Errol Kalayci
Contributor
Hello,
The GUE Mexico was terrific. I arrived on Thursday and after checking in at the hotel, took a cab within the hour for the short 1 km ride to Zero Gravity (GUE dive shop). As a cave diver since 1995, I have several hundred long range deep caves dives and was an active WKPP gas diver for a number of years and explored caves in Florida, the Bahamas, Norways Artic Circle and Mexico. My last cave dive was in 2005 so I decided to dive with a real pro. He was attending the GUE conference as well and is a German GUE cave instructor named Tom. Tom did a very thorough dive briefing which came in very handy as I would not have expected the halocline to be like oil rather than smoke (in the Bahamas). While swimming through the halocline you simply can not see as it looks like the water is all oil, so you try to stay above in fresh water or below in the warmer salt water but sometimes have no choice. Anyway, Tom took me for a dive in the Taj Ma Hall which cenote (cave entrance) is located essentially behind the shop and highly decorative. Since we would not be out of the water until dark we decided to do a single dive with a stage bottle and our double 80s. I was wearing a 7mm wetsuit and later wished I had brought the DUI TLS 350. Anyway, we may a jump or two and swam almost to the end of the line wherein we dropped the stages without hitting our turn pressure and switched to back gas. Coming to the end of the cave, while I shot some video along the way, we still had not hit our predetermined turn pressure and returned, picked up the stage, started breathing from it again and swum back towards the exit. Before exiting the cave, we jumped across to the hidden China Garden which is a very special infrequently dove area and marveled at the natural beauty until we again reached the end of the line. After the first hour I was cold, after 75 minutes I was pretty cold, when we finally exited I was shivering. We had plenty of gas for our very long swim dive and only turned to me being cold. Average depth was around 40. A pretty good first day back cave diving. With all the time I spend in doubles and with stages the only real concern was making sure I understood how we made jumps and what cookies are as they did not exist last time I made a cave dive.
Friday I attended the GUE Project Baseline workshop that Todd Kincaid put on. I had one of the contour video camera systems we will use with me and passed it around. I learned a lot and will be starting a Project in South Florida and in Bimini in the near future. The rest of the day was spent connecting with old friends, making new ones and hearing some great presentations. Saturday was more of the same and I gave my presentation (Triathlon the Second Sport for Divers? How to functionally train for diving). I had some good morning workouts and even froze during my morning swim Saturday before breakfast as a cold front hit Mexico as well. Now for the dive Sunday.
Sunday I went for a dive with my old wkpp buddy, and former Rebreather student, Chris Werner and Andreas from GUE. Chris and I decided that with all the Magnum dpvs down there and stage bottles it would simply just be wrong not to go for a nice dive during the GUE picnic at a cenote (forgot the name). Therefore, Chris and Fred from Zero Gravity drew us a very good map after telling them our thoughts, we grabbed 2 stages each, a set of double 80s and a very large dpv each and off we went. We planned to scooter for 45 minutes, drop it, then start swimming until we have to drop a stage when we hit the proper turn pressure, switch to the other stage until time to turn and swim back to scooters to ride out while keeping back gas for bailout. In doing so, we would have to very carefully scooter and push the scooter through a major restriction fairly long in length in a bit of the halocline while swimming with 2 stages. Knowing I was cold on the previous dive, I bought a 7mm hood from the shop prior to the dive. The dive went well and we carried it out perfectly and were greeted with awesome sites. We made 4 jumps across lines before we dropped the dpvs and started swimming 45 minutes into the dive. Thereafter, we dropped a stage and kept swimming, made another jump and hit the end of that line at close to 10,000 feet of penetration into the cave. Chris knew I would be getting cold and I started to, I realized the neck damn had come out of my wetsuit and tucked it back in which helped but preferred to swim fast and deeper through the salt water which is warmer while they stayed higher in the colder fresh though of course we were all pretty close and within good safe team distance. The hood bought me essentially another hour of warmth. We retrieved the stages and scooters as we went and rode out much quicker having a better feel for the cave layout. For a close to 3 hour dive, we used less than 160 cubic feet of 30% nitrox at max depth of 57 and avg depth around 40 feet. If you work out the sac rate for the dive it is pretty low, especially given that we swam well over an hour and dragged 2 aluminum 80 stage bottles around with us. When we surfaced and were talking about how much fun the dive was with the people at the head pool I asked Andreas if he could sign me off, he looked puzzled knowing my extensive tek diving background, and asked me for what. With a deadpan I said, for Cavern course, this was my first time ever in a cave. His eyes got huge and Werner and bunch of guys cracked up and told him I was joking. If anyone wonders what GUE training can do for them, think about this dive and how much fun we had with ease and only ended because of temperature, not gas or anything else.
Errol Kalayci
The GUE Mexico was terrific. I arrived on Thursday and after checking in at the hotel, took a cab within the hour for the short 1 km ride to Zero Gravity (GUE dive shop). As a cave diver since 1995, I have several hundred long range deep caves dives and was an active WKPP gas diver for a number of years and explored caves in Florida, the Bahamas, Norways Artic Circle and Mexico. My last cave dive was in 2005 so I decided to dive with a real pro. He was attending the GUE conference as well and is a German GUE cave instructor named Tom. Tom did a very thorough dive briefing which came in very handy as I would not have expected the halocline to be like oil rather than smoke (in the Bahamas). While swimming through the halocline you simply can not see as it looks like the water is all oil, so you try to stay above in fresh water or below in the warmer salt water but sometimes have no choice. Anyway, Tom took me for a dive in the Taj Ma Hall which cenote (cave entrance) is located essentially behind the shop and highly decorative. Since we would not be out of the water until dark we decided to do a single dive with a stage bottle and our double 80s. I was wearing a 7mm wetsuit and later wished I had brought the DUI TLS 350. Anyway, we may a jump or two and swam almost to the end of the line wherein we dropped the stages without hitting our turn pressure and switched to back gas. Coming to the end of the cave, while I shot some video along the way, we still had not hit our predetermined turn pressure and returned, picked up the stage, started breathing from it again and swum back towards the exit. Before exiting the cave, we jumped across to the hidden China Garden which is a very special infrequently dove area and marveled at the natural beauty until we again reached the end of the line. After the first hour I was cold, after 75 minutes I was pretty cold, when we finally exited I was shivering. We had plenty of gas for our very long swim dive and only turned to me being cold. Average depth was around 40. A pretty good first day back cave diving. With all the time I spend in doubles and with stages the only real concern was making sure I understood how we made jumps and what cookies are as they did not exist last time I made a cave dive.
Friday I attended the GUE Project Baseline workshop that Todd Kincaid put on. I had one of the contour video camera systems we will use with me and passed it around. I learned a lot and will be starting a Project in South Florida and in Bimini in the near future. The rest of the day was spent connecting with old friends, making new ones and hearing some great presentations. Saturday was more of the same and I gave my presentation (Triathlon the Second Sport for Divers? How to functionally train for diving). I had some good morning workouts and even froze during my morning swim Saturday before breakfast as a cold front hit Mexico as well. Now for the dive Sunday.
Sunday I went for a dive with my old wkpp buddy, and former Rebreather student, Chris Werner and Andreas from GUE. Chris and I decided that with all the Magnum dpvs down there and stage bottles it would simply just be wrong not to go for a nice dive during the GUE picnic at a cenote (forgot the name). Therefore, Chris and Fred from Zero Gravity drew us a very good map after telling them our thoughts, we grabbed 2 stages each, a set of double 80s and a very large dpv each and off we went. We planned to scooter for 45 minutes, drop it, then start swimming until we have to drop a stage when we hit the proper turn pressure, switch to the other stage until time to turn and swim back to scooters to ride out while keeping back gas for bailout. In doing so, we would have to very carefully scooter and push the scooter through a major restriction fairly long in length in a bit of the halocline while swimming with 2 stages. Knowing I was cold on the previous dive, I bought a 7mm hood from the shop prior to the dive. The dive went well and we carried it out perfectly and were greeted with awesome sites. We made 4 jumps across lines before we dropped the dpvs and started swimming 45 minutes into the dive. Thereafter, we dropped a stage and kept swimming, made another jump and hit the end of that line at close to 10,000 feet of penetration into the cave. Chris knew I would be getting cold and I started to, I realized the neck damn had come out of my wetsuit and tucked it back in which helped but preferred to swim fast and deeper through the salt water which is warmer while they stayed higher in the colder fresh though of course we were all pretty close and within good safe team distance. The hood bought me essentially another hour of warmth. We retrieved the stages and scooters as we went and rode out much quicker having a better feel for the cave layout. For a close to 3 hour dive, we used less than 160 cubic feet of 30% nitrox at max depth of 57 and avg depth around 40 feet. If you work out the sac rate for the dive it is pretty low, especially given that we swam well over an hour and dragged 2 aluminum 80 stage bottles around with us. When we surfaced and were talking about how much fun the dive was with the people at the head pool I asked Andreas if he could sign me off, he looked puzzled knowing my extensive tek diving background, and asked me for what. With a deadpan I said, for Cavern course, this was my first time ever in a cave. His eyes got huge and Werner and bunch of guys cracked up and told him I was joking. If anyone wonders what GUE training can do for them, think about this dive and how much fun we had with ease and only ended because of temperature, not gas or anything else.
Errol Kalayci
