My Journey To Cave Country...

[JDostal]

pt40fathoms - the course was $400 for both Cavern & Intro. We actually camped @ the Ginnie campground. It was something like that $16 per person per night. Usually Ginnie charges for diving but it was free as we were in a course. We still had to pay to dive @ Peacock - $10 per diver per day.

Mike - Peacock was definitely cool....I really, really want to see more!!

Loiret - Our instructor was essentially showing us how overweighted we were. We got in the water and he told us just to breath slowly through our regs and let air out of our BC. We would sink - sometimes quickly. He judged our descent speed by sight and had us keep removing weight. Eventually most of us got down to no weight at all. It was weird...I never realized I was that overweighted...but I was. I think it helped a little as well that I had a couple of reels and backup lights added onto me and I had never adjusted for that...but still. It was more just relaxation, breathing slowly and realizing that the open water mentality of "lead is good" has got to go. I started out diving w/ something like 22lbs when I first got certified. Heck, I thought I was doing GREAT being at "only" 14lbs

 

[GoBlue!]

...Our instructor was essentially showing us how overweighted we were. We got in the water and he told us just to breath slowly through our regs and let air out of our BC. We would sink - sometimes quickly. He judged our descent speed by sight and had us keep removing weight. Eventually most of us got down to no weight at all. It was weird...I never realized I was that overweighted...but I was. I think it helped a little as well that I had a couple of reels and backup lights added onto me and I had never adjusted for that...but still. It was more just relaxation, breathing slowly and realizing that the open water mentality of "lead is good" has got to go. I started out diving w/ something like 22lbs when I first got certified. Heck, I thought I was doing GREAT being at "only" 14lbs

Did you recheck your buoyancy with "empty" tanks? Were you neutral then? Just curious....

Jim

 

[pt40fathoms]

GoBlue beat me to the punch. I would suggest that a bouyancy check with empty tanks should be your next step before selling your weight belt. However, with the extra gear you were carrying, that may have made up for the bouyancy change when empty. I change the amount of weight I carry dependant on what I am carrying, and what I am wearing. Such a dry suit and twins, wet suit and single AL80 and so on. I'm sure you do the same, we all do after a while. It is interesting that you dropped 14 pounds though, that does seem like a lot of lead. It sure must have felt easy to move in the water after you 'got the lead out'.

Thanks for the info on the costs, and BTW, how was the camping facilities?

 

[steve2281]

Great read, thanks. steve

 

[JDostal]

pt40fathoms - the camping was good. Very nice showers actually.

I didn't have a chance to use a completely empty tank (500psi...) however we typically did two dives off of one tank (we had 130cf tanks....) and one one dive I think I had it down to 1000psi or so and I was still okay with it.

Naturally, when I go ice diving next week I'm going to have on my long underwear as well as my insulation, so I'm anticipating adding a few pounds. In the class I was just wearing my long underwear under my suit. I've done that before here in Wisconsin - I typically only need to add two pounds when I switch to my full insulation...so I'm kinda hoping that I can get away with somewhere betweeen 2-6lbs tops here under the ice or in colder water. I've also got to make a few changes (hopefully not much...) for the fact that I'll dive tanks a little emptier again in open water....at the very least, it was very cool the first time in the water without any extra weight - I felt much more like I was just part of the water as compared to trying to stay afloat.

The other people in the group had similar results - just about everyone dropped at least half of their lead....according to our instructor he manages to help most peopled do that.

 

[GDI]

Omnicronm I like your writing. Peacock is a great system and Ginnie and Little River can be great humblers. This transition you talk about is one reason I love to teach

 

[JDostal]

Omnicronm I like your writing. Peacock is a great system and Ginnie and Little River can be great humblers. This transition you talk about is one reason I love to teach

Thanks GDI It was a great time...I know that when we came up from our first cave dive @ Ginnie I was thinking of the chewing out I was going to get from our instructor for flailing around like an idiot in the flow a few times, but he said that we looked okay. I was kinda nervous and wasn't taking my time to do things methodically at first...but he said we looked okay - I certainly felt humble though

 

[Wendy]

Glad to hear that you had such a positive experience and a good time.

I was curious as to what the d-ring on your tank band was for? Were you in single or doubles (didn't know what tank band you were referring to) and also did you do your clas in a traditional jacket style BC or a bp/wing?

So you didn't mention the condition of your finger tips after the class, are you needing replacement fingerprints? I remember my fingers being sore after all that pulling and gliding at Ginnie.

 

[JDostal]

Glad to hear that you had such a positive experience and a good time.

I was curious as to what the d-ring on your tank band was for? Were you in single or doubles (didn't know what tank band you were referring to) and also did you do your clas in a traditional jacket style BC or a bp/wing?

So you didn't mention the condition of your finger tips after the class, are you needing replacement fingerprints? I remember my fingers being sore after all that pulling and gliding at Ginnie.

I was using singles for the class. I have the Scubapro RecTek BCD - it's pretty much a DiveRite TransPac, but it doesn't have a hard backplate. It's kind of a wanna-be harness with a diverite wing that simply has the scubapro logo on it. It's got two scubapro tank bands. The D-Ring on the back left was just an extra spot to hook things on so that they didn't dangle below me in the cave. I usually put my safety reel on that ring, then my backup lights went on my left hip d-ring, and my primary reel and line arrows on my right hip d-ring. Our instructor mentioned that they actually don't allow the tank cam-band d-ring after Intro class, so I'm not really sure why we put it on in the first place. I think it might have had something to do with the fact that some of the people in the class didn't have canister lights and they had to hook on some of the UK Light Cannons, so they typically put them on the tank band to get them out of the way. I got lucky and was able to borrow a Dive Rite canister light for the class.

My fingers were actually pretty good I only did a lot of pulling in the devils system when we went through the lips. We only dove there once so I didn't have too much of a chance to destroy my fingers I know one of the people in my group was pretty sore though after the first day @ Peacock because he was doing a bit of pulling in a small tunnel...hehe.

 

[pitah]

Omicron, thanks for sharing your experience. simply amazing.