Cave 1 rule changes

[KMD]

Jailhouse is a dive that is clearly outside of cave 1 limits and would especially advise newer students to not even consider it.

The basin is frequenly less then 10 foot of viz and improper finning on the surface will reduce it to zero. While the line starts in open water, it immediatly enters a restriction. The floor of the restiction is covered very deep with mung, dead leaves and some clay so it is very easy to stir things up even worse. The line has only one strong tie off point on a rock. Everything else is tied to sticks jammed in the mud, so it can be very easy to create slack on the line.

All in all its not a place a cave 1/Intro to cave diver should be. Go get full cave and some experience first.

That being said, it is a fantastic dive.

 

[RTodd]

Fair point on jailhouse. I forgot about the first part of the entrance before you get to the bottom of the breakdown pile. I was working off of the flawed, if we can get scooters in there, it is appropriate rationale. I get a bit skewed in my views since the entrance to jailhouse is easy compared to a lot of the stuff we do down there. All of the big huge entrances with easy access to roads have been well developed. The out of the way stuff with reasonable access to roads tends to involve crawling/digging for 5-10 minutes to get to the good stuff.

 

[Bob Sherwood]

I just wanted everyone to be clear on what the changes are. Please reference the written and published standards when looking into changes as they are the most current information. Thanks, best, Bob

2.3.1.4 Course Limits

1. General training limits as outlined in section 1.4

2. Student-to-instructor ratio is not to exceed 3:1 during any overhead diving activity

3. Gas consumption: 1/3 of the starting gas supply should be subtracted from the total and reserved

for emergencies. Of the remaining amount divers may use up to 1/3 for penetration. This process

may be continued until divers reach the minimum starting volume of 100ft3 / 2832 liters.

4. Maximum depth: 100 feet/30 meters

5. Minimum 30 feet/9 meters of visibility to enter a cave

6. Minimum 100 cubic feet/2832 liters of gas to begin a Cave 1 dive

7. No passages in which divers are forced to travel single file for a prolonged distance. (ie

approximately 10 ft/3 meters).

8. No complex navigation (jumps, traverses, circuits)

9. Allowed to navigate past one permanent intersection

10. Allowed to navigate “gaps”, a gap occurs where the main line ends and begins a short distance

later; normally this occurs where the line has reached another entrance/exit point

Apparently there are new cave 1 rule changes so that the clause about gaps only being allowed if they cross open water has been dropped and so gaps are simply allowed now (so the hotul gap is just legal now). And restrictions are allowed now, what is not allowed is 'restricted passages'. So if a restriction is less than 50 feet between areas where the divers can turn around it is allowed, but longer restricted passages are out. The latter rule sounded like there might be a little more to the story and that certain passages which fit the letter of the law might still not be considered prudent for a cave 1 diver to dive based on other issues (halocline, etc).

...

Question: at the paso de legarto jump in the mainline in grand cenote, the line arrows have one arrow pointing back at your direction, a tie off and the two arrows pointing the 'wrong' way. As you pass that, do you cookie in front of the tie off and behind the two 'wrong' arrows to negate them, or do you cookie in front of the whole mess and negate the whole thing? I was leading in, and I felt that I agreed completely with the first arrow so didn't drop a cookie in front of it. Then there was enough room for the team behind the two arrows pointing the wrong way so I dropped cookies there. As we came back someone had actually jumped onto the paso de legarto line by tying into the first line arrow. That made me reassess my choice of cookie placement, but it still seemed like it worked and was unambiguous. It might have been more unambiguous to drop cookies on the other side of the first line arrow, but it didn't seem 'wrong' to do it the way we did. Thoughts?

 

[lamont]

7. No passages in which divers are forced to travel single file for a prolonged distance. (ie approximately 10 ft/3 meters).

thanks bob, i must have misremembered that. 10 feet seems a lot more reasonable.