OP
Hi, everyone. I'm home tonight after a very productive, but seriously exhausting day. Tomorrow is a rest day/homework day, so the Day 3 post will go up in the late morning.
NSS-CDS Full Cave: The Live-Blog
- Thread starter dewdropsonrosa
- Start date
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@dewdropsonrosa
And to complain:
What the heck are you doing? I had resolved that I neither have the time nor the funds to “go tech” ... You sort of are subversively chipping away on that, you know, .... , ... that’s not what I meant !
@dewdropsonrosa is subversive as hell. She is Trouble with a Capital T. She’s the one who encouraged me to think about AN/DP this fall depending on how ITT in August goes. And I am most definitely thinking that way. Even spending wintry weekends wrestling with math. Math! Bah!
Watch out!@dewdropsonrosa is subversive as hell. She is Trouble with a Capital T. She’s the one who encouraged me to think about AN/DP this fall depending on how ITT in August goes. And I am most definitely thinking that way. Even spending wintry weekends wrestling with math. Math! Bah!
The following addictions are easily curable:
Tobacco, Coffee, Alchohol, most illegal drugs
The following addictions are harder to cure, but still curable:
Sex, Cocaine, Opiates, synthetic Opiates, Love
The following addiction is incurable:
Cave Diving
Michael
I'm a Great Lakes wreck diver. I'm not interested in caves at all.
Also a Great Lakes wreck diver. I didn't think I was interested in caves either—until, out of curiosity, I took cavern and intro courses five years ago. I found the caves far more interesting than I thought I would. Since then I've found cave diving makes a great counterpoint to wreck diving. I'm enjoying this thread, it's taking me back to my first vist to High Springs five years ago.
BTW, that was me playing with the sidemount rebreather while you two were coming out of the catacombs. I'm not stalking you, seriously.
Good grief. Another thread to add to my watchlist. I was in High Springs a couple of weeks ago doing a GUE Fundamentals Part 1....have said over and over again for years "I'm not interested in cave diving"...but I'm certainly interested in this thread and your experiences @dewdropsonrosa.
OP
OP
Day 3: Progress
Reggie and I independently woke up on the morning of Day 3 and decided that yes, Day 4 would most certainly be a rest day. Diving against flow and hauling double tanks around takes a lot of energy, so we’ll be at home to recharge.
We did three dives today, all of which were pretty good. I had just one holy-crap learning moment today: I miscalculated how close my manifold was to the ceiling, bumped, and experienced a brief roll-off. (This happened during an air-share exit – “Give me that thing back!”) I have learned my lesson about ceilings and isolator valves. It will not happen again.
Day 3: Selected Observations
Reggie has noted that there are a couple of things that I do better than average. I generally create less silt than would be expected at my novice level and my air consumption is starting to improve noticeably. I usually come out of the cave within ~300 PSI (~20 bar) of him.
I have more trouble than the average student with pulling in hard flow. I’m 5’4” (163cm) and I don’t have a lot of upper body strength. I made a joke about taking up some light weightlifting, and then it occurred to me that it’s probably a good idea.
I also have more trouble than average with reeling in (reeling out is going well). Problem #1 is that if something distracts me for a moment, I’m prone to reversing the direction in which I was reeling and causing a jam. Problem #2 is figuring out how to work with the flow so that I’m not out-swimming my reel and losing tension on the line. [Day 4 homework includes extensive reel drilling on dry land to get better muscle memory for these tasks.]
Now that I’m up to 7 dives (2 in the cavern, 5 in the cave), my general comfort has greatly increased. My mental map of the cave from the Eye to the Lips is pretty clear at this point. I’ll need another few dives to nail the Ear and Catacombs to the main tunnel. I’m getting more familiar with the flow inside the cave.
Yesterday, I hit my third before I could really get started with the lost-buddy drill. We went back today to repeat it, and I had significantly more air when we got there. I set up my cookie to mark my maximum penetration point, placed an exit arrow, tied into the arrow, and successfully completed the simulated search. I mildly jammed the reel but fixed most of the issue by myself when we were back near the gold line.
We also started practicing for the lost-line drill in a silt-out. I put on the blindfold, Reggie spun me around a few times, and then swam me over to a placement. I deployed my safety reel, made a really nice tie-off (seriously, I’m proud of that thing), and turned around to start my search for the line. I picked up my floor-hide hand a little too much and as a result, was swimming in a small circle. Reggie did indicate that most people need to run this drill a few times before everything comes together.
We re-did the buddy air-share, touch contact exit drill today through the Catacombs. Something clicked between now and Day 1; it’s suddenly much easier to manage the hose and the line together without forgetting to bring it to the other side of a placement.
Finally… we did our first planned deco dive today! We grabbed a fresh set of tanks for this dive, so we got to use the full third for penetration (1100 psi vs. 600-700 to allow for multiple dives on a set). That doesn’t sound like a lot of gas, but oh my god, it is. We had 72 minutes of bottom time on a wide-ranging, fun dive all over the cave. We did six minutes of deco on backgas (EAN29) and called it a day.
Tomorrow is a rest day, and we’ll be back in the water on Friday. I have a few more drills required to pass NSS-CDS Level 2 (Basic Cave), and then we’ll be working exclusively on NSS-CDS Level 3 dives (Apprentice).
Reggie and I independently woke up on the morning of Day 3 and decided that yes, Day 4 would most certainly be a rest day. Diving against flow and hauling double tanks around takes a lot of energy, so we’ll be at home to recharge.
We did three dives today, all of which were pretty good. I had just one holy-crap learning moment today: I miscalculated how close my manifold was to the ceiling, bumped, and experienced a brief roll-off. (This happened during an air-share exit – “Give me that thing back!”) I have learned my lesson about ceilings and isolator valves. It will not happen again.
Day 3: Selected Observations
Reggie has noted that there are a couple of things that I do better than average. I generally create less silt than would be expected at my novice level and my air consumption is starting to improve noticeably. I usually come out of the cave within ~300 PSI (~20 bar) of him.
I have more trouble than the average student with pulling in hard flow. I’m 5’4” (163cm) and I don’t have a lot of upper body strength. I made a joke about taking up some light weightlifting, and then it occurred to me that it’s probably a good idea.
I also have more trouble than average with reeling in (reeling out is going well). Problem #1 is that if something distracts me for a moment, I’m prone to reversing the direction in which I was reeling and causing a jam. Problem #2 is figuring out how to work with the flow so that I’m not out-swimming my reel and losing tension on the line. [Day 4 homework includes extensive reel drilling on dry land to get better muscle memory for these tasks.]
Now that I’m up to 7 dives (2 in the cavern, 5 in the cave), my general comfort has greatly increased. My mental map of the cave from the Eye to the Lips is pretty clear at this point. I’ll need another few dives to nail the Ear and Catacombs to the main tunnel. I’m getting more familiar with the flow inside the cave.
Yesterday, I hit my third before I could really get started with the lost-buddy drill. We went back today to repeat it, and I had significantly more air when we got there. I set up my cookie to mark my maximum penetration point, placed an exit arrow, tied into the arrow, and successfully completed the simulated search. I mildly jammed the reel but fixed most of the issue by myself when we were back near the gold line.
We also started practicing for the lost-line drill in a silt-out. I put on the blindfold, Reggie spun me around a few times, and then swam me over to a placement. I deployed my safety reel, made a really nice tie-off (seriously, I’m proud of that thing), and turned around to start my search for the line. I picked up my floor-hide hand a little too much and as a result, was swimming in a small circle. Reggie did indicate that most people need to run this drill a few times before everything comes together.
We re-did the buddy air-share, touch contact exit drill today through the Catacombs. Something clicked between now and Day 1; it’s suddenly much easier to manage the hose and the line together without forgetting to bring it to the other side of a placement.
Finally… we did our first planned deco dive today! We grabbed a fresh set of tanks for this dive, so we got to use the full third for penetration (1100 psi vs. 600-700 to allow for multiple dives on a set). That doesn’t sound like a lot of gas, but oh my god, it is. We had 72 minutes of bottom time on a wide-ranging, fun dive all over the cave. We did six minutes of deco on backgas (EAN29) and called it a day.
Tomorrow is a rest day, and we’ll be back in the water on Friday. I have a few more drills required to pass NSS-CDS Level 2 (Basic Cave), and then we’ll be working exclusively on NSS-CDS Level 3 dives (Apprentice).
OP
[Dinner request rescinded! @1bubbleoff and I are catching up for nosh tonight.]
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