Very clean looking config. Can't speak to how it all deploys when necessary but it looks really good. BZ.
Hopping my way to full cave...
- Thread starter Manatee Diver
- Start date
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Very clean looking config. Can't speak to how it all deploys when necessary but it looks really good. BZ.
OP
Back in High Springs for two more days of abuse, my arms are already tired. I felt like I spent the day in the gym doing rows.
If I don't trap my hoses under another hose it should has been deploying fine.
If I don't trap my hoses under another hose it should has been deploying fine.
I can't believe that I've been missing this thread! I'm delighted to hear that Reggie, Harry, and crew have been able to make cave diving work for you.
I'm hoping to head back in March (lacked funds for December) to finish up Full Cave. Perhaps we'll find some time to dive together?
Tell Reggie that Rosa says hi!
I'm hoping to head back in March (lacked funds for December) to finish up Full Cave. Perhaps we'll find some time to dive together?
Tell Reggie that Rosa says hi!
OP
Two days of training down, I have lots of stuff I want to type, but my fingers are still a little raw.
I would love to dive with you.
I can't believe that I've been missing this thread! I'm delighted to hear that Reggie, Harry, and crew have been able to make cave diving work for you.
I'm hoping to head back in March (lacked funds for December) to finish up Full Cave. Perhaps we'll find some time to dive together?
Tell Reggie that Rosa says hi!
I would love to dive with you.
elgoog
Contributor
The past few days were rough on my fingers too - I attempted the pull-and-glide but ended up doing the pull-and-slide.
@Manatee Diver I saw you on Saturday in the Gallery and on the deco log. You look really good in the water.
I think we ended up in a bit of a traffic jam getting our reels out the Ear too
@Manatee Diver I saw you on Saturday in the Gallery and on the deco log. You look really good in the water.
I think we ended up in a bit of a traffic jam getting our reels out the Ear too
The biggest change that I made between Cave Trip #1 and Cave Trip #2 was to ensure that I had a firm, solid grip before I started the pull.
I think it's the micro-sliding from suddenly bearing weight/force from a pull that wears fingertips off in sheets.
I think it's the micro-sliding from suddenly bearing weight/force from a pull that wears fingertips off in sheets.
This is the key.
<Place> your finger strategically like you are rock climbing, don't accept just any old hand slap spot. Don't leave one handhold until you have scouted and placed the next. Move and place them deliberately.
If your finger slips or slides you are losing skin one (soft) layer at a time.
Aim for zero fingertip slippage.
If you really have no other option use the friction of your entire hand.
OP
The past few days were rough on my fingers too - I attempted the pull-and-glide but ended up doing the pull-and-slide.
I saw you on Saturday in the Gallery and on the deco log. You look really good in the water.
I think we ended up in a bit of a traffic jam getting our reels out the Ear too
Thanks. So you were the team that tied up there, seeing a couple members of your team wedged into the rocks trying to untie your primary tie off was bit of a teaching moment about why he ties up just inside the cave.
I need to work on that, based on your thread I made sure to never pull below my shoulders, so I imagine that it could've been worse if I didn't learn that lesson from your thread.
OP
My hands are pretty much back to normal, so I can type this out.
Training Day 4
Day started at CCDS, where we did some academics and lecture. This lasted until right before lunch, so we headed to Ginnie for lunch, and land drills. At 3pm we splashed for dive 1, swimming to the ear. This would be my first time entering the ear, the flow was a fire hydrant as usual. But somehow I pulled myself into the cavern. Reggie showed me where to tie off my reel, placements and tie offs, before making it to the main line. Unfortunately we had to cross under another team's line, as they tied off in the ear, and then crossed from the wall through the center. After tying off we made out way to the ceiling of the gallery to the lips. At the lips Reggie signaled to turn the dive, I actually remembered to return the signal, and we turned the dive heading back to the surface for debrief. As one would imagine the exit was much easier than the entry, instead of fighting the flow you are making sure that the flow doesn't slam you into the narrow exit.
We get to the surface and Reggie asked "Do you know why I am not happy?" And he explains that I should've been in front of him since he was leading the dive.
Dive 2:
The last dive was mostly about seeing if I can handle the flow. Now we are back to the meat and potatoes of the course. We re-enter through the ear, first we make our way to the Catacombs to lay the line that will be needed for the level 1 line drills. We exit the Catacombs and swim through the top of the Gallery through the Lips, and on to Keyhole. At Keyhole we turned the dive, and shortly there after we start another lost buddy drill. Cookie goes on the line followed by the arrow, while I pull my safety reel out Reggie swims off. I check my gas consumption to see how much I have to spare for the search. And I do my simulated wall to wall search, reach Reggie, send him down the line, reel up my safety reel, and pull my line markers.
Shortly after everything is cleaned up my primary light fails (simulated), my first instinct is to go for the light I put in my tight pocket, which has the Dive Rite QRM, so I can place in on soft handle that I have my primary light on. But it is buried under my spare mask and safety spool. So I go for the one in the light in the light pouch on my belt. Turn it on, unclip it, and deploy it, now we exit the cave on my backup light.
It all goes well until we reach end of the Gallery. I see a team stacked up in the exit. While we are waiting Reggie notices that my safety spool was hanging out of my thigh pocket from before and we fixed that. After waiting an additional couple of minutes I peek around the corner and see that there is enough room for us to sneak over the top of the team. As I pass over I see that it is the team that tied off in the eye, and I see two of their divers trying to brace themselves against the flow trying to get their primary tie off undone. Which was a great illustration about why you tie off in the area just inside the cave which is mostly sheltered from the flow.
We surface uneventfully, and Reggie says no real performance issues with those drills, since it is fairly late, we decide to pull the primary reel, leaving the Catacombs reel in place. Quick dive to do that, and we head home.
Thoughts on Day 4:
I can see the advantages and disadvantages of sidemount today. The ear and the catacombs are very narrow, just wide enough for divers in doubles, so in sidemount I have to turn to my side to make it through some of these passages. This will become an issue tomorrow, when we actually have to do the drills in the Catacombs.
Overall today went well, since it was mostly covering ground that I've already done, tomorrow the clown shoes come out.
Dive Profile:
Dive Time: 116 minutes
Bottom Time: 91 minutes
Average Depth: 48ffw
Max Depth: 72ffw
No air consumption numbers, because Macdive is acting weird, and is reporting that I had the exact same numbers across both computers.
Training Day 4
Day started at CCDS, where we did some academics and lecture. This lasted until right before lunch, so we headed to Ginnie for lunch, and land drills. At 3pm we splashed for dive 1, swimming to the ear. This would be my first time entering the ear, the flow was a fire hydrant as usual. But somehow I pulled myself into the cavern. Reggie showed me where to tie off my reel, placements and tie offs, before making it to the main line. Unfortunately we had to cross under another team's line, as they tied off in the ear, and then crossed from the wall through the center. After tying off we made out way to the ceiling of the gallery to the lips. At the lips Reggie signaled to turn the dive, I actually remembered to return the signal, and we turned the dive heading back to the surface for debrief. As one would imagine the exit was much easier than the entry, instead of fighting the flow you are making sure that the flow doesn't slam you into the narrow exit.
We get to the surface and Reggie asked "Do you know why I am not happy?" And he explains that I should've been in front of him since he was leading the dive.
Dive 2:
The last dive was mostly about seeing if I can handle the flow. Now we are back to the meat and potatoes of the course. We re-enter through the ear, first we make our way to the Catacombs to lay the line that will be needed for the level 1 line drills. We exit the Catacombs and swim through the top of the Gallery through the Lips, and on to Keyhole. At Keyhole we turned the dive, and shortly there after we start another lost buddy drill. Cookie goes on the line followed by the arrow, while I pull my safety reel out Reggie swims off. I check my gas consumption to see how much I have to spare for the search. And I do my simulated wall to wall search, reach Reggie, send him down the line, reel up my safety reel, and pull my line markers.
Shortly after everything is cleaned up my primary light fails (simulated), my first instinct is to go for the light I put in my tight pocket, which has the Dive Rite QRM, so I can place in on soft handle that I have my primary light on. But it is buried under my spare mask and safety spool. So I go for the one in the light in the light pouch on my belt. Turn it on, unclip it, and deploy it, now we exit the cave on my backup light.
It all goes well until we reach end of the Gallery. I see a team stacked up in the exit. While we are waiting Reggie notices that my safety spool was hanging out of my thigh pocket from before and we fixed that. After waiting an additional couple of minutes I peek around the corner and see that there is enough room for us to sneak over the top of the team. As I pass over I see that it is the team that tied off in the eye, and I see two of their divers trying to brace themselves against the flow trying to get their primary tie off undone. Which was a great illustration about why you tie off in the area just inside the cave which is mostly sheltered from the flow.
We surface uneventfully, and Reggie says no real performance issues with those drills, since it is fairly late, we decide to pull the primary reel, leaving the Catacombs reel in place. Quick dive to do that, and we head home.
Thoughts on Day 4:
I can see the advantages and disadvantages of sidemount today. The ear and the catacombs are very narrow, just wide enough for divers in doubles, so in sidemount I have to turn to my side to make it through some of these passages. This will become an issue tomorrow, when we actually have to do the drills in the Catacombs.
Overall today went well, since it was mostly covering ground that I've already done, tomorrow the clown shoes come out.
Dive Profile:
Dive Time: 116 minutes
Bottom Time: 91 minutes
Average Depth: 48ffw
Max Depth: 72ffw
No air consumption numbers, because Macdive is acting weird, and is reporting that I had the exact same numbers across both computers.
OP
Training Day 5:
One of the rare cold days in Florida, I think the high was in the low 60s, we met at CCDS. While there I finally got to use my save a dive kit on my own stuff, the o-ring fell out of one of my regs when I was unscrewing it in the fill tank. It fell into the muddy water below the tank. After fills we make our way to Ginnie, after all the gear prep we hit the water for the first dive at 11:45am. The plans for today's dives are a bit fluid based on air usage, my cold tolerance, deco time, and time time.
Dive 1:
We enter through the ear again, no other reels so we get the choice spot up the right side of the wall. We make our way to the catacombs to check the line running through there, just some minor fixes were required, but it acquired a surprising amount of debris when you consider how low flow that section of the cave is. Then back through the lips to just before the Keyhole, here we did the level 1 lost line drill. Facing the exit you grab onto the line, you put on the blindfold, and you are moved to a rock. There you deploy your safety reel and make your way back to the line.
So I do just that, and move along until I hit a big rock, without hitting the gold line. Since this was the basic level, and I wouldn't be expected to deal with a major obstacle like that, so I knew that I screwed up. So I reeled back to my base rock, thought about I did wrong realizing that I wasn't waving my arm to find the line, and I wasn't keeping my other hand perfectly in line with the safety reel. So this time I did those two actions, and I found the line. Locked my safety reel down, tied it to the line, spending a moment to figure out where the flow was going, and followed the line with the flow until Reggie stopped me. We return to my spool, and I see the actual distance traveled searching for the line, it felt like at least 10 yards, but it was probably more like 2-3 yards. Cleaned up my reel, after checking for air and no stop time remaining, we both figured we didn't have enough no stop time so we called the dive. Exit was unexciting.
Once we got all cleaned up, we have a quick debrief. He acknowledged that my first attempt was completely wrong, but Reggie didn't dwell because I immediately fixed it. The only wrong wrong with my second attempt was I didn't check that the line was perfectly straight enough. But we was well enough to pass at level 1, but that I would need to improve it to pass the level 2 line drill.
Dive Profile
Dive Time: 82 minutes
Bottom Time: 68 minutes
Average Depth: 52ffw
Maximum Depth: 74ffw
One of the rare cold days in Florida, I think the high was in the low 60s, we met at CCDS. While there I finally got to use my save a dive kit on my own stuff, the o-ring fell out of one of my regs when I was unscrewing it in the fill tank. It fell into the muddy water below the tank. After fills we make our way to Ginnie, after all the gear prep we hit the water for the first dive at 11:45am. The plans for today's dives are a bit fluid based on air usage, my cold tolerance, deco time, and time time.
Dive 1:
We enter through the ear again, no other reels so we get the choice spot up the right side of the wall. We make our way to the catacombs to check the line running through there, just some minor fixes were required, but it acquired a surprising amount of debris when you consider how low flow that section of the cave is. Then back through the lips to just before the Keyhole, here we did the level 1 lost line drill. Facing the exit you grab onto the line, you put on the blindfold, and you are moved to a rock. There you deploy your safety reel and make your way back to the line.
So I do just that, and move along until I hit a big rock, without hitting the gold line. Since this was the basic level, and I wouldn't be expected to deal with a major obstacle like that, so I knew that I screwed up. So I reeled back to my base rock, thought about I did wrong realizing that I wasn't waving my arm to find the line, and I wasn't keeping my other hand perfectly in line with the safety reel. So this time I did those two actions, and I found the line. Locked my safety reel down, tied it to the line, spending a moment to figure out where the flow was going, and followed the line with the flow until Reggie stopped me. We return to my spool, and I see the actual distance traveled searching for the line, it felt like at least 10 yards, but it was probably more like 2-3 yards. Cleaned up my reel, after checking for air and no stop time remaining, we both figured we didn't have enough no stop time so we called the dive. Exit was unexciting.
Once we got all cleaned up, we have a quick debrief. He acknowledged that my first attempt was completely wrong, but Reggie didn't dwell because I immediately fixed it. The only wrong wrong with my second attempt was I didn't check that the line was perfectly straight enough. But we was well enough to pass at level 1, but that I would need to improve it to pass the level 2 line drill.
Dive Profile
Dive Time: 82 minutes
Bottom Time: 68 minutes
Average Depth: 52ffw
Maximum Depth: 74ffw
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