Cavern In Doubles?

[willardj]

I did mine with Johnny Richards in High Spring's with no problem. The best thing is to contact the Instr. you are planning to train with and discuss it with them.

 

[jimdiverman]

I am scheduled to do doubles training at Dive Outpost in late October, but last night my instructor sent me an e-mail asking me if I wanted to do doubles academics and pool next week, and then we will do the dives when we are in Live Oak. So I will be doing doubles and cavern at the end of October.

 

[WD8CDH]

What is the big deal about no doubles anyway???

Of course when I started cave diving, it was next to impossable to get double manifolds. I don't think I have been diving with a single for at least 25 years. ALL of my rigs are doubles (or tripples) all the way down to double 35's.

Ron

 

[ianr33]

What is the big deal about no doubles anyway???

Ron

Doubles allow irresponsible divers to penetrate dangerously far into a cave.Or thats the theory.

Personally I feel that if you have a cave card you should be treated as an adult and allowed to make your own decisions on how much gas to carry.

 

[WD8CDH]

So I could go in with a single 190 and a garage sale regulator but not my double 35's with redundant Poseidon regulators. Sounds safe to me.

Ron

 

[DeepSeaExplorer]

So I could go in with a single 190 and a garage sale regulator but not my double 35's with redundant Poseidon regulators. Sounds safe to me.

Ron

Actually, I would personally consider a single 190 a safer rig than double 35s. So I guess it depends...

 

[ianr33]

So I could go in with a single 190 and a garage sale regulator but not my double 35's with redundant Poseidon regulators. Sounds safe to me.

Ron

You would need an H or Y valve on the 190.

Perfectly O.K to dive a single cave filled 130 (around 150 cu ft of gas) to 1/3rds but dive double Al 80's (155 cu ft gas) and you are restricted to 1/6ths.

This never made any sense at all to me and was one of my reasons for doing Full Cave

 

[Daedalus]

In Florida I have never seen an intro diver in doubles who was not using cave filled steel tanks, so I find all the comparisons between a cave-filled steel single and under-filled tiny doubles a strained argument.

 

[timle]

I agree Deadalus. However I feel the extra redundancy should be a requirement even at the intro level. You can get a long way back in a system on 1/6 of doubles. Going further doesn't necessarily make it more dangerous - I believe in the rules of no jumps, tees, etc - but limiting gas is just an attempt to keep people from getting to jumps, tees, etc to keep those not trained from using them.

In short I believe the prudent rule should be Intro - stick to mainline. Full - navigate to level you feel comfortable.

1000 feet back and not responding properly to a problem is just as dead as 2000 feet back.

My wife and I did cavern/Intro in doubles.

 

[TSandM]

Just as a correction, it turned out the class we did (Cavern/Intro) was a TDI class, and TDI does permit both cavern and intro in doubles. Ginnie, however, does not recognize the TDI certification and requires a Discretionary Apprentice waiver to dive doubles there, even though TDI doesn't have such a thing -- AND the form cannot be submitted electronically. Just wanted to put that in here as a head's up to anybody, like us, who may think that getting their cert card in doubles from an agency that permits doubles will automatically mean they can DIVE doubles wherever they go