C2

[lamont]

me and my C2 buddies (dave and marcus) passed our C2 course from danny (with fred assisting) on friday.

highlights:

- a lot of 12-13 hour days. someone told me C2 is shorter and easier than C1 and i didn't find it that way.
- my drysuit decided to become a wetsuit and i never had time to properly fix it (my primary drysuit is getting a zipper repair at DUI -- it failed right before the course, naturally).

- day one: ponderosa, swim test, 2 dives up river run, introduction to jumps, introduction to O2 switches.

- day two: taj mahal, circuit dives on upstream line, lost line drills for dave + marcus

- day three: mayan blue, stage bottles, my lost line drill.
- since one of my stage regs had a free-flow issue, i bought a brand-new stage reg for this course. i used it for the first 2 days as a deco reg. thinking it was new, and therefore more reliable than my other reg, i used it as a stage reg today and it failed on descent at around 50 feet and started giving me mouthfuls of water. switched to backup and turned dive.

- day four: carwash, survey dive to chamber of ancients, lights out gas-sharing OW drills, lights out gas-sharing exit through restr to room of tears.
- got an ear infection from carwash (used multiple different kinds of drops post-dive, but still got infected) hurts to chew food right now
- accidentally had my HID light on b4 gearing up -- during gearing up, burned thumb on light and blistered it a bit
- ran out of food for dinner at this point and since it was late had to pick up two sandwiches from gas station -- one was edible, one was not.

- day five: experience dive to end of sw sacbe line, lost diver (i was stolen, and fred totally cheats at underwater tic-tac-toe).

 

[ae3753]

Congratulations on the course! Danny and Fred are great guys.

Post class dives?

 

[lamont]

Post class dives?

we're here for another week, so my ear permitting we'll all be diving.

post any suggestions you've got. right now we haven't thought much past further exploration of carwash -- hit chamber of the ancients again to finish the survey, make it to room of tears.

definitely like to get further in nohoch... haven't really thought too much about a route to use there...

we also want to get back to mayan blue and do some more exploring there...

there was also some discussion of trying to dive the pit last night, but i wasn't paying much attention to that... sounded cool, but most of the mention i see online is of scooter diving it from dos ojos so far...

of course there's non-C1 systems that we don't know anything about at all...

really, the whole world just opened up quote a lot and i have absolutely no idea where to start...

 

[ae3753]

Great to hear that you have more diving ahead. Definitely rest the ears, are you using drops? I found that it's necessary for more than 5 days of diving in Mexico. If your ears are bother you, I'd avoid Taj Mahal (ups and downs there).

Here's my list of post C2 dives:
* Grand Cenote - Cuzan Nah and PDL
* Carwash - Room of Tears
* Naharon - Southwest Sac Be
* Calimba
* Chan Hol
* Jailhouse
* Minotauro
* No Hoch - Parker line
* Mayan Blue - B to E to F

Of course, there's many more. But these are the ones that made me instantly happy that I took full cave.

Any of these sites, you can actually spend a whole day exploring. For example, Grand Cenote can easily be multiple days, and all great dives.

Have a great time, and let us know how it goes!

 

[KMD]

Add to that:

Chinese Gardens - Taj Mahal
Pondarosa - Chapel (stage dive)

Congrats on your class. Sucks to be doing it in a wet Drysuit though!

Take a day off and I think you will find your ears will get lots better.

Now you need to come down and dive with us in November!

 

[lamont]

Add to that:

Chinese Gardens - Taj Mahal

so, i think we did chinese gardens in taj by doing the circuit that ends in the first jump off the upstream line didn't we? might be nice to appreciate it a little bit more though, without an instructor over our heads... but i think we've been through that passage 3 times now...

actually, that brings up one funny thing which occured during the course on that circuit returning back on the first jump in taj mahal, which was that we had two post failures and a pile of light failures and stolen backups and i was #1 with a post failure and a good primary but no backups, we had put the other post failure in #2 and all the donatable gas in #3. and at this point i think that #2 may not have had any light at all. this was a mistake in that we didn't have the gas in the middle, but i was worried that #3 would fall behind and go OOG and knew that i'd need to go to #3 for gas. so, as soon as i poked my head into a restriction, danny signalled OOG and batted my reg out of my mouth and as i swung around to climb over marcus ( i think ) to get to dave with the gas, my primary light failed -- for real -- and not for any readily apparent reason after the dive. fred thought that danny had turned it off and turned up the heat on us. after the dive it was in the on position and i can't replicate any kind of short circuit and it only took about 70 min to recharge it, and it was at >15V which is well above the 14.4V nominal of the pack... some third ghost of cave instructors past must have been in the cave with us.... we wound up exiting sharing gas on only a single backup light... day #2, which seems like about an eternity ago...

Pondarosa - Chapel (stage dive)

Congrats on your class. Sucks to be doing it in a wet Drysuit though!

Take a day off and I think you will find your ears will get lots better.

feels better now, but i'm not sure if that's the eardrops or the margaritas...

Now you need to come down and dive with us in November!

i think i need to quit my job and spend a couple months down here.... but yeah, something like that sounds appealing.... not sure if i'll have vacation accrued back up again though... what dates?

 

[MonkSeal]

post any suggestions you've got.

Mayan ear candles for curing infection I was almost deaf for two days and candles opened my ears to allow drops to come in.

BTW Congratulations

 

[KMD]

Regarding Chinese Gardens - Nope you haven't gotten there. You can't get there on a circuit. (at least not unless maybe you are diving sidemount. ) Its on the upstream side of Taj Mahal. Ask Danny or Fred to give you directions. Its well worth visiting.

Our dates are November 18th through December 2nd. Bunch of people are coming down including some other famous Satellites. (Lynne & Peter)

 

[laurin]

My biggest highlights after C2 would have been:

-Chinese Gardens
-Black Forest and the sea turtle shell at Tortuga after a longish restriction (stage dive) - I hear Tortuga and Vaca Ha are now closed to divers, which is a pity if it's true...
-Getting a good look at Xix Ha Tunich and the whole big room at Chac Mol, and also the upstream section (great for dreaming about scootering, too)
-Room of Tears (felt a bit overrated, though...)
-Chan Hol

Long dives in Nohoch were also really cool, but the sheer amount of formations and seemingly endless tunnels got a bit numbing after a couple of dives.

I'd really recommend taking a look at Chan Hol, the entrance restriction alone is fun. The cave itself feels kinda like a mix of Nohoch and Gran Cenote... When we did it in Jan the original survey arrows etc were still in place, I've heard this may have changed since then.

//LN

 

[KMD]

I'd really recommend taking a look at Chan Hol, the entrance restriction alone is fun. The cave itself feels kinda like a mix of Nohoch and Gran Cenote... When we did it in Jan the original survey arrows etc were still in place, I've this may have changed since then.

Exploration arrows in Chan Hol are gone as of this last July. Good old Steve Gerrard has made his (negative) impact in that cave.

Tortuga/Vaca Ha/Kim Ha is indeed closed. Land was sold. New owners don't allow cave diving. Which is indeed a shame as those cave system were increadibly beautiful.