Cave Diving, Cave Exploration and Cave Mapping in Yucatan, Mexico

On Sunday, I flew up to Florida for a little diving vacation.  Andrew Driver had put together a wreck diving trip with plans to dive the Hydro Atlantic, Lowrance and the RB Johnson.  And if the team jelled nicely, we might get to dive some more interesting wrecks.  The cast of characters would include Eric Goldstein, Jim Moore and me.  Luckily, we all arrived on time with all our gear undamaged.  We would be diving on the Avid Diver captained by Oliver.

The first challenge was re-assembling my rebreather and finding the right amount of weight for saltwater and a bit more underwear then I would wear in Florida.  After some struggling to find the requisite lead, the rebreather came together.  The only other challenge was that there were no tanks with the valves in the correct position to de-invert the tanks.  So, once again I had to change my configuration and go valves down.  I find traveling with the rebreather very frustrating.   I loath changing my configuration, especially when I spent so much time dialing the unit in Mexico.  The addition of the weight for saltwater and the changing of the tanks really throws the whole thing out of balance and kills my trim.  I think when I go back to Mexico, I am going to return  to diving with inverted tanks and figure out how to balance the unit that way.  I need to find a way to mitigate this frustration and time spent changing my configuration around based on my location.  Enough of that, now on to the diving.

On Monday, we visited the Hydro Atlantic.  The Hydro Atlantic sits in 170ft of water.  It is a real wreck, not an artificial reef.  It was originally a cable laying ship.

The plan was to hot drop on the wreck.  It would be the first time that either Eric or I had done a hot drop and the current was really ripping.  The first attempt we missed the wreck. Visibility was about 25ft, I think we may have just drifted by the wreck as it lies south/north and the same direction of the current.  We surfaced and starting looking for the solo diver that went ahead of us. We he turned up we retrieved him.  Once we had him in the boat, we made a second drop and did a 25min BT.  It was a very cool dive.  RT was about 50 minutes.  Our max depth was 160ft on the second dive.

Today, the forecast was calling for 5-7 and building.  We elected to head out and try for the Lowrance.  It was questionable when we arrived, there were some 5-6 rollers though the chop wasn’t too bad.  After some discussion, we decided to dive but curtail our bottom time.

We hot dropped and landed right on the wreck, it was an awesome experience!  I felt like we really had done something pretty cool.  We did about 25min on the wreck.  Run time was about 70minutes.  Our max depth was 190ft.  We had planned on 40min but curtailed it due to weather.  The big bonus was the big, 5-6ft tall, sun fish hanging out on the wheel house at 140ft.  We were 2-3 feet away and he was just hanging out.  The deco went smoothly, Jim sent the bag.  The three of us hovered around him.  When we got out the seas had built a little, but not to anything unmanageable.

I guess that is all for today.  Tomorrow, we are planning to dive the Lowrance again.  I am looking forward to another dive on the wreck.

Hello trusty readers!  This week I find myself in South Florida with Andrew Driver of Blue Foot Diving.  I am here for 5 days of wreck diving.   In about 20 minutes we will be leaving for the Lowarance.  It is in about 170ft of water.   The plan is to do a hot drop, swim around the wreck for 40 minutes and then deco out in the drift.  I think it is going to be a very cool dive.  I will write more about it later today.

In the mean time, while you are at work slaving away, enjoy this video by Pietro.  Pietro is a fabulous videographer and photographer in Playa del Carmen.  He is also a super nice guy!  The video is of a dive upstream from The Pit at Dos Ojos.  I think you might find the shots of the road and the gear setup interesting.  It think it provides a little perspective on the logistical challenges of diving at The Pit.  In any event, enjoy it is worth while!

Today, I followed a link from Cave Divers Forum to a Kayaker’s website to watch his video of hucking a 50ft waterfall.  It was super cool.  From that site, I visited his photographer’s site, Tyler Roemer Photography Blog and spent some time gazing at his photos.  Holy crap they are amazing. Tyler’s photos are of the mountains and young people doing the things you do in the mountains: hiking snowboarding, cycling and climbing.  It really got my heart to go pitter pater.  There is something missing here on the Yucatan, green rolling hills and mountains.   Granted the scrub jungle, the beaches and the caves are beautiful, however they are not lush green mountains and snow.  Lately, I have been thinking about moving to the mountains again.  13 years ago, I lived in Keystone, Colorado.  That is where I met Allie, my wife.  We were snowboard bums working at the resort loading skis onto the gondola.  I hiked in the back country a couple of days a week, in the winter.  And in the summer I mountain biked and fly fished.  It was really a beautiful place.  I left Colorado for two reasons. First, Allie left to go to school and I was lonely.  Second, I didn’t want to snowboard anymore.  I had been skiing every weekend since I was seven years old and I didn’t want to be cold anymore.  I get really nasty headaches when my head is cold.  So one day in the spring I hung my snowboard up and bought a mountain bike.  I have only been snowboarding a handful of times since.  Well, the short of the story is that I have been thinking about the mountains a lot lately.  I am not going anywhere anytime soon I still have work to be done here on the Yucatan.  I guess the grass is always greener on the other side.

On a releated note, recently I have been captured by the awesome beauty we have all around us.  Brain Kakuk has been turning in some amazing photos of the Helictities in Dan’s Cave in Abaco, Bahamas.  You can see some of the photos of the formations here and here.  I am filled with amazement to get to see this stuff, it really enriches my life.  Thank god for the internet!

In a week I am flying to Florida for almost two weeks of diving.  The first week will be deep wrecks out of Ft. Lauderdale with Blue Foot Diving and the second week will be cave diving in north Florida to do my Cave CCR Crossover with Ted McCoy.  As you can imagine, the mad rush is on to get all my work buttoned up and to do some dives in my dry suit.   The wackiest thing is to realize that I am taking vacactions from Playa del Carmen, Mexico.  It has become home and I am ready to travel away from paradise already.

Some of my photos from a mountain bike ride from Teluride, Colorado to Moab, Utah.  It tooks us 7 days.  Awesome ride!

Every once in a while I read about some really cool diving that is going on that reminds me how basic the stuff I am doing is.  Brain Kakuk is continuing to make headway in the Bahamas and has blessed us with a write up about exploration at Dan’s Cave on Abaco Island.   Take five minutes are read about it, it got my juices flowing.

Cave Exploration in Dan’s Cave on Abaco Island, Bahamas.

When you are done reading about the diving, make sure to check out his photo gallery, the formations are stunning!

Now that we have that out of the way, do you ever dream about diving?  Well, I do!  And last night I had the craziest dream.  I thought you might enjoy a retelling, it is ridicules.  So, the dream started in the middle of a dive at The Pit.  Victor, Santiago and myself were working our way into the BMB passage.  (I haven’t been there yet, so I don’t know what it looks like.)  In my dream, the passage narrowed down the width of two people and angled down.  Then the passage continued through a hole in the floor.   The line was run was against the ceiling entering the passage, onto the floor and then against the ceiling through the hole and it was slack.  I was the third man.  When we got to the hole, Victor was looking in trying to figure out how to pass the restriction and kept moving the line back and forth forcing me to keep crossing under the line.  This was all taking place at like 330ft in my rebreather with bailout.  To say the least, it was a little stressful.  After sometime of watching them and getting very upset about having to repeatedly cross under the line and wasting my dive time, I hit my turn time and called my dive.

After calling the dive, the dream skipped right to the point I was out of the water and laying in bed continuing to decompress, at which time I noticed I had forgotten to wear my X1 and I never set my PO2 above .4.  Actually, I realized that I hadn’t ever looked at my PO2.  I decided that I must have followed Santiago’s open circuit schedule and I was freaking out.  (When I woke up my jaw was sore from being clenched.)  I wanted to get out of bed to check how much deco I had omitted, though I didn’t know what set points to use.  And I couldn’t figure out when laying in bed had become part of deco.  I knew I should be bent in the dream and I kept checking my right elbow.  The dream ended with me thinking to myself that it was awesome that I wasn’t bent and that I had gotten lucky.

What a wild dream!  Well, it was for me.  If you have ever had a really crazy diving dream, please post it as a comment.  If it is really long and interesting,  you can email it to me at hans@quietdiver.com and I will post it as an article.

And to tie things off, right before going to sleep last night I watched “Pod Cisnieniem” or “Under Pressure”.  It is a movie (DVD) about an open circuit depth record dive by a Polish team in the Red Sea.  I got the movie from Patrick who was teaching Jacek Szymczak this week.  Jacek is the deep diver in the movie.  Watching the movie really got me amped up and I think it inspired my dream about The Pit.  I love the idea of participating in a big project like that and supporting something extraordinary.  With any luck, I will have the opportunity one day.

Unfortunately, the trailer is in Polish.  However, the DVD is subtitled in English and well worth watching. Here is the trailer for the movie:

In another coincidence, Leigh Cunningham, the deep support diver, was Patrick’s trimix instructor in Egypt.  It was really cool to see his instructor in action.  I hope you enjoy the movie as much as I did!

Last week I wrote about an awesome cave dive to The Wakulla Room at The Pit.  Well, three days later, Saturday, I returned to make another try.

Over the last two weeks, I also wrote about some oxygen sensor trouble, trouble might be overstating the issue.  My 02 sensors had come to the end of their lives and needed replacement.  Unfortunately, after many hours of preparation for my dive on Saturday including staging all my gear in the water and starting my dive, I experienced another sensor failure, or sensor abnormality.

To recount the chain of events, on Saturday, 1/17/09, I went to Vaca Ha to do some cave diving on the unit.  The night before as I prepared my Megalodon, I discovered the number 2 sensor was dead, no voltage.  I didn’t think anything of it, the sensor was old and I hadn’t fired up the unit in three months.  I replaced the sensor with a new one dated July 2008, calibrated the unit and dived it.  During the dive at Vaca Ha, the number three sensor became current limited.  It wasn’t a big problem; I took the appropriate steps and exited the cave.  In preparation for my Pit dive on Wednesday, 1/21/09, I replaced the number three sensor with a new one dated March 2007.  That sensor was pretty old, but I wanted to give it a go.  Maybe it only lasts 6 months, maybe it lasts a year.  It was vacuum packed from the factory.  I calibrated the unit and went for a dive at The Pit.

During my 2 plus hours of deco I noticed the number 2 cell started to read a little lower than the other two sensors.  I checked to see if was current limited and I flushed, both checked out.  I didn’t think much of it. I assumed that the cell had come out of calibration as it baked in during the dive.  I figured, I could recalibrate the unit and all would be well.  The number one and number three sensors agreed.  Since I calibrate before every dive, it would be taken care of in my next pre-dive.

And that brings us to Saturday, 1/24/09.  I had another dive scheduled at The Pit.  Again, the setup and gearing up process went very smoothly.  I was super relaxed and ready for an awesome dive.  I finished my in water meditation and dropped down the deco line to check my staged tanks.  At the surface I had a PO2 of .4.  At the 20ft station I stopped and gave my gear the “In Water Two’s Check.”  My PO2 looked fine.  But for some reason, I decided to watch my primary handset as I descended.  This is not something I normally do, usually I check the handset and my HUD periodically to confirm the PO2, but I don’t watch it.

As I approached the 70ft station to check on my 50%, my number two sensor spiked to 1.97.  The other two sensors were in range at 1.0.  I had been adding diluent (7/71) on the way down.  I stopped and hovered staring at the handset trying to figure out what I was looking at.  I watched the PO2 fall on the number two cell from 1.97 to .8, while the other two sensors held steady at 1.0.

At this point I made a mistake; I didn’t flush the unit and put a known gas in the loop.  I just stared at the numbers trying to figure out if I should go for a dive.  Luckily on at least two separate occasions in the past week, I flushed the loop instinctually.  This time due to some mental twist, it never even crossed my mind. I think because it was so near the beginning of the dive and I thought I knew what should be in the loop.  The truth is I had no idea what was in the loop!  I wrongly assumed that I started the dive at .4, maybe I started the dive closer to 1.0.  I really didn’t know at that point, and what is worse is I didn’t know that I didn’t know.  I thought I knew.

After less then 1 minute, I decided to call the dive.  I couldn’t see going for a 4 hour 350ft cave dive with a unit that may or may not be broken.  I decided that when I surfaced, I would replace the number two cell again and try and go for another dive.

When I surfaced four minutes later, I hoisted the unit out of the water and changed the number two sensor with a brand new one.  I fired the unit up to calibrate it and the brand new sensor read 9.4mv.  I stared at it for a minute and realized, I couldn’t remember the proper range for an oxygen sensor.  My sensors had always started above 10mv, and that was my mental low limit.  I asked another CCR diver, Victor an Evolution diver, and he told me 8-13mv was the acceptable range, though I wasn’t sure if that same range applied to the R-22D sensors.  Later, I found out that the sensor was in range.

I decided against diving that day.  It was unfortunate that I couldn’t remember the proper range because I would have been able to continue my diving.  It amazes me how the smallest issue can sometimes put a dead stop to something that took hours and hours to prepare for.  It was a case of not being sure of a fundamental piece of information and paying the price.  In any event, I had hit my limit for the day.  Jorge and I packed up the gear, waved to Santiago and Victor and headed back to Playa for an afternoon on the beach.

The next day I called Patrick Widmann and Andrew Driver to discuss the sensor issue.  The very first thing they both did was give me a good flubbing for not flushing the unit.  The lesson is, know what you are breathing and don’t assume.  It was a good reminder that at any point in the dive, I may need to flush the unit to determine what gas is in it.  It may save my life.  As a result of my discussions, the sensor that spiked has been pulled from service. I am going to take it with me to Florida and put it on a cell checker.   The 9.4mv sensor is going to stay for now; however, I am going to watch it closely.  The bull got me.

A solo trimix CCR cave dive to the back of the Wakulla Room.

After our dives at The Pit in October I was pretty rattled about deep diving and CCR diving.  During those three days at The Pit, I lowered my rebreather into the water with the BOV open, twice.  The first time I know I made a mistake and luckily only suffered a little water in the loop, not enough to cancel the dive.  The second time, I double checked the BOV was closed before I lowered it.  After twenty minutes, I noticed the Megalodon was floating kind of funny.  When I checked it, it was flooded bad.  The bottom of the can was full of water and the sorb was shot.  I called my dive that day due to “technical difficulties” and waited on the surface for Patrick.  When he returned in pain, I got rattled.  The combination of making a very pedestrian error, one which I was taught not to make in basic CCR, twice and then seeing Patrick injured me, just put me off CCR diving and deep diving all together.  I just wasn’t sure I was cut out to play at that level if I am going to make basic mistakes.  I spent some time considering selling the rebreather and just diving open circuit.

I didn’t dive the CCR for a couple of months and concentrated on sidemount/survey diving.  I gave myself some room to rebuild my confidence, see Patrick’s outcome and to get some distance.  Finally, with Patrick back in the water and the season for deep diving returning I thought it was time to get back in the saddle.  I had a choice, I could dive the rebreather or get rid of it.  No reason to have it sitting in the corner depreciating.  I decided to dive it with a renewed focus on checking everything twice.  I started with a couple of dives at Vaca Ha.  Both of those dives went very smoothly and I was really stoked to be back on the machine.

Then Victor & Santiago told me they would be doing a week of deep diving at The Pit and asked me if I wanted to join.  I thought, “This will be good.”  It will be a chance to get back to The Pit and concentrate on myself.  Victor & Santiago would dive as a team and I would dive solo.  Learning from our October experience, I hired a sherpa, Jorge, to do the heavy lifting.  He would be responsible for raising and lowering the tanks and moving them from the truck to the water and back, which was an excellent investment!  The three of us split the cost of the sherpa and it was the best 80 Pesos I have spent in a long time.

The two days before the dive were filled with the typical work: planning, blending, and double-checking gear.  The rebreather needed a new #3 cell so that went in and was calibrated.  The gases were mixed: 10/60 for bottom and 5 different blends for bailout.  Tuesday night was spent poolside doing bubble checks and assembling the gear.  The tanks were loaded into the 4Runner and the rebreather was assembled.   I cut my dive plans and hit the sack calm and ready for my dive.  I was in bed by 11:30.

Jorge arrived at 7AM on the dot and we loaded the remaining gear and Chico, my Black Lab.  We were on the road by 7:30AM.  It is really amazing how much smoother things go without 3 other divers involved.  Normally, it would take us and hour to get loaded and out of Playa.

We arrived at The Pit by about 8:45.  Jorge and I set to work.  In short order the tanks and rebreather were in the water.  As soon as the rebreather hit the water, I jumped in and checked it.  Everything seemed to be sealed up nice and tight.  About 9:30, I had my wetsuit on and I was in the water.  I kited up and pre-breathed the machine.  I played the dive over in my head a couple of times.  Everything was going so smoothly, I was very happy.  Once everything was on and I was comfortable, I lay back in the water and did my five minute meditation.  I cleared my mind and took nice long deep breathes and listened to my heartbeat.  I could hear it slowing to a nice rhythm.

When the five minutes were up, I waved to Jorge and calmly dropped down the deco line.  At 20ft I stopped and checked the O2 bottle, it had pressure and was off.  Then I dropped down to the 50% and checked it, though I checked it more thoroughly.  I noticed something strange, it only had 2500PSI.  The 50% should be full I thought to myself.  The 02 is the bottle that was short.  Then I looked at the MOD sticker and I realized that I was looking at the O2 bottle.  It was at the wrong depth!  I thought to myself, “Damn it!”  I unclipped the bottle and ascended to the 20ft station.  I swapped the bottles, reconfirming them and then dropped back down to deposit the 50% at the right depth.  All this was handled in the span of a couple of minutes; however the clock had started to run at that point.

I am very glad I checked the tanks before I left.  In the past, we lowered the tanks and assumed they were fine.  It would have been a nasty surprise to arrive at the “50%” and find that I was looking at a bottle of 100%.  Without in water support it would have been especially problematic, because it would have required that I break my ceiling by 50ft to retrieve the 100% while breathing the 30/30.  I know I should have enough gas to deal with the situation, but the fact is it was avoidable and in fact was avoided by double checking the gassed at the deco stations.  During stage class and deco class we are taught to check and recheck the gas we are breathing, the same lesson goes for staging gas on a deco line.  Another lesson learned.
With the gases at the correct depths, I left for my dive.  I started to make up for lost time, though I arrived at the 150ft stage depot a minute late.  By the time I got to the 220ft way point I had slowed my swimming to limit my exertion I let go of the fact that I was late.  I was still a half minute behind.  I arrived at the By-pass and felt great.  The cave is awe inspiring; the scale of it is really remarkable.  The Cardea Passage and Wakulla Room are huge, both wide and tall.

I swam through the By-pass and beyond my previous distance.  This trip I had some time to really enjoy the Wakulla room (Map of The Pit by Nick Toussaint).  I had scheduled 20 minutes for my deepest segment, so I just took my time.  At 15 minutes I arrived at the second T in Wakulla.  I thought for a second trying to remember the way to BMB, I took the left, a moment latter the line drops off towards the BMB.  I had reached my distance goal, but I still had time.  I decided to drop down and try and catch a glimpse of the BMB.  I got down to 317ft at minute 18, two minutes ahead of schedule.  I stopped and peacefully enjoyed the moment.  All of the anxious excitement of my first dive to Wakulla was absent.  By minute 19 I had turned and was heading out, by minute 24 I had exited the By-pass and started my ascent.

The ascent was super peaceful; I was really stoked about my progress and execution.  I had about 2 hours of deco ahead of me and I wasn’t dreading them.

I arrived at my 40ft stop around 11:30AM.  I could see Victor & Santiago getting into their gear.  I was really excited for them; I hoped they would have a great dive.  While I was on my 20ft stop, another team came up from the deep.  After some puzzling, I thought I recognized the diver in doubles, it was Dennis from Aquanauts.  It was nice to see him.  We exchanged glances and hand gestures to pass the time.  At minute 164 my dive was over, I was floating on the surface chatting with Dennis.  It was an awesome dive.

I floated around for 30 minutes just relaxing.  I pulled off my CCR and got it read to lift.  Jorge, with some assistance from Dennis, lifted the CCR and the tanks.  What a luxury to have help.  Jorge and I cleaned up our mess waiting for Victor’s team.  We got them out of the water and squared away.  Jorge, Chico and I headed for home around 3PM.  It was a fabulous day of deep diving.  Almost everything went right and I had a huge amount of fun.  The pay-off was huge for the effort.  With any luck, I will be back there in 4 days to give it another go.

Of course, no dive is executed by only one person.  I want to thank Jorge for his time, he was a life saver.  I want to thank Patrick Widmann from Protec for mixing up some excellent Trimix and loaning me his deep bailout.  I know I need to blend my own.  I want to thank Santiago and Victor for having me a long.  And I want to thank Chico for being the loving attentive friend that he is.

And as a closing treat, a friend forwarded me this video from YouTube.  I thought was great, though unrelated to diving.

Wow, the last time I wrote about diving was on December 23.  That feels like a long time ago.  Well, the reason I haven’t written is the diving I am doing hasn’t provided much that I can write about.  I am involved in a resurvey project; Alain and I are collaborating with 2 other fine gentlemen, I am sure you would recognize both of their names if I mentioned them.  Most of my diving has been in the same system laying line and surveying it.  So far we have surveyed 2400ft of cave with an error of about .75%.   We are very pleased with our progress.  Eventually, I will write about in detail.  Now that you have been updated, we can move on to the new dive site I visited today, Vaca Ha.

Patrick and I have been talking about making some CCR dives at Vaca Ha and Tortuga for almost a year.  It seems like the perfect site, good depth and big cave.  Every time we had the time to go, we decided to go somewhere else like The Pit.  Well, I needed to dive somewhere new after a month on the aforementioned project and I decided to hit Vaca Ha.

On Friday night I assembled the breather.  It had been a couple of months since I used it.  Actually, it had been since Patrick’s accident.   It needed a good once over and when I fired it up I found number 2 cell was completely dead.  Luckily, I have a bunch of cells on hand and I made a quick swap.  Everything else checked out.

Since I hadn’t been to Vaca Ha before I needed to get some information on how to access the site and what I should expect.  I called Steve Bogaerts and Bil Philips.  Between the two of them I got the information I needed.  It ends up that Bil Philips mapped Vaca Ha, so I called the right guy.

Entrance to the site is 80 Pesos and the key can be picked up from the land owner, Latacia, in Tulum.  With Bil’s directions getting the key was easy as can be. Vaca Ha is about 5 miles out of Tulum on Coba Road.  Once through the gate drive straight back, don’t take the road to the left, it goes to Tortuga.  The Cenote is a small pool at the edge of a swamp.  It is just big enough for 4-5 people to float around in and do bubble checks.  The guideline starts in open water under the rock overhang.  The pool drops down to 10ft then a smallish cave drops down to 20ft and you enter a minor restriction.  After some tight passage the cave opens up into a beautiful chamber at about 35ft.  Vaca Ha is on the deeper side, my max depth was 76ft and most of my dive was below 50ft.

My first cave dive was up the main line for 35 minutes.  At the 25 minute mark I came to a T.  I took the T left and then came to another T.  I took the T to the right and it ended in a couple of hundred feet.  I turned and checked the other branch; it was going and big enough though I had reached my distance limit for my bailout.  I returned to the first T and checked the other branch, that tunnel was going though it was getting smaller.  I believe it goes to the Strip Tease Restriction and then is too small for CCR after that.  On the way back I checked a couple of the other jumps to the left.  It was an excellent dive.  If you removed the stalactites and stalagmites this cave reminded me of Orange Grove.   Vaca Ha has smooth walls and keyhole shaped passages, very reminiscent.  Maybe it has been a long time since I had been to OG or maybe they are similar.  My first dive ended with out any deco.  It was really satisfying to be on the rebreather again.

On my surface interval I took a 1 hour nap and ate some tuna and an orange.  Not the best tasting combination, but it was food.

Recently, I added half-inch tall d-rings (Manufactured by Steve Bogaerts) to the font of my waist strap in an attempt to get my tanks to ride more level and tighter to the body.  This is a very similar setup to the adjustable rings I use on my sidemount harness for when the tanks get light.  In any event, I used the new d-ring location on the first dive and it really made a difference in the water, I was much more comfortable and I felt more streamlined.  I found the band too low on my tank, so I adjusted up to try and make it ride more smoothly.  It worked well, though I am going to try it even higher on the tank tomorrow.  Moving the clip from the butt plate mounted d-rings to the front of the hips made a world of difference.

On my surface interval I was contemplating where to go next, luckily Adam Korytko from CaveHeaven.com was there guiding.  I asked him and he replied that there is a jump about 13 minutes down the main line to the right and down.  It is marked with a red arrow.  He said it is a beautiful dive and there is a tight restriction.  He wasn’t sure I could pass with the rebreather.  I looked at the team that had just passed it and figured that if they could make it, I could.  I kitted up and hit the water.

Right on schedule I got to the jump.  The jump is down into the halocline and into a short silty passage, so buoyancy has to be the first order of business.  I have to admit that making the requisite adjustments on the CCR and running the spool without a Goodman handle was a little complicated.  I made the jump clean and didn’t add any new damage to the floor.  About 10-15 minutes up the line it doubles back on itself and enters the restriction.  When I arrived I checked my gases and PO2.  I hovered for a minute or two examining the restriction.  It is sort of peanut shaped.  That is if you bend a peanut in the middle and put the concave side down and rock it so it is sitting on the right lobe.  The restriction makes a slight right turn, so unless you enter inverted you have to arch your back to make the turn.  It was deceiving small and a real bender.  After examining it for a minute and taking into account the team that had passed it, I decided I could make it.

I entered the restriction and immediately made contact with the lid of the canister.  Still convinced I could make it, I wigged in a bit more waiting to pop through.  Before I knew it, I was in the middle and couldn’t go forward or back.  The restriction is more then body length and I was committed.  My chest was on the floor and my canister was key-holed.   I slight wave of fear poured over me.  I struggled for a minute.  It was a shock how much larger I was in my rebreather then in sidemount.

I stopped everything and decided to take inventory of my situation.  I checked my access to my bailout regulator and then dumped all the air out of my wing.  It was time to make myself smaller.  The more I squeezed in, the more my counter lungs were compressed.  I held my breath for a minute to listen for bubbles, one of my fears was tearing the loop and being stuck on bailout.  I started to work my way through again moving left and right looking for the biggest spot.  I twisted a bit to try and unhook the canister.  Still stuck I stopped again and decided to think and breathe for a couple of minutes.  I wanted to make my chest smaller and I wanted to confirm the machine was working correctly.  It is easy to loose track of the machine if you are struggling with something else.

I started to list my options: remove my bailout tank to make some more room, remove the rebreather or work on passing the restriction in my kit.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t sure I could remove either piece of kit and the idea of removing the breather and possibly loosing control of the bailout tank scared the hell out of me.  That would be the last resort.

Another minute or two passed and I decided to give it a go again.  I wiggled and then decided to push my chest down and put my face in the floor to try and point the lid down.  POP!  I was out on the other side.  On the other side I hovered for a minute or two to collect myself.  I checked the machine over and decided to exit.  I had had enough excitement for one day!

As you can imagine the exit was no joy.  I got stuck again, however not as bad.  I found a better path through and was able to make myself a bit smaller.  Having passed it once, I was sure I could make it again.

On the exit side, I decided to pass the restriction again to determine the best approach.  As I checked over the machine, I saw one of the 02 sensors was more then a .20 low and stayed that way.  I did a 02 spike to confirm the cell was current limited and it didn’t rise at all.  I held my thumb out, called the dive, lowered my set point to put the cell back in range and did a hearty loop flush to confirm my electronics.  Luckily, the change didn’t negatively impact my deco obligation.  I was relieved I had the cell failure and I didn’t go back through the restriction.  Getting stuck the first time was scary.  The cell failure was worth paying attention too, though not a crisis.  The rest of the trip home was uneventful.

This got me to thinking.  What were my viable options once I was stuck?  I know I had the option to not enter the restriction, so set that one aside.  How could I have made myself smaller or change my shape?  The first thought that came to mind was to try and unclip the lungs and swing them out in front of my so I could push my chest into the ground, though I have never tried this while staying on the loop.  This seemed the least problematic.

The next thought was trying to swim out of the breather.  I wasn’t sure how I could accomplish that and maintain control of the bailout and the rebreather.  There was a drop off after the restriction so there was no place to rest the tank.  And after removing the unit I would be stuck holding a tank and a rebreather in 60ft of water.  I would have to push the rebreather back though the restriction and don it again.  I thought about that for a while and decided I would need a no mount harness to clip the tank to once I was out of the CCR.  I would also need to be able to reach my waist to unclip my harness.  Plus, my weight is on the back plate so I would be positive as soon as I was out of the rig.  That seemed like the least pleasant option short of drowning.

What other options exist?  What have you done in this situation?

I think it is worth while to point out that failures and problems come in clusters! Not only did I get stuck but I had a cell failure.  The cell failure is to be expected, they are at the end of their life span.  I wonder how long the cell had been current limited?  Was it the whole time I was dealing with being stuck and did I just miss it, or did it really happen after I exited?  Remember, “Murphy is a cave diver.”

I am going to give this some more thought and try some exercises under the watchful eye of a buddy.  I am interested to know my options and how they will play out.  I am sure this isn’t my last time being stuck.  If I come up with any good results, I will let you know.

Mhhh…I wish I could entitle this one: “How Not to Get Bent” but unfortunately, that is not what this article is about. I did get bent and this article is just one way for me to analyze what happened and try to find some clues on what I can do different next time.

Most of my personal deep diving experience comes from mixed gas diving in the Egyptian Red Sea. The workload before the dive was minimal since we used a boat to reach the dive site. I usually sat down at the end of the platform with all my stage tanks at arms length. The dive itself was mostly cruising a long a reef wall or wreck at depth, sometimes for pleasure and sometimes for collecting data. Most of the dives were easy swimming since elevating your breathing at depth using Open Circuit Scuba is not really something you want to do. Occasionally, heavy currents made it difficult to hold precise deco stops or forced me to hang on a shot line like a flag in a heavy wind.  Profiles were square shaped sometimes with a single bottom depth and ascent, sometimes a multilevel dive going from deck to deck of a shipwreck for example. Bottom times where typically limited by gas volume and my RMV. Since my resources were very limited in Egypt (80cf tanks only) and I had decided to never make a dive with less then 10min bottom time my depth was automatically limited to about 120m (400ft).

At first I used GAP and later Z-Planner for my custom cut tables.  When I look back on those dives them seem somewhat aggressive, not by choice but by lack of experience and knowledge.  However, I can’t really recall a single time when I felt different after a dive then at the beginning of the dive. Usually, I felt even better because I had spent some time breathing O2.

Doing deep cave dives with extended bottom times requiring long horizontal distances turned out to be way different from doing them in the ocean. These circumstances often force us to do things which can have a very negative impact on our decompression, such as:

1. Strenuous work before the dive, which includes getting to the site, setting up etc
2. Strenuous work during the dive, meaning traveling with bigger amounts of equipment long horizontal distances as fast/efficient as possible.
3. Possible ups and downs as our profile is dictated by the cave which can lead to bounce dives and therefore a higher risk of DCS.
4. Extended bottom times leading to hours of in water decompression.
5. Strenuous work post dive, which includes getting all your gear back together and leaving the dive site.

As I reported in the article Three More Trips to The Pit, I believe that our three days at The Pit and my inability to listen to myself, contributed to my accident. Our analysis of the execution of the dive didn’t reveal any of the standard causes, there was no: rapid ascent, dehydration, violation of decompression profile, or ceiling violations.   From an execution perspective, the dive went very smoothly and according plan until the first symptom manifested itself.

Therefore, I have to look for other possibilities to understand the possible cause (if there is such a thing) for my accident or at least identify the contributing factors. Looking at the three days, I believe that I have found a pattern that gradually resulted in me lying in a recompression chamber.  The pattern was driven by the 5 aforementioned points as well as by ego and commercial interests.

Our objectives for the first day were to install a system for evacuating an unconscious diver and execute a dive to Wakulla Room.  During the dive I would fine tune new equipment and bailout at depth to check RMV under realistic circumstances. It took us more time, effort, concentration, work, etc. to install the system then anticipated, therefore we called the dive. For some unexplainable reason, I felt that I lost an opportunity and was behind schedule.  I felt slightly defeated when I left The Pit.

Three days later, we returned with the goal of perfecting the system and executing the first dive of the project. AGAIN, it took way more time, effort, etc. then planned to rig the lift system, however this time I didn’t call the dive. Why? I even thought about it.

I usually tell my students during their training that if they think about calling a dive, the dive is already called and they simply have to inform their team. I didn’t call the dive because I wanted to dive, because of all the effort I had put in, because I had already “lost” one day there, because other people were there to support my dive, because I wanted to know if everything works so I could make further plans, because I have to get this done, because I need to know if my configuration is better, because, because, because a thousand different reasons of which not one has any value compared to the outcome.

Looking back it is all so obvious and clear.  However, it wasn’t back then, I thought I would be just fine. My Ego needed adjustment and it got it!

We entered the water super late; this threw my focus off target, instead of relaxing and visualizing the dive, I focused on the late start.  I did my bailout exercise and finished my dive running a VPM B algorithm which I padded by about 20 minutes divided on the last stops to account for the pre-dive work as well as the workload and higher breathing rate during my fast exit. When I surfaced felt a slight pain in my left shoulder and the right ankle which I explained by the pre-dive work (lowering the tanks with my left arm), heavy kicking on the way out swimming at 60ft a minute in full gear with bailout tanks and the probability of a very minor Type 1 DCS hit. The pain disappeared in less then 10 minutes and I had no other symptoms.

Usually at the end of the dive we rest and eat on the platform, close to the water, for at least 2 hours to give our bodies time to recover before climbing up and evacuating the gear.  However, this time we omitted the rest period because it was getting dark which would have made the drive out more difficult and increased the risk to the vehicles. So, I climbed up and helped the support diver hoist the equipment out as fast as possible.

On the way back to Playa del Carmen, I got a phone call from Alain who happily announced that he had taken the next day off to support us. “Great!” I thought.  Since we had agreed to only dive there with support, every member of our support team is a working dive instructor with very limited time, and with the high season coming in fast, I feared it would be impossible to get enough people together. Maybe that is the reason I felt so pressured to dive.

Back in Playa, we went to Protec to blend for the next day and after a lot of work I finally arrived home at 22:00h. When I cut tables for the following day, I decide to go with the more conservative VPM B/E algorithm.  I took this step to add conservatism in consideration of the pain, all the work and two days of back to back deep diving.  The change to VPM B/E gave me 40 minutes more decompression then the previous dive, Pit Revisited, which had the same profile and longer bottom time.  I considered this more then an ample amount of decompression time.

The next morning, we got out of Playa a little late.  And as Hans was setting up his gear he had an equipment failure and called his dive.  I started my dive alone and felt great.  I found the alternate line into Jills Chamber and was super excited.  The dive was going really smoothly until I experienced a strong pain in my left shoulder on the 12m (40ft) stop while moving my arms. (The hyperbaric physician stated later that excess motion could have triggered bubble formation). Within minutes, the pain pretty much disappeared and so I went through the rest of my decompression padding my stops further due to the unexplained pain.

As I ascended through the last 3m (9ft) the pain in my left shoulder returned and I got a new pain in my both my ankles, the pain was significant. As I contemplated what to do I stayed on O2 breathing from the loop.  After 10-15 minutes, I hauled myself up on the platform doffed my gear and started breathing Open Circuit O2.  I stayed on the O2 until I decided that it wasn’t changing any of my symptoms.  Once off the O2 I started to feel better and better and after 30minutes I was free of pain or any other sign or symptom of DCS.  At this point, I was a bit confused and I scanned my body rigorously for any remote signs. We left the jungle and I felt great! First, my dive was awesome.  Second, I thought I had very closely escaped a chamber ride…Boy was I wrong.

After dropping people and gear I came home and since it was late I ate something and went to bed, still without pain or any other symptom.   The next day I woke up with sore muscles in my left shoulder. Nothing unusual after challenging day in the jungle, however, given the episode I was worried and cautious. As the day passed the pain didn’t change but I had no other symptoms which drove me mad. Here is what I thought,

“If I go to the chamber and tell them the kind of diving I did, they will put me in no matter what and I will not be allowed to dive for at least 6 weeks. Given that diving is my only income and that in the past 6 years the longest brake I took was about 3 weeks that thought was unbearable. It did not help that my work calendar was filled with bookings.”

So, I decided to breathe oxygen to see if that would make any difference, which it didn’t.  Next, a friend came over, who is working a hyperbaric chamber operator, to give me a neurological exam, which came out totally ok. However, I was still very unsure what to do. After some talking, I decided to go to the chamber and see the physician. He gave me the same exam which came out clean, again.  However, as anticipated he sent me to the chamber for a table 6 treatment.

My shoulder pain didn’t change during the treatment, however my right ankle started to hurt on decent and then stopped. Five hours later I exited the chamber in the same condition I entered, except I was more tired and my lungs were burned. The next day I returned with the same issues and so I went back in for a table 5 treatment which I exited unchanged again.  After 5 treatments and no changes they switched the plan to table 9 and I did two more treatments to a total of 7. The last two days I had some relief in the shoulder in the evenings but the pain pretty much came and went and alternated between my ankle and the shoulder.

It was a very difficult time with a lot of emotional episodes. Blaming God and the world for what happened to me and questioning what went wrong over and over again with endless discussions and the opinions of every diver that crossed my path. (Some of which where helpful).

After that my treatment was suspended due to the fact that it seemed not to change anything. I was prescribed anti-inflammatory medication for two weeks and another doctor visit in two weeks. After 5 Days on medication the pain started to fade and now it is sometimes on, sometimes off, sometimes strong, sometimes week. But generally it seems to fade.

I asked the question, “When can I return to diving?” And no one knows. Five different doctors give me 6 different answers ranging from 5 days after pain dissolved up to 3 months. It continues to be a difficult time, I have many questions and there is nobody there to answers them.

Summing up, I think my accident (if you can call it that way) was an accumulation of many things. I believe that the mix of hard work, repetitive long deep dives,  pre-existing injuries caused by the dive the day before and all the other stuff contributed to situation I find myself right now.  Do I regret it? Yes, of course. Will I stop this kind of diving? Of course not! But I definitely learned a lesson or 7.

Safe Diving,
Patrick

I want to thank DAN and the local chamber for doing an excellent job, Hans, Alain, Matt, Steve, Nando, Etienne, Alex, Santiago, Maura, Victor, Allie, and many more for their moral support. I also want to apologize to my family and my girlfriend for putting them through this.

Advanced Cave – Stage / Multi-Stage Course with Steve Bogaerts

In October, I wrote a story about the DPV course I completed; I brazenly stated that the course was less stressful and difficult then previous courses. I felt great when I wrote that story, all that was going to change in the next two days. I had elected to do the DPV and Stage courses back to back in 5 consecutive days.

In the past, I had never made it past three days of training with Steve. By the third day I was exhausted and had absorbed all my body and brain could. On two occasions we had 4 or 5 days scheduled, and I bagged the extra days. Since I live in Mexico it was never a big deal. We would just reschedule those days in the future and Steve would enjoy his time off. Each time we ended training, I was at a natural stopping point. Any further and I would reach the point of diminishing returns.

The Stage Course was surprisingly challenging. I had done a pretty good job handling the scooter and integrating it with my diving. On Thursday, we headed to Ponderosa for some open water skills with a single stage and then the stage and the scooter. I did pretty well and executed all the required skills. I did discover that my regulators were not optimally setup and that I must have a long torso. We drilled on attaching the stage to the crotch d-ring and towing it with the scooter behind us. My 40 inch hose just wasn’t long enough. We also performed a cavern dive and drilled staging the scooter and a single bottle. I had a little trouble remembering to stop breathing the stage when we hit the scooter 1/3rds. That definitely should have been a warning. The day ended early because I was worn out.

Thursday night I had spent some time re-arranging regulators and filching my wife’s Scuba Pro MK25/S600, I needed one more turret first stage. In return she got an Apeks ATX 200. I think it was a fair trade. A little more wrangling and I ended up with two sets of left and right delivery regulators on turret first stages. I was happy with the outcome. I had wanted to find this combination for a while.

Friday dawned and I met Steve at his place. We got the DPV’s together and headed to Chac Mool. I rigged my sidemount tanks and my two stage tanks. As I started walking all this gear to the water’s edge I felt apprehensive. When I was nearly done ferrying gear to the water, I said to myself, “I can’t believe this is a two day course, I can’t imagine how anyone could do this in two days.” I was subconsciously aware that I was emotionally, physically and intellectually fatigued. In retrospect it is clear that was my gut talking and I wasn’t really listening, if I were I would have been able to prevent the coming mistakes.

The plan for Friday was to make two cavern dives and a long cave dive. The first cavern dive would drill handling one stage and the scooter. I needed to stage both and continue on. Then turn the dive and return in zero visibility and pick up them up. The drill started with us scootering. He signaled that I should drop my scooter. I staged the scooter and swam on. I believe I was still breathing the stage which was a protocol violation, however, I corrected quickly. I prepared to drop the stage. I decided to drop it at a 90degree turn in the line. I thought it would be easy to maintain orientation on my return. I dropped the stage on the wrong side of the line and continued. Steve called the dive and started the zero visibility drill. I reached the stage and immediately picked it up. I had to lift it over the line to the correct side of my body. While doing this, I actually got my body over the 90 bend and I had the line between me and the tank and in both arms. Right before I clipped the tank in, I realized the issue and corrected it. However, it wasn’t pretty and could have made things difficult if I hadn’t recognized the issue. I referenced the tie off twice more to confirm and then proceeded on. I picked up the DPV and called the drill.

In the debrief Steve pointed out some of my mistakes and how I could improve:

1. I should have dropped the bottle on the right side of the line as I was entering. This way when I returned, I could immediately mount it on the left. I wouldn’t have to cross the line with it.
2. When I reached the bottle, I should have picked it up and swam down the line a body length or so. This is for two reasons: A. so I wouldn’t be over the tie off and interfere with it or risk getting entangled in it like I did. B. By hovering over the tie off, I was preventing my dive buddy behind me from referencing it while I mounted the stage bottle.
3. I need to stop breathing the stage as soon as I decided it is time to drop it or the DPV.

The second dive went better. This was my first dive with two stages and the DPV. My job was to scooter the line until I was instructed to stage. At that point I staged the scooter, and the two tanks. The drill went pretty well. We turned the dive and I picked up all my gear with visibility and we surfaced. The debrief wasn’t remarkable.

I was completely exhausted emotionally and intellectually by this time. However, I decided to go on and didn’t say anything to Steve. We ate some lunch and returned to the water. I started to put on all my tanks and I was really struggling with them. Steve could see I was stressed. I went though my pre-dive check and only gave Steve my stage turn pressures. Actually, I gave Steve the amount of gas I could use out of each stage. When I told him I was done, he asked me what my turn pressures were for my sidemount tanks. I looked the gauges and rattled off 700psi each. And this is where things really went down hill. I was over tired and worn out. I had 4 tanks with 4 different starting pressures. And I was using 2 different amounts out of each set of tanks. I only said and processed how much I could use out of each tank. I decided I could remember the starting pressures. I never processed the turn pressure. I didn’t write anything down and Steve allowed me to start the dive. I was already a train wreck. Some lessons are best taught by a big blunder.

We started to scooter up stream. I was only supposed to breathe 1/6 from of my stages and burn the scooter for 20 minutes. Within 15 minutes I had already over breathed my first stage by a couple of hundred PSI, to be honest I am not sure how much I over breathed it. Steve knew there was a problem, he knows my SAC rate and he knew how much gas I had. He let me continue the dive. When I realized I had overshot the mark, I switched to my second stage. I figured I could recover by breathing the second stage short. However, I wasn’t sure how much I should short it and a seed of uncertainty and doubt started to creep in. I wasn’t sure of my gas situation. I knew I had plenty of gas with nearly full sidemount tanks. But I wasn’t rock solid sure. I staged my tank and continued scootering.

Within 5-6 minutes, I hit 20 minutes on the scooter. It was time to stage the scooter and then the second stage tank. I dropped both and placed a cookie on the line at an arrow pointing into the cave confirming my exit. We started to swim up stream on the sidemount tanks. Like a complete moron, I didn’t check my starting pressures for the sidemount tanks and so I had no idea when to turn! The further I swam, the more intense the sense of impending doom grew! Finally, after 20 minutes I had had enough and I called the dive. I was sufficiently freaked out about my uncertainty around my gas volumes. I was in 50ft of water and 2800ft from the entrance. We swam for 5 minutes or less and Steve called lights out. I got on the line and extinguished my light.

At this point the anxiety grew big ugly horns and was breathing fire! I felt doomed. I know the reality is that I had enough gas in my cylinders to get back, however we had departed from reality and had entered the realm of guessing and uncertainty. The longer we swam in the dark the worse the feeling got. I started to slowly unwind in the dark, but I still made good progress.

When I finally reached my stage bottle an overwhelming sense of relief flooded me. It is like popping out of a nasty silty restriction back into clear water, I felt like I could make it home. I struggled to clip the stage on in the dark on the line. I had chosen a really ugly spot to drop the bottle. I finally got it on and we proceed. I decided to breathe from the stage. I reckoned that I could breathe the tank dry and ditch it if I needed. That would provide some reference as to how far I had traveled and give me some definitely information about my gas volumes.

Five minutes later, I think, we came to the scooter, mind you this is all in the dark, and I clipped the scooter to my crotch D-ring and started to make headway. I held the scooter out in front of me and dropped in to a nice steady pace. I came upon my cookie and started to remove it from the line. Half way through the process, I decided to leave it. I thought, if I get turned around in the dark, this cookie will point me to the right way out.

After what seemed like an interminably long time, we reached my first dropped stage. I really struggled putting it back on. Two stages and a scooter in the dark on the line were tremendously difficult for me. I am not sure if it was the rigging or all the gear. I nearly lost the line a couple of times and I definitely stressed the line. Finally, I got sorted and started swimming.

I think this a good time to talk about the dark, real dark. The kind you find 2000 feet back in a cave. It is the loneliest and most baffling experience I have ever been through. In the dark time seems to follow a completely different pace. If you eyes are open your brain starts filling in the gaps to try and stay sane. It is hard to keep it focused, there is no reference. To be honest, I have no idea how long any of the stuff I am describing took. All I knew was that I had to keep hacking at it and make progress. This dive was the longest I had been in the dark to date and it seemed like a long time.

Imagine me lumbering down the line with all this gear. I didn’t know the cave very well and I had no idea where I was or how far I had traveled. After some time, my scooter got stuck in the wall. I thought it was strange. I could feel the wall on my right shoulder. I was holding the line with my left hand. I pulled the scooter back towards me and away from the way. It was pretty stuck. The line was in my palm with no real pressure. I started to struggle with the scooter. I finally yanked on it and it came free. I decided to change the line from left to right hand and swap the scooter. I put my right hand under my left and I cupped the line. The scooter was floating free. I left go of the line with my left and the line pulled through my right hand and disappeared. I gasp deeply. Fuck! I am off the line, in the dark, with 2 stages and a scooter in a cave I don’t really know. This is really bad!

Steve had felt the line being pulled up behind him and turned around. He saw my gauges on the ceiling of the cave. He told me he knew something bad was about to happen. He heard my gasp and then the line went slack in his hand returning to its normal position. He saw I was off the line and could hear my breathing had quickened. He thought about the fact that I was in a large bore cave with a DPV, lots of gear, 2000ft from the entrance, in 50ft of water and lost off the line. He feared I might trigger the scooter in my struggle and really make things worse. This had the makings of a bad situation. He expected me to turn on my lights and call the drill.

I quickly thought about the situation and blindly swept my arms below me looking for the line. I didn’t find it. I considered turning on my lights and then decided that in real life I wouldn’t have that option. I had to stay with it. I was momentarily overcome with fear.

I regained a little composure, thought again and decided the line had to be below me. I hadn’t felt any tension before it snapped free. I put my right hand on the wall, stretched my arms out and descended. I figured I would land on the line. A few moments later, I found the line. I hovered motionless with it in my hand feeling relieved. I spent some time breathing. I needed to get that under control. I regained composure and I was relieved I had found the line. The thought of a lost line search with a DPV was no fun.

I swam up the line and met Steve. We continued in the dark for a short time and then turned the lighting on. He signaled his DPV was broken and I towed him to the entrance.

On the surface we debriefed the dive. It was an intense experience. I had hit the wall in so many ways. I discovered that I can’t track 4 different tank volumes and turn pressures in my head. I also learned that I need to call dives earlier, especially on the surface if I am in over my head, which I was. In the end, I didn’t pass the course. I was sent away with instructions to practice with one stage and a scooter or two stages and no scooter. I was unable to safely conduct a multi-stage DPV cave dive. Whether it was because I was over tired or too task loaded, I made some bad decisions on the surface and really suffered during the dive.

I don’t believe I was ever in mortal danger on the dive. I do believe that I learned a huge amount about myself and my capabilities. Since the DPV course I have gotten an N-19. I have been hesitating to use it. The multi-stage portion of the course really made me trigger shy. I had sunk into some sort of compliancy around gas management and the course really rattled me. I have been much more diligent with my gas management, including writing down my turn pressures. Lately, I have been using a single stage regularly and I find it useful to process the turn pressures by writing them down and saying them. I have also incorporated a 5 minute meditation on the surface before starting the dive. I completely kit up including pre-dive check. Then I float on the surface for 5 minutes taking deep breathes. The idea is to center myself and visualize the dive. I want to lower my heart rate and dissipate the anxiety that is built up as I struggle to kit up.

I think I am going to schedule another day with Steve in January or February 2009 to finish the course. Hopefully, by then I will have a handful of single stage DPV cave dives under my belt. I already have a handful of single stage cave dives and they are becoming easier to execute.

Happy Thanksgiving to all my U.S. readers.  I would like to give thanks for the 75′F weather, warm water and miles of beautiful cave we have here in Mexico.  And over course, all of the other wonderful blessings I have in my life, like my family, friends, dog and the good health of all.

This morning I was checking the relevant sources and I came upon a link to a video about the exploration of the longest under water cave system in Sweden.  That unto itself would not be that exciting, however, to execute the exploration they needed snow machines, augers and snow shovels.  Yes, that is right! They ran the expedition in the middle of the Swedish winter.

From their summary, they ran the expedition in the middle of winter because they were exploring a river that siphons under ground and springs a couple of miles later and the winter has the least flow. The cave actually traverses the border between Norway and Sweden.  Whatever their reason, they deserve a huge round of applause because being wet and being cold are very difficult to master, my hat is off to them. The diving looked challenging from the video. Tight sidemount through hard rock and under the ice.

The video is in Swedish but I think it is worth a watch.  So, I give thanks for the easy diving and warm water here on the Yucatan. I have made a couple of ice dives and though beautiful, I am not inclined to make it my primary mode of diving. Keep the videos coming Markus.

The original video can be found here: Expedition Bjurälven from Markus Nord.