How fast do you swim in the cave?

[tbone1004]

Ignoring any opinions about the training dives themselves.

There are a couple different thoughts on "swim speed".
My "swim speed" is about 30fpm. I did it for over 3 hours today in Ginnie and saw all the things. Same in LR yesterday, and Peacock the day before. My how I love cave CCR diving...
If I have to "go somewhere", then it's somewhere between 50fpm-70fpm depending on what's going on with flow but if I put my head down you can watch your computer tick over as we go over line arrows at 50fpm on the nose. Anything faster than 70fpm is retarded and anything faster than 50fpm should only be done when you need to get somewhere quickly, and not on OC. Usually booking it to the exit for some reason. I can kick faster than that, someone is dying to get me to kick 100fpm.

IMO 50fpm is too fast to really enjoy the cave, especially on CCR where you don't have tick tock.

 

[rddvet]

I’ve had the discussion with multiple instructors and Joe about it. The standards are what they are and it’s not the fault of the instructor for following standards. Joe was adamant about 2 things at the end of my course - first he was comfortable signing me off and that I wasn’t going to start doing really dumb things like trying to swim (or scooter!!) to the Henkel or doing Eagles Nest, and second that I do need to lose the gut. I’m down 35 pounds or so since my class and working on more. I haven’t intentionally done anything dumb like hop in a cave with a scooter or go solo. I have actually declined 2 dives to caves where I did not feel comfortable going at my current skill level, and in hindsight I feel I made the right decision on both of them. I’d rather sit it out than do something stupid. I’ll be sticking to a slow progression in caves, even if it means doing Peacock and Ginnie and Little River a bunch of times while I build up my comfort level. My thought process is that the caves will be there longer than I’m diving, so I can wait to do the big ones until I’m ready and am with the appropriate buddies.

Sounds like you've got the right mindset which is why you were able to pass a 7 day zero to hero course. Alot of peiople can't and I think the biggest reason behind skills is their mindset. I'm happy to do simpler ccr cave dives. Sometimes doing longer big dives all the time gets old and going back to easy is nice. You can message me if you come back down.

I was under the impression that there was an agency that broke up ccr full cave but it seems I am wrong. That boggles my mind. Why would the only option be a zero to hero course just because you're on CCR? It doesn't make sense. Seems there needs to be a change to that.

 

[Manatee Diver]

I was under the impression that there was an agency that broke up ccr full cave but it seems I am wrong.

TDI breaks them up, CCR Cavern, CCR Into, and CCR Full.

 

[Addison Snyder]

you should be monitoring your penetration (and exit) speed by checking each distance marker and dive time on your computer

Cool, I'll try that.

 

[Marie13]

Swim speed - I'm slow frog kicking. When I did my cavern/intro to cave class last month, the other two students were guys who were fast. One dive they were so fast, I was way behind them. Could barely see their lights. They also ween't good about checking to see where I was. They really heard about it from instructor. I didn't try to speed up. When I try to catch up to people, it always seems to lead to more issues, so I just kept swimming along. Instructor came back to check on me and saw I was fine - just slow. LOL. On a later dive, I was put in the lead and the guys complained they got cold (50F water) following me.

 

[rddvet]

. I didn't try to speed up. .

You did the right thing. I generally don't speed up for people in front of me. I either signal them to slow down or if it's someone I'm comfortable with I'll just keep doing my thing and let them figure out that they left me behind. It's then discussed post-dive. It's the people in front of you's responsibility to keep in light contact with you. If they can't, they're not using their buddy awareness. I can see early on in my cave career that I wasn't comfortable being left behind and would sometimes speed up some. But at this point, I dive as a team but am always self-relient if I need to be, so a few minutes alone till my buddy figures it out isn't a big deal. Usually you're buddy's not so fast that you can't signal them to slow down, but I've been on a few dives where the lead person was a bat out of hell and there was no way to signal them.

 

[PfcAJ]

So communication is key.

If you’re swimming too fast, your team needs to tell you to slow down the pace.

You made a comment about speeding up on exit if there’s a serious problem. That might not be the best strategy if the speed increase results in a gas usage increase. There’s been more than one occasion of folks drowning just short of their stage bottle or the exit. Efficient is what you’re after.

 

[rjack321]

100% agree on lots of jumping around and complex navigation. My thought is that I don’t want to do anything I wouldn’t be totally confident finding my way out on without my buddy. Right now I’m confident I can find my way home on the Olson & Peanut sides of Peacock and either side of the T at Little River. Ginnie I really need more time in before I’m comfortable doing anything besides the gold line.

Instead of thinking "can I get out alone?"
Revise that to "do I know the cave enough get out alone with no line, no marker, nothing?"

Dial everything back here, speed, distance everything. Slow down and learn to read the cave. I'm not a CCR cave instructor but when I was in cave class we had to give a blow by blow of the whole dive on debrief. So when did you tie in? (depth, time, gas). Where were you at 10mins? (depth, time, gas) What did you pass at 15mins? (depth, time, gas).

On CCR, at a minimum I would expect buddies to know every 5 to 10mins, how far in are we? How much time will it take to exit and what will our deco obligation be at that point? How much gas will it take to exit?

That's a lot to process when you are first starting out including the line and navigation too. Sticking to the gold line for the next 20 dives is probably a good idea, just try to keep track of the basics. Then add one jump and do bunch more dives with one navigational decision (the waterhole is a good one in Peacock), the park bench/white room/maple leaf/hill 400 area has plenty of 1 jump dives to keep you busy in Ginnie not terribly far from the exit or with more than 10mins of deco etc.

You can only do zero to hero cave CCR with IANTD now? That's really scary

As far as I know its that way across the board with all the CCR cave courses as there is no way to limit people's penetration to 1/6ths etc.

 

[Manatee Diver]

As far as I know its that way across the board with all the CCR cave courses as there is no way to limit people's penetration to 1/6ths etc.

One of my dive buddies did the TDI CCR Intro Cave, his limited was based on his bailout, and gold line only no navigation.

I figure you could give them something like "Bailout distance, or 1,000 feet whichever is shorter"

Sort of like how the current CDS Apprentice cave is "50cuft of penetration gas, or thirds whichever is less"

 

[flymolo]

Just felt I’d reiterate the 30-40 fpm speed as some others here have suggested. My buddies and I agree that the slower we go the more enjoyable the dive and more time we get to spend in the cave.