OP
Start my Cavern/Intro training!!
- Thread starter Doby45
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I would love to hit another system while down..
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theoretically you know all of the basic fundamentals before you get into cavern/intro in some sort of fundamentals course. Very few people actually do, so cavern/intro becomes basically Fundies conducted in a cavern or early part of a cave and the time that you are supposed to take between intro and apprentice/full is spent practicing these fundamental skills with the addition of basic line running and the stresses of being in an overhead.
The parallels are a bit weird.
Cavern/Intro/Apprentice roughly correlates to Fundies + Cave 1 with GUE. GUE obviously being more rigorous vs. most instructors. The theory being that in GUE they are only teaching you cave skills when in a cave course, everything leading up to that *buoyancy, trim, propulsion, gear config, etc.* is already done from Fundies. In a Cavern/Intro course, there is often a lot of emphasis on those four things. GUE typically 9 days total for fundies/cave 1 while cavern/intro/apprentice is 6 days with cavern/intro taking the same 4 days as Fundies. If you start off as a recreational diver with 0 experience in any sort of technical equipment, the extra days are really beneficial with a GUE course or an intro to tec course before going into a Cavern/Intro course.
@Doby45 you are right about Ginnie. Unfortunately most of the other areas down there are flooded and looks like we may have got a bit more rain today so it's unlikely that the other caves will open back up. LR may still be open though
Dish
Are you for Scuba?
OP
I want that damn chicken SOOOOOOOOO bad. Still waiting..
Jack Hammer
Contributor
Enjoy your training and welcome to the addicting world of caves!
fish149
Contributor
I just finished intro with Johnny Richards in January and had a blast! You're gonna love it!
TausogDiver
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I can totally relate. Cave genie is calling. Im working extra hours so i can go back for more training.
OP
Well, all I can say is WOW.. Awesome experience and absolutely great instructor. I can not recommend Johnny more highly.
I got to High Springs on Wednesday and the original plan was for me and my dive buddy to do a bunch of "homework/line work" in the Ballroom. Well, my buddy came along but a month ago he broke his knee so he could not dive. Therefore, we just got in to town and got settled in to our luxury suite at the High Springs Country Inn. The red carpet was rolled out and we had a few libations on the veranda of our suite. I got my gear squared away and got to bed rather early. Not sure if it was getting to bed early or my overall excitement but I could barely sleep and it took literally forever for the morning and sound of my alarm clock to arrive.
Day One: Thursday
Buddy and I grabbed a quick bite to eat at Hardees right there at 441 and made our way over to Ginnie Spring to meet with Johnny. We arrive a bit early as I have always been taught on time is late and early is on time. My excited nerves have me on pins and needles as I walk in to meet the man that my mind has made Johnny out to be. So I walk up to the counter and sign my waver, the whole time loathing that I am writing down AOW as my highest training on the form. The nice lady behind the counter says that she thinks Johnny is back filling tanks and she would go get him. Just as she starts to walk a way a gentleman comes around the corner that I would say is a mix between Willie Nelson and Santa Claus. This kindly looking man is walking directly for me and when he is about 3-4ft away he still out his hand and says "Hey, my name is Johnny, nice to meet ya." At this point my nervousness immediately calmed and I shook his hand and introduced myself and my crippled up cheerleader. We then did the whole filling out of paperwork and paying stuff while waiting on the second diver that would be taking Cavern with me. We will call that diver Mike (because that was his name and calling him something else would be rude as hell) and he was from South Carolina and spoke with rather Cajun accent. The whole time I was wondering where the hell he got the accent as he said he had always been in South Carolina, whatever. I guess some mysteries are just not to be known. We got all the paperwork done and meet Johnny out back to do a bit of academics and some land line work. I will not go into a ton of detail on the line drill stuff as it is something you just need to experience. I will give you this small bit of advice, use your damn head. There was nothing at all that was difficult as long as you have the right mind set to do cave dives to start with. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.
After the line work, Johnny had us assemble our gear for inspection and possible adjustments. Things like retractors and equipment that dangles has no place in the Cavern class and most definitely has no place in the Intro course. I have already been using doubles and was taking my courses in back mount doubles, so my equipment was "cave" ready even during the Cavern course. Mike was using an I3 Dimension BCD and standard OW reg setup, while not the ideal setup, Johnny never shamed, belittled or made Mike feel bad that he was not configured like some uber cave diver. He did explain to Mike that while his current equipment was fine for Cavern (with some small tweaks) it would not be acceptable at the Intro level and he gave him some configuration advice. After the gear config meeting Johnny called the day and suggested that Mike and I do some "homework" dives in the Ballroom to prepare for our dives we would do the next day.
Homework dives went pretty well and Mike and I got more comfortable together. As I had almost more dives in the Ballroom than Mike had total, I ran him in on the first dive as a fun dive and to see how squared away he was. Mike was in good shape and had no problems in the Ballroom so we finished that dive and surfaced. Then we decided that I would run a line in to the courtesy line that is installed in the Ballroom and then we would do a mask off exit one at a time to just get comfortable again following a line with no mask. Dive went great and Mike did great so we called the dive and went to get our tanks filled for the next day.
to be continued.....
I got to High Springs on Wednesday and the original plan was for me and my dive buddy to do a bunch of "homework/line work" in the Ballroom. Well, my buddy came along but a month ago he broke his knee so he could not dive. Therefore, we just got in to town and got settled in to our luxury suite at the High Springs Country Inn. The red carpet was rolled out and we had a few libations on the veranda of our suite. I got my gear squared away and got to bed rather early. Not sure if it was getting to bed early or my overall excitement but I could barely sleep and it took literally forever for the morning and sound of my alarm clock to arrive.
Day One: Thursday
Buddy and I grabbed a quick bite to eat at Hardees right there at 441 and made our way over to Ginnie Spring to meet with Johnny. We arrive a bit early as I have always been taught on time is late and early is on time. My excited nerves have me on pins and needles as I walk in to meet the man that my mind has made Johnny out to be. So I walk up to the counter and sign my waver, the whole time loathing that I am writing down AOW as my highest training on the form. The nice lady behind the counter says that she thinks Johnny is back filling tanks and she would go get him. Just as she starts to walk a way a gentleman comes around the corner that I would say is a mix between Willie Nelson and Santa Claus. This kindly looking man is walking directly for me and when he is about 3-4ft away he still out his hand and says "Hey, my name is Johnny, nice to meet ya." At this point my nervousness immediately calmed and I shook his hand and introduced myself and my crippled up cheerleader. We then did the whole filling out of paperwork and paying stuff while waiting on the second diver that would be taking Cavern with me. We will call that diver Mike (because that was his name and calling him something else would be rude as hell) and he was from South Carolina and spoke with rather Cajun accent. The whole time I was wondering where the hell he got the accent as he said he had always been in South Carolina, whatever. I guess some mysteries are just not to be known. We got all the paperwork done and meet Johnny out back to do a bit of academics and some land line work. I will not go into a ton of detail on the line drill stuff as it is something you just need to experience. I will give you this small bit of advice, use your damn head. There was nothing at all that was difficult as long as you have the right mind set to do cave dives to start with. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.
After the line work, Johnny had us assemble our gear for inspection and possible adjustments. Things like retractors and equipment that dangles has no place in the Cavern class and most definitely has no place in the Intro course. I have already been using doubles and was taking my courses in back mount doubles, so my equipment was "cave" ready even during the Cavern course. Mike was using an I3 Dimension BCD and standard OW reg setup, while not the ideal setup, Johnny never shamed, belittled or made Mike feel bad that he was not configured like some uber cave diver. He did explain to Mike that while his current equipment was fine for Cavern (with some small tweaks) it would not be acceptable at the Intro level and he gave him some configuration advice. After the gear config meeting Johnny called the day and suggested that Mike and I do some "homework" dives in the Ballroom to prepare for our dives we would do the next day.
Homework dives went pretty well and Mike and I got more comfortable together. As I had almost more dives in the Ballroom than Mike had total, I ran him in on the first dive as a fun dive and to see how squared away he was. Mike was in good shape and had no problems in the Ballroom so we finished that dive and surfaced. Then we decided that I would run a line in to the courtesy line that is installed in the Ballroom and then we would do a mask off exit one at a time to just get comfortable again following a line with no mask. Dive went great and Mike did great so we called the dive and went to get our tanks filled for the next day.
to be continued.....
Last edited:
Jack Hammer
Contributor
Sounds like you had fun. I'm looking forward to reading round 2.
OP
Day Two: Friday
Day started earlier than yesterday, we had to be down at the Ballroom parking area by 8am to get in before all the locals came out to play. Johnny gave us some pre-dive briefing as to what we would be doing on that first dive and then he got busy running a line course. Once he had the course laid he came back to Mike and me and confirmed the briefing again. We then did our pre-dive safety checks and got going. Again, not to give away the meat of the course I will not go into exact details but I will say we had to run the course maskless and then together in blacked out masks sharing air. A few of the course runs had to be hilarious to the casual observer as there was a hiccup here and there. Dive ended and we had our briefing, nothing "magical" to share about that dive. Dive two, Johnny ran another course that went deeper on into the Ballroom and we had to do some drills such as checking and fixing line running errors like loose or poor placement and identifying and fixing line traps. There were a couple of circuits that we did and then the dive was called and I was in charge of pulling the line out. If you have ever heard the expression "like a fart in the breeze" that is Johnny when it comes to vanishing. Needless to say when I had the line half way out I noticed my second diver (Mike) in front of me, a clear view out the mouth of the Ballroom and no Johnny. I got Mike's attention and questioned him as to the location of Johnny and the answer I got back was some shoulder shrugs. I then had Mike hold his place on the line and I went back about 10ft and had a better look down in the bottom of the Ballroom and there is Johnny smoothly swimming around like a catfish. I signal him, get his attention and tell him to get his butt back on the line. The expression on his face was so funny and he kept sticking up his ? hand signal. I just pointed him back to the line and gave him the thumb. Johnny then got to my secondary tie off and gave me the OK signal and I sent him on his way We finished the dive and had our little briefing. We had our final dive in the Ballroom area with a line run in by Mike and some basic drills on the way out. We had our debriefing and swapped tanks for our final dive of Cavern into the Devil's Ear!!! The Ear dive was very cool and eye opening. It started with a solid pre-dive briefing and then Johnny running the line in to the gold line. Mike was diver two and I was diver three and when we made it to the gold line we were to hold our position and then Johnny took us one at a time to have a look at the shoot that will have you exit at the Eye and the entrance to the catacombs. After abit we thumbed the dive and had the joy of our first "ride" out the Ear. Safely at the surface we gathered and had our post dive briefing. We then got out and put away all our gear and made our way to the Deli to take our exam. Upon finishing the exam and having some discussion Johnny smiled and shook both our hands, we were official CAVERN DIVERS!!!!
to be continued...
Day started earlier than yesterday, we had to be down at the Ballroom parking area by 8am to get in before all the locals came out to play. Johnny gave us some pre-dive briefing as to what we would be doing on that first dive and then he got busy running a line course. Once he had the course laid he came back to Mike and me and confirmed the briefing again. We then did our pre-dive safety checks and got going. Again, not to give away the meat of the course I will not go into exact details but I will say we had to run the course maskless and then together in blacked out masks sharing air. A few of the course runs had to be hilarious to the casual observer as there was a hiccup here and there. Dive ended and we had our briefing, nothing "magical" to share about that dive. Dive two, Johnny ran another course that went deeper on into the Ballroom and we had to do some drills such as checking and fixing line running errors like loose or poor placement and identifying and fixing line traps. There were a couple of circuits that we did and then the dive was called and I was in charge of pulling the line out. If you have ever heard the expression "like a fart in the breeze" that is Johnny when it comes to vanishing. Needless to say when I had the line half way out I noticed my second diver (Mike) in front of me, a clear view out the mouth of the Ballroom and no Johnny. I got Mike's attention and questioned him as to the location of Johnny and the answer I got back was some shoulder shrugs. I then had Mike hold his place on the line and I went back about 10ft and had a better look down in the bottom of the Ballroom and there is Johnny smoothly swimming around like a catfish. I signal him, get his attention and tell him to get his butt back on the line. The expression on his face was so funny and he kept sticking up his ? hand signal. I just pointed him back to the line and gave him the thumb. Johnny then got to my secondary tie off and gave me the OK signal and I sent him on his way We finished the dive and had our little briefing. We had our final dive in the Ballroom area with a line run in by Mike and some basic drills on the way out. We had our debriefing and swapped tanks for our final dive of Cavern into the Devil's Ear!!! The Ear dive was very cool and eye opening. It started with a solid pre-dive briefing and then Johnny running the line in to the gold line. Mike was diver two and I was diver three and when we made it to the gold line we were to hold our position and then Johnny took us one at a time to have a look at the shoot that will have you exit at the Eye and the entrance to the catacombs. After abit we thumbed the dive and had the joy of our first "ride" out the Ear. Safely at the surface we gathered and had our post dive briefing. We then got out and put away all our gear and made our way to the Deli to take our exam. Upon finishing the exam and having some discussion Johnny smiled and shook both our hands, we were official CAVERN DIVERS!!!!
to be continued...
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