ScubaInChicago
Contributor
GUE Cave 2 Class Report W/ Mark Messersmith
So I haven't read a GUE Cave 2 report in quite a while and thought I would throw one out there in case someone had any interest in the cave curriculum through the eyes of someone who just took it. So here we go…
I took Cave 1 six months prior and after 50+ C/1 dives, it felt like I had hit a brick wall. Following the gold line and seeing jumps everywhere while doing it was getting too tempting, so for sanities (and safeties) sake, I had to go to the next level. I was fortunate to find a couple of teammates who had taken C/1 about the same time I had and were feeling the same growing pains. They had already scheduled the class with Mark Messersmith who I had the privilege of meeting while he sat in on part of our T/1 class 4 years ago. I knew he was a very patient instructor with tons of experience and just a really great guy all around.
Our class was scheduled for early May, just in time for some hot weather to roll in. This turned out to be mostly a non-issue as we were in the water before the late morning heat, and wet during the surface interval. Most of the Florida systems during that time were flooded or blown out with unmanageable flow. Our diving would take place in the Ginnie Springs and the Manatee systems.
Day 1…Our first day was at Ginnie where the basics are reviewed and S-drills and valve drills are evaluated. Fortunately, we all had these down pat and could move on to do some actual diving. The dive plan had already been gone over on land and I had the privilege of running the reel through the Eye, along side a "Temporary permanent" line, and along the gold line into the gallery. Lucky for me, the flow was down a bit and I didn't look like a hot mess while putting in the line. The dive went well setting up a circuit and then as usual, the failures starting coming. I've gotten to the point in my training that these have now become fun and I'm a gluten for punishment and look forward to the challenge. My teammates were in the same mindset and everything was handled textbook. We finished the dive and got to hang out in the Eye for 10 min of deco (wishing we could cheat and hang out pinned to the ceiling). The second dive of the day was postponed due to jetlag of our teammate who flew in on a 5a.m. flight and a little bit of chill from the 72* water. Some classroom review stuff was gone over and an overall early/good day was behind us
Day 2…Today was an even earlier day to make up dive two from the day before (who's bright idea was that anyway?). I can't remember if it was 7:00 a.m.or a 7:30 a.m. day, but it was far earlier than I wanted to get up for diving. We all had annual passes to Ginnie so we did get to bypass the longish check-ins. We went over our dive plan, did more S and valve drills, then got diving to complete our circuit. Wouldn't you know it? Our gear really sucked, it started failing like clockwork. We finished our dive and did another 10 minutes of deco in the Ear, yippee. I don't recall the fun we had on dives two and three of the day, but I know we hit the Bats on backgas on one of those dives and paid with 20 minutes of mandatory deco
Day three we got to take a stage, but not without doing more valve and S drills (blah). Part of the days exercises was to see if the stage was an asset or a hindrance with stress, streamlining, and time lost to switching, stowing, and dropping the stage. We actually rocked it and got an extra 500' out of the stage and paid the price with 25 minutes of deco for it. All I could think of while looking at the clock was what a bad day it would be if some jerk took our deco bottles (as has been known to happen at Ginnie). Day three went so well, I asked if we could take 2 stages the next day, lol. Day 3 was loooooonnnnnng, outside of 2 hour run times, lots of deco, and hauling heavy gear, we still had classroom stuff to cover.
Day 4 moved us out to Manatee Springs Park, the plan was to get there at 7:30 a.m. which meant waking up at 6, leaving at 6:30 and driving an hour to the park. Did I mention I'm not an early bird? Our dive plan consisted of doing a circuit at Freedmon's Sink, luckily for us, it was reported that there was NO flow due to the high water levels, NOT. Our dive turned into a little bit of a cluster, but felt it was handled very well given the options and chain of events. One of our teammates was a little beat up from the long days and the stress was starting to show. After a good debrief and regrouping, we got past dive 1 of the day and finished off with a productive dive 2. Then it was back to EE for some classroom and critiquing. Yet another long day, but the end was in sight
Day 5… Hey, here's an idea! Let's get to Ginnie Springs really, really early to get the swim test out of the way before everyone else starts to get there. I will be the first to warn anyone who takes their swim test in "The Run", it's freaking cold. The water level was up and there was no place to take a quick stand up breather, which was good, because it forced me to keep swimming. Mark joined us for the swim and finished a solid 2-3 minutes before us. I also realized how much kickoffs from the wall in a pool helped my overall time, I would guess swimming in the run added somewhere between 1 to 1-1/2 minutes to my overall time. Just something to keep in mind if you're training for the 500 yards in 14 minutes in a pool and just making it, aim for 12 minutes or less. I honestly don't remember very much about day 5, we were all pretty beat up by then. I do remember us making it within 50PSI of Double Domes before calling it on 3rds. I'm sure there were failures along the way and I'm positive we handled them accordingly to complete the course.
Overall, the class was AMAZING. It was awesome taking the kiddie gloves off, thinking through some complex scenarios, conducting the necessary problem solving, and getting the team out safely. Going into this class, I had GUE C/1 & T/2 behind me which proved to be extremely valuable for in water comfort, bottle manipulation, and carrying multiple bottles. One of our teammates was T/1 trained and the other was full cave doing C/2 dives with other GUE C/2 divers. While T/1 or T/2 isn't required, it sure didn't hurt.
I have nothing but great things to say about Mark and the way he handled every aspect of our training, (including the prototype Halcyon loaner gear). The staff at EE was awesome as always, and a BIG thanks to Kyle, Doug, Travis, Dan and Cora for going the extra mile throughout our class. If anyone has any questions, feel free to send me a PM and I'd be more than happy to help anyway I can.
Dan
GUE C/2, T/2 Diver
So I haven't read a GUE Cave 2 report in quite a while and thought I would throw one out there in case someone had any interest in the cave curriculum through the eyes of someone who just took it. So here we go…
I took Cave 1 six months prior and after 50+ C/1 dives, it felt like I had hit a brick wall. Following the gold line and seeing jumps everywhere while doing it was getting too tempting, so for sanities (and safeties) sake, I had to go to the next level. I was fortunate to find a couple of teammates who had taken C/1 about the same time I had and were feeling the same growing pains. They had already scheduled the class with Mark Messersmith who I had the privilege of meeting while he sat in on part of our T/1 class 4 years ago. I knew he was a very patient instructor with tons of experience and just a really great guy all around.
Our class was scheduled for early May, just in time for some hot weather to roll in. This turned out to be mostly a non-issue as we were in the water before the late morning heat, and wet during the surface interval. Most of the Florida systems during that time were flooded or blown out with unmanageable flow. Our diving would take place in the Ginnie Springs and the Manatee systems.
Day 1…Our first day was at Ginnie where the basics are reviewed and S-drills and valve drills are evaluated. Fortunately, we all had these down pat and could move on to do some actual diving. The dive plan had already been gone over on land and I had the privilege of running the reel through the Eye, along side a "Temporary permanent" line, and along the gold line into the gallery. Lucky for me, the flow was down a bit and I didn't look like a hot mess while putting in the line. The dive went well setting up a circuit and then as usual, the failures starting coming. I've gotten to the point in my training that these have now become fun and I'm a gluten for punishment and look forward to the challenge. My teammates were in the same mindset and everything was handled textbook. We finished the dive and got to hang out in the Eye for 10 min of deco (wishing we could cheat and hang out pinned to the ceiling). The second dive of the day was postponed due to jetlag of our teammate who flew in on a 5a.m. flight and a little bit of chill from the 72* water. Some classroom review stuff was gone over and an overall early/good day was behind us
Day 2…Today was an even earlier day to make up dive two from the day before (who's bright idea was that anyway?). I can't remember if it was 7:00 a.m.or a 7:30 a.m. day, but it was far earlier than I wanted to get up for diving. We all had annual passes to Ginnie so we did get to bypass the longish check-ins. We went over our dive plan, did more S and valve drills, then got diving to complete our circuit. Wouldn't you know it? Our gear really sucked, it started failing like clockwork. We finished our dive and did another 10 minutes of deco in the Ear, yippee. I don't recall the fun we had on dives two and three of the day, but I know we hit the Bats on backgas on one of those dives and paid with 20 minutes of mandatory deco
Day three we got to take a stage, but not without doing more valve and S drills (blah). Part of the days exercises was to see if the stage was an asset or a hindrance with stress, streamlining, and time lost to switching, stowing, and dropping the stage. We actually rocked it and got an extra 500' out of the stage and paid the price with 25 minutes of deco for it. All I could think of while looking at the clock was what a bad day it would be if some jerk took our deco bottles (as has been known to happen at Ginnie). Day three went so well, I asked if we could take 2 stages the next day, lol. Day 3 was loooooonnnnnng, outside of 2 hour run times, lots of deco, and hauling heavy gear, we still had classroom stuff to cover.
Day 4 moved us out to Manatee Springs Park, the plan was to get there at 7:30 a.m. which meant waking up at 6, leaving at 6:30 and driving an hour to the park. Did I mention I'm not an early bird? Our dive plan consisted of doing a circuit at Freedmon's Sink, luckily for us, it was reported that there was NO flow due to the high water levels, NOT. Our dive turned into a little bit of a cluster, but felt it was handled very well given the options and chain of events. One of our teammates was a little beat up from the long days and the stress was starting to show. After a good debrief and regrouping, we got past dive 1 of the day and finished off with a productive dive 2. Then it was back to EE for some classroom and critiquing. Yet another long day, but the end was in sight
Day 5… Hey, here's an idea! Let's get to Ginnie Springs really, really early to get the swim test out of the way before everyone else starts to get there. I will be the first to warn anyone who takes their swim test in "The Run", it's freaking cold. The water level was up and there was no place to take a quick stand up breather, which was good, because it forced me to keep swimming. Mark joined us for the swim and finished a solid 2-3 minutes before us. I also realized how much kickoffs from the wall in a pool helped my overall time, I would guess swimming in the run added somewhere between 1 to 1-1/2 minutes to my overall time. Just something to keep in mind if you're training for the 500 yards in 14 minutes in a pool and just making it, aim for 12 minutes or less. I honestly don't remember very much about day 5, we were all pretty beat up by then. I do remember us making it within 50PSI of Double Domes before calling it on 3rds. I'm sure there were failures along the way and I'm positive we handled them accordingly to complete the course.
Overall, the class was AMAZING. It was awesome taking the kiddie gloves off, thinking through some complex scenarios, conducting the necessary problem solving, and getting the team out safely. Going into this class, I had GUE C/1 & T/2 behind me which proved to be extremely valuable for in water comfort, bottle manipulation, and carrying multiple bottles. One of our teammates was T/1 trained and the other was full cave doing C/2 dives with other GUE C/2 divers. While T/1 or T/2 isn't required, it sure didn't hurt.
I have nothing but great things to say about Mark and the way he handled every aspect of our training, (including the prototype Halcyon loaner gear). The staff at EE was awesome as always, and a BIG thanks to Kyle, Doug, Travis, Dan and Cora for going the extra mile throughout our class. If anyone has any questions, feel free to send me a PM and I'd be more than happy to help anyway I can.
Dan
GUE C/2, T/2 Diver
