This is for the land locked and office ridden
Playing hookey and getting to go cave diving twice in one week is just too much to keep to myself, so here is yesterdays report.
Casa Cenote
This is the second time I have dived this site since xmas. It is a long cenote that has a short tunnel (400') that exits to the beach. The tunnel can be a roller coaster ride when the tide goes out, but that is not the dive I did yesterday.
Alex an I geared up and jumped in the cenote and swam the eight minutes or so to the upstream entrance.
Embarrassing mistake number one: Dont do you gear matching after a long surface swim. Do it as close to the backup lights that you forgot in your car as possible.
I had foot cramps for some reason, but doing the surface swim twice sort of cleared them up.
We entered a passage that I knew was low and mean, full of very sharp rocks, lots of percolation. I let Alex lead as I had done it previously and knew that going in has the best view. The halocline is strong here, and going second means that it looks like someone rubbed vasaline on your mask.
The previous time I was there I had put in about 250' of line and jumped onto a main line turned left and swam for about 20 minutes.
Alex took a right turn just before we arrived at the main line and tied off about thirty metes downstream from where I had the previous time. As I passed the tie off, I looked downstream and saw a T, so got Alex's attention so we could investigate and make note of the navigation.
We than turned again and continued upstream. We passed a fabulous fossilised brain coral, then the restricted tunnel I had jumped onto the main line last time and continued through very sharp low passages that had well defined halocline lakes and puddles in the floor. I was looking for the underwater waterfall I had seen on the first dive as I wanted Alex to photograph it, but he swam through it and messed it up before I could get his attention.
I guess I should explain the underwater waterfall for all those of you who are scratching you heads and saying HUH????....The what???
In a narrow tunnel that has a halocline or interface of fresh water sitting on salt, you can see the boundary between the layers. when you stir it up as a diver goes through it, you get the vasaline on the mask phenomena, just like when you add sweed fruit cordial to water and the sugar mixes in.
In some tunnels as these two layers of water pass downstream, the heavier salt water flows over rocks and obstacles and looks like a waterfall underwater.
we continued upstream, the line took a hard right and I noted that there was a tunnel heading straight on although the entrance was not very clear. I pointed this out as a potential jump for a future dive.
We continued for another five minutes and reached the end of the line and the end of the passage with a turn time of about 35 minutes.
As it was restricted, I started to lead out even though I had planned to swap positions with Alex on the exit. This is not normal proceedure, but in this case I had a significantly brighter light than my buddy and if he is behind me I could easily miss his signals in an emergency.
I ducked my head under a large evil protruding rock looking for a better place for us to change positions, and found it where the line took a hard turn. I turned and looked back and saw a wildly flailing light beam coming from the middle of a great big cloud of silt. Something had happened to Alex so I raced over imagining the roar of a catastrophic air loss, and visulizing which post to shut down first.
When I got there there was no roar of excaping gas so I cautiously poked my head into the silt to see Alex rubbing his head and giving me a dizzy signal.
He had banged his head on a rock going through the restriction and dislodged it. A rock the size of a small suit case landed on his head and disorientated him. Once I realized that there was no life threatening emergency going on here I started to realize that this had to be without a doubt the largest piece of percolation I had ever seen and started laughing.
We exeted without further incident, poked around the entrance and found a shorter way in. We swam out and had a photo session in one of the caverns there.
We got out, packed up the gear and walked across the carpark to the restaurant for a beer. The sand at our feet, the breakers on the reef and the satisfaction that I should have been at work but wasnt.
Playing hookey and getting to go cave diving twice in one week is just too much to keep to myself, so here is yesterdays report.
Casa Cenote
This is the second time I have dived this site since xmas. It is a long cenote that has a short tunnel (400') that exits to the beach. The tunnel can be a roller coaster ride when the tide goes out, but that is not the dive I did yesterday.
Alex an I geared up and jumped in the cenote and swam the eight minutes or so to the upstream entrance.
Embarrassing mistake number one: Dont do you gear matching after a long surface swim. Do it as close to the backup lights that you forgot in your car as possible.
I had foot cramps for some reason, but doing the surface swim twice sort of cleared them up.
We entered a passage that I knew was low and mean, full of very sharp rocks, lots of percolation. I let Alex lead as I had done it previously and knew that going in has the best view. The halocline is strong here, and going second means that it looks like someone rubbed vasaline on your mask.
The previous time I was there I had put in about 250' of line and jumped onto a main line turned left and swam for about 20 minutes.
Alex took a right turn just before we arrived at the main line and tied off about thirty metes downstream from where I had the previous time. As I passed the tie off, I looked downstream and saw a T, so got Alex's attention so we could investigate and make note of the navigation.
We than turned again and continued upstream. We passed a fabulous fossilised brain coral, then the restricted tunnel I had jumped onto the main line last time and continued through very sharp low passages that had well defined halocline lakes and puddles in the floor. I was looking for the underwater waterfall I had seen on the first dive as I wanted Alex to photograph it, but he swam through it and messed it up before I could get his attention.
I guess I should explain the underwater waterfall for all those of you who are scratching you heads and saying HUH????....The what???
In a narrow tunnel that has a halocline or interface of fresh water sitting on salt, you can see the boundary between the layers. when you stir it up as a diver goes through it, you get the vasaline on the mask phenomena, just like when you add sweed fruit cordial to water and the sugar mixes in.
In some tunnels as these two layers of water pass downstream, the heavier salt water flows over rocks and obstacles and looks like a waterfall underwater.
we continued upstream, the line took a hard right and I noted that there was a tunnel heading straight on although the entrance was not very clear. I pointed this out as a potential jump for a future dive.
We continued for another five minutes and reached the end of the line and the end of the passage with a turn time of about 35 minutes.
As it was restricted, I started to lead out even though I had planned to swap positions with Alex on the exit. This is not normal proceedure, but in this case I had a significantly brighter light than my buddy and if he is behind me I could easily miss his signals in an emergency.
I ducked my head under a large evil protruding rock looking for a better place for us to change positions, and found it where the line took a hard turn. I turned and looked back and saw a wildly flailing light beam coming from the middle of a great big cloud of silt. Something had happened to Alex so I raced over imagining the roar of a catastrophic air loss, and visulizing which post to shut down first.
When I got there there was no roar of excaping gas so I cautiously poked my head into the silt to see Alex rubbing his head and giving me a dizzy signal.
He had banged his head on a rock going through the restriction and dislodged it. A rock the size of a small suit case landed on his head and disorientated him. Once I realized that there was no life threatening emergency going on here I started to realize that this had to be without a doubt the largest piece of percolation I had ever seen and started laughing.
We exeted without further incident, poked around the entrance and found a shorter way in. We swam out and had a photo session in one of the caverns there.
We got out, packed up the gear and walked across the carpark to the restaurant for a beer. The sand at our feet, the breakers on the reef and the satisfaction that I should have been at work but wasnt.
