote of confidence Bill and again, I humbly have to thumb VBT only because I don't do FB. If you guys ever do a dinner or actual meeting please give me a heads up and I would love to meet everyone face to face.