Cave Diving in Cozumel - July 2006

[Kevrumbo]

A 1 min reponse is totally unacceptable in a cave, esp. for someone who's guiding. When I flash my light or cover it, I expect my buddy to be turning around NOW! As in have that 1/4 flat turn done in max 20 seconds.

Sounds like a flake to me.

Yeah rjack . . .you post like a second-guessing flake to us all. . .

 

[rjack321]

But by mrpat's narrative he can still see German in front of him though

Not exactly, read a little closer...

...seconds later he slips through a tight spot and disappears into a narrow passage...

...in a minute or two the glow of German’s primary light starts illuminating the suspended particles and his facemask pops into view about two feet in front of me.

Pull and glide up to him my butt. But whatever dude. The more you try to justify buddy seperation, due to lack of fitness and an "intentional" silt out - the lamer your arguments sound.

From tying off to a twig on down, this whole story is a case study in how not to cave dive correctly.

 

[Kevrumbo]

An alarmist speculation; an unfair opinion; and a Chicken Little response & troll by you rjack. And of course there is no justification for a Buddy Separation by commission; By omission, there may be mitigating circumstances. . . (mrpat, care to elaborate on rjack's hypothetical OOG scenario?). . .

 

[TSandM]

I have to confess that, when I read the description, I thought, "Wow, more than a minute for the lead to realize the follower was gone?" I haven't done any cave diving, but in my classes, that wouldn't be acceptable at all. Heck, thirty seconds isn't acceptable not to notice the buddy's light is gone.

But maybe things are different when you are going through restrictions?

 

[Kevrumbo]

Easy solution Lynne; you proactively close up rank and catch up to your lead immediately before he "disappears" --surface debrief afterward & talk about improving Buddy Awareness.

If it were me suffering from leg cramps and I see my Lead swimming off way ahead, I'd quickly be pulling hand-over-hand (breaking off every handhold stalactite & stalagmite along the way) in order to reach and let him know I've got problems. The integrity, welfare & safety of the Unified Dive Team is obviously more important than the "ecological sanctity of the cave. . ."

 

[BabyDuck]

'a minute or two' may be a conversational convention. if he was really timing, he would have said 'in 68 seconds...' and, of course, time does weird things when you're waiting for something you really want/need.

 

[MikeFerrara]

Aside from any damage to the cave, a siltout makes any situation worse so it's best to try to avoid it.

Pull and glide just doesn't work in all caves...sometimes there's just nothing to pull on. Sometimes, you think there is, grab it and it just snaps off in your hand. If that happens, not only are you doing damage but you aren't moving very far either.

 

[Meng_Tze]

Taking the OP write up at face value.

It seems the guide was too pre-occupied with himself. Losing sight of buddy, going through restriction without checking buddy (he should have noticed there and then that buddy was not around). My debrief would have been straight forward and to the point: '*** were you thinking?'

I can see a lapse of attention in lead tracking buddy. But there is no excuse for a buddy not to notice an 'attention' light signal. This would be ONE lapse (error in judgement), after that no more diving for me with that buddy. Same as breaking gas rules.

And it does not matter if you are in a two man or three man team.

:no

 

[MikeFerrara]

Taking the OP write up at face value.

It seems the guide was too pre-occupied with himself. Losing sight of buddy, going through restriction without checking buddy (he should have noticed there and then that buddy was not around). My debrief would have been straight forward and to the point: '*** were you thinking?'

I can see a lapse of attention in lead tracking buddy. But there is no excuse for a buddy not to notice an 'attention' light signal. This would be ONE lapse (error in judgement), after that no more diving for me with that buddy. Same as breaking gas rules.

And it does not matter if you are in a two man or three man team.

:no

Moving through restrictions often results in a loss of contact which is one reason that cavern and, I think, intro divers aren't supposed to go through restrictions.

It's not necessarily a lack of attention. If the restriction isn't straight or, for whatever reason, the guy in the back doesn't have a strainght shot with his light beam, the beam just doesn't get to where the lead diver can see it. Once his head is in the hole, he just may not be able to see your light.

Even if the lead diver can see your light signal, he might not be able to do anything about it. He might have to pass all the way through the restriction before he can even turn around.

I've had this happen, where I was ready to turn a dive and thought being at a restriction was as good a time as any. My wife slipped in and my "attention" signal only found her feet and not her eyes. This was a perticularly nasty little bugger with a deep silt floor and it takes a little while to get through and do it halfway clean. The result was her waiting on the far side for me to come through (like she should) and me momentarily waiting on the other side hoping she would come back and save me the trouble. The situation resolved itself without issue but I didn't turn to leave the cave without her either.

Our permenant solution was that we decided to stop and pow-wow prior to entering any restriction so that, if anyone in the team didn't want to enter, they had a chance to say so BEFORE anybody was in. It works real well but it isn't something that I remember ever coming up in our cave training or reading about. It was just one of those things that we had to run into and figure out on our own.


Now he should have signaled before dropping down to pick up a $0.05 piece of plastic but there was no lack of awareness on anybody elses part.

 

[MikeFerrara]

Meng, I see you're in Florida. Picture being in the entrance restriction in up stream Cow and having someone behind trying to signal...or crawling down through the cracks back by "Not My Fault".