Cavern/Intro to Tech class report plus bonus cave dive

[ScubaDocER]

"Provisional" is a GUE thing . . . If you take their classes, you can fail outright (rare), pass outright (depending on class and instructor, this may also be rare ), or be given a "provisional", which means you passed muster on some skills or criteria, but had deficiencies in others. You are sent off to practice and return for reevaluation.

I did my Cave 2 with GUE. Just never heard of it at the time. Interesting concept. For us it was simply pass/fail.

 

[Cave Diver]

I did my Cave 2 with GUE. Just never heard of it at the time. Interesting concept. For us it was simply pass/fail.

I believe the provisional thing was added later, after so many people were failing classes. It allowed them to demonstrate proficiency in the skills they were lacking without repeating the entire course. There was no provisional offered at the time that I took my GUE course either.

 

[rjack321]

I am NAUI Cave 1 so I feel qualified to answer -- 1/3 of doubles within no-deco limits, 2 navigational decisions with no complex navigation.

I'm loving starting at 1/3rd's on doubles. This makes for nice long dives in shallower systems where you can get lots of bottom time (and thus, experience) but the no-deco limits keep you from staying in deeper systems like Ginnie for too long. With double 130s and 1/3rd's you can dive in Peacock or Madison practically all day without hitting deco limits...

Funny, I have never done a dive to 1/3rds although that is partly a consequence of mostly diving low flow systems with only 1 buddy. Or swimming shallow systems where I run out of steam at 1+hours penetration before I could get to 1/3rds on even Al80s. The only place I've been where I would have considered 1/3rds is JB.

 

[SparticleBrane]

Funny, I have never done a dive to 1/3rds although that is partly a consequence of mostly diving low flow systems with only 1 buddy. Or swimming shallow systems where I run out of steam at 1+hours penetration before I could get to 1/3rds on even Al80s. The only place I've been where I would have considered 1/3rds is JB.

Good point. I've only done a dive to full thirds a few times; recently we've been hitting our destination with 200-300psi before thirds (double 130s).

Then again I've only done cave dives in teams of 3, or 2 teams of 2 (more like a team of 4 but we have a 'designated buddy' if that makes sense). If I were diving in just a team of 2 I believe we would push the gas limits back a bit.

Does GUE take out minimum gas for cave dives? I seem to remember hearing something about it.

 

[gxsr_sarge]

Does GUE take out minimum gas for cave dives? I seem to remember hearing something about it.

For Cave 1, the rule is "1/6's" but really works as follows: They take 1/3 of the beginning gas (say, 3600psi), then divide by 3. This 1200psi is essentially the "minimum gas". Then subtract minimum gas from beg gas: 3600 - 1200 = 2400psi. THEN, you take 1/3 of 2400 and reduce it from your beginning gas to get your TP (i.e., 3600 - 800 = 2800psi TP).

Cave 2 and up do the rule of 1/3 without first subtracting minimum gas.

 

[ScubaSam]

Kim - I had lunch with Kevin (scubakevdm) today who is in town this weekend visiting family and he mentioned this thread when I talked about taking Intro to Cavern/Cave.

I'm awfully proud of you and thank you for posting. It was a great read and makes me very excited and anxious to start but I have to remember, baby steps, slow and steady.

Again, so damn proud of you!!!

 

[down4fun]

Kim - I had lunch with Kevin (scubakevdm) today who is in town this weekend visiting family and he mentioned this thread when I talked about taking Intro to Cavern/Cave.

I'm awfully proud of you and thank you for posting. It was a great read and makes me very excited and anxious to start but I have to remember, baby steps, slow and steady.

Again, so damn proud of you!!!

Thanks Sam

I too was proud if you couldn't tell from the report. But I also struggled at times and I think it is just as important to share those moments so that others coming up can relate.

See you in July:kiss2:

 

[Belmont]

Eyuppers .... ( LOL )

THAT"S HOW THEY SET THE HOOK ( )

Beano

Talk about hook setting.

My instructor took me to The Room Of Tears after my intro cave.

 

[DIR-Atlanta]

I am not familiar with the concept of "provisioning" someone. I assume from the post that it is a penalty system. I took my Cave 2 in 2000 and I am not sure we had that.

The GUE Cave 2 course has changed significantly since you took it in 2000. Back then, it was more comparable to a traditional NSS-CDS or NACD Full Cave course, and there was no such thing as a provisional certification - only pass/fail.

Regarding the guided dive at the end - this used to be a fairly common practice among NSS-CDS and NACD instructors when I was doing my cave training in the mid-1990s. As I recall, the Cavern course standards permitted/encouraged instructors to make the final Cavern cert dive an "experience" dive for Intro Cave, provided the students had completed all the skills and were deemed worthy. My Intro Cave instructor (who conducted a lot of his courses at the Mill Pond) used to do it all the time. His favorite site for this was Twin Cave, where he would set up a penetration reel in such a way that the students would drop briefly down into the Subway, just at the back of the Cavern area.

 

[ucfdiver]

His favorite site for this was Twin Cave, where he would set up a penetration reel in such a way that the students would drop briefly down into the Subway, just at the back of the Cavern area.

Twin cave would be an excellent choice for that, too, since it's for the most part, a single bore cave with very few offshoots, interesting idea.