Last week my buddy Charlie and I took Cavern and Intro to Cave last week with Johnny Richards and we loved it! First off Johnny is the ****! almost certainly will take full cave with him when we are ready for it. BTW I love reading long posts so this will be fairly long 
We will start a little before the actual course: Charlie and I had new doubles, he hp 117s and hp 120s for me. We had pool practice doing valve drills and getting familiar with the new gear, but our big problem was no open water time with drysuits and whatnot because the water is still too cold here in TN. We got to Gainesville the day before and do 2 dives in Ginnie Spring to fix any problems that may arise. Luckily we only had small issues that were fixed with practice and small gear reconfigurations. End of the day we're feeling ready and confident about the start for cavern tomorrow.
Day 1:
Start of Cavern, we only did academic and land line drills. Learned a lot, one of the biggest eye openers was following the line Johnny laid for us with eyes open and no contact took us 1:20. This seemed reasonable and didn't mean much at the time but then Johnny made us do it eyes closed with line contact; after some struggling around tight wraps and confirming that I was following the correct line it took me 5:20 to get back. It took me 4 times as long to "find my way out", following thirds I'd've died (and yes I know i'm using sixths but still). Great wake up call. The rest of the day was in the classroom learning. Charlie and I did another dive in the Ginnie cavern practicing running our reel, always good to practice and time in water is always well spent.
Day 2:
dives for Cavern, we started early in the morning, went over the dive plan and got in the water. We got into our new routine of predive checking: head to toe check of all gear being present, functionality, and location; gas matching ( starting pressure, 3rds, 6ths, turn pressure), bubble check under water and S drill. I really like that routine and some version of it will be used for all my dives from now on, OW to the most technical dives that I will inevitably do in the coming years. Johnny lays a line course around the basin of Ginnie Spring and we do our first lap, following the line with sight, no big deal. Next we do it without mask, Charlie kept his eyes open so he had no problem; I kept mine closed, still no big deal. Then we do two more laps, blacked out air sharing taking turns as donating and OOG diver. We had some trouble with this, mainly moving too slow and being too positively buoyant.
Second dive was demonstrating different propulsion techniques. Modified flutter kick, modified frog kick, pull and glide and helicopter turning. Charlie and I have been practicing these for a long time and this was easy. We went into the cavern running our own reel and demonstrating these techniques. Afterwards the dive was called and we headed out and surfaced, the only problem was Johnny wasn't with us. This is because he left our team and became an observer and was supposed to rejoin our team. We left him because of this and once we surfaced we went "oh ****" and went back in. Afterwards we talked about it and our decision to not run a reel back in; we understood that had it been anywhere we would have but since we are very familiar with that cavern we chose not to.
Third dive was 2 part, each of us would run the reel in, turn and head out. Seemed easy but Johnny did a surprise OOA drill, he swam up and we had to donate quickly. I'm happy to say that both of us instinctively donated our long hose and made for the exit. This was kind of funny because Charlie dropped both reel and primary light when this happened, dangling canlight head was a funny sight then
The final dive of that day was cave dive! We discussed the plan, nothing major just focusing on turn pressure; we headed into the Devil's Ear and made it all the way to the keyhole and turned. A lot of fun but was killer on our fingers as we adjusted from finning to pull and glide.
This post is getting long enough. I'll stop here and continue for days 3 and 4 later.
We will start a little before the actual course: Charlie and I had new doubles, he hp 117s and hp 120s for me. We had pool practice doing valve drills and getting familiar with the new gear, but our big problem was no open water time with drysuits and whatnot because the water is still too cold here in TN. We got to Gainesville the day before and do 2 dives in Ginnie Spring to fix any problems that may arise. Luckily we only had small issues that were fixed with practice and small gear reconfigurations. End of the day we're feeling ready and confident about the start for cavern tomorrow.
Day 1:
Start of Cavern, we only did academic and land line drills. Learned a lot, one of the biggest eye openers was following the line Johnny laid for us with eyes open and no contact took us 1:20. This seemed reasonable and didn't mean much at the time but then Johnny made us do it eyes closed with line contact; after some struggling around tight wraps and confirming that I was following the correct line it took me 5:20 to get back. It took me 4 times as long to "find my way out", following thirds I'd've died (and yes I know i'm using sixths but still). Great wake up call. The rest of the day was in the classroom learning. Charlie and I did another dive in the Ginnie cavern practicing running our reel, always good to practice and time in water is always well spent.
Day 2:
dives for Cavern, we started early in the morning, went over the dive plan and got in the water. We got into our new routine of predive checking: head to toe check of all gear being present, functionality, and location; gas matching ( starting pressure, 3rds, 6ths, turn pressure), bubble check under water and S drill. I really like that routine and some version of it will be used for all my dives from now on, OW to the most technical dives that I will inevitably do in the coming years. Johnny lays a line course around the basin of Ginnie Spring and we do our first lap, following the line with sight, no big deal. Next we do it without mask, Charlie kept his eyes open so he had no problem; I kept mine closed, still no big deal. Then we do two more laps, blacked out air sharing taking turns as donating and OOG diver. We had some trouble with this, mainly moving too slow and being too positively buoyant.
Second dive was demonstrating different propulsion techniques. Modified flutter kick, modified frog kick, pull and glide and helicopter turning. Charlie and I have been practicing these for a long time and this was easy. We went into the cavern running our own reel and demonstrating these techniques. Afterwards the dive was called and we headed out and surfaced, the only problem was Johnny wasn't with us. This is because he left our team and became an observer and was supposed to rejoin our team. We left him because of this and once we surfaced we went "oh ****" and went back in. Afterwards we talked about it and our decision to not run a reel back in; we understood that had it been anywhere we would have but since we are very familiar with that cavern we chose not to.
Third dive was 2 part, each of us would run the reel in, turn and head out. Seemed easy but Johnny did a surprise OOA drill, he swam up and we had to donate quickly. I'm happy to say that both of us instinctively donated our long hose and made for the exit. This was kind of funny because Charlie dropped both reel and primary light when this happened, dangling canlight head was a funny sight then
The final dive of that day was cave dive! We discussed the plan, nothing major just focusing on turn pressure; we headed into the Devil's Ear and made it all the way to the keyhole and turned. A lot of fun but was killer on our fingers as we adjusted from finning to pull and glide.
This post is getting long enough. I'll stop here and continue for days 3 and 4 later.
