Randy43068
Guest
- Messages
- 5,461
- Reaction score
- 133
- # of dives
- 100 - 199
slow & easy, fast & hard......
Both have their place.
Both have their place.
Slow and easy vs hard and fast... (why the tortoise beats the hare}
- Thread starter The Chairman
- Start date
Please register or login
Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.
Benefits of registering include
- Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
- A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
- You can make this box go away
OP
Denise was there doing a Cavern class... I tagged along with her Saturday. This was with other peeps on Sunday.
Bogie
Contributor
While observing better divers I always notice how they dive slow and easy. I notice how efficient and effective their diving skills are compared to the hurried type. Observing well skilled diving buddies is always a learning experience.
OP
Interesting. I got my butt chewed repeatedly during my Cave 2 class for not flutter kicking. The instructor made the point that frog kick in flow is a poor choice, because the flow is knocking you backwards during the entire "glide" phase, whereas flutter kicking provides continuous forward propulsion. I had a hideous time doing it, because I'd expunged flutter kicking from my propulsive vocabulary four years earlier, during Fundies, and I had no muscles with which to do it.
The water hole tunnel is one of my favorites but it can be pretty mungy and care is needed not to silt it out. Even a slightly errant or overly aggresssive frog kick can stir up the mung. A flutter kick would clearly be problematic.
Personally, I feel strongly that people with crappy skills like that need to stay in the more or less "sacrificial" training areas of the cave until they get their stuff together, if they ever do.
A couple things to consider would be the ease at which you can silt out a tunnel like that, and in particular what may happen afterwards. The line in the water hole tunnel is old, slack and would not be ideal to have to come out on in touch contact. There is also a sidemount tunnel that branches to the right about half way back from the waterhole. That one gets tighter and if you got on it in by mistake in a silt out, it could get interesting with part of the team in backmount.
The waterhole tunnel in general is also large enough to easily turn a team in most places, so if it were me and the lead was going to fast and/or flutter kicking and creating silt problems, I would get his attention and both slow him down and make him aware of the silt issue he was creating. If he repeated, I'd get his attention and thumb the dive, both for the sake of the team and out of respect for the cave and the concept of cave conservation. The idiot leading had no business being there.
In terms of speed, once I get above my optimum cruise speed CO2 retention goes up as does my SAC with little real gain in penetration distance. There are situations where swimming faster helps. It is much like flying into a headwind, a little more speed, within limits is worth the fuel burn in terms of extendced range because it reduces the time in the head wind. Similarly, if you are swimming into flow at a leisurely pace and are barely making headway, you won't get much penetration, so there is a time and place for a faster pace. The waterhole tunnel is not one of those places and it is rare that the flow in the peanut tunnel would be high enough to justify a faster than normal pace.
Of course, you will encounter divers who swim fast and skip breathe in order to maximize penetration. Those are also people who end up being more susceptible to narcosis due to the exacerbation by the elevated CO2 levels, in addition to the effects of the CO2 itself, and they often end up with CO2 headaches during and after the dive. If you need more distance in a cave, bring a stage or larger tanks.
Personally, I feel strongly that people with crappy skills like that need to stay in the more or less "sacrificial" training areas of the cave until they get their stuff together, if they ever do.
A couple things to consider would be the ease at which you can silt out a tunnel like that, and in particular what may happen afterwards. The line in the water hole tunnel is old, slack and would not be ideal to have to come out on in touch contact. There is also a sidemount tunnel that branches to the right about half way back from the waterhole. That one gets tighter and if you got on it in by mistake in a silt out, it could get interesting with part of the team in backmount.
The waterhole tunnel in general is also large enough to easily turn a team in most places, so if it were me and the lead was going to fast and/or flutter kicking and creating silt problems, I would get his attention and both slow him down and make him aware of the silt issue he was creating. If he repeated, I'd get his attention and thumb the dive, both for the sake of the team and out of respect for the cave and the concept of cave conservation. The idiot leading had no business being there.
In terms of speed, once I get above my optimum cruise speed CO2 retention goes up as does my SAC with little real gain in penetration distance. There are situations where swimming faster helps. It is much like flying into a headwind, a little more speed, within limits is worth the fuel burn in terms of extendced range because it reduces the time in the head wind. Similarly, if you are swimming into flow at a leisurely pace and are barely making headway, you won't get much penetration, so there is a time and place for a faster pace. The waterhole tunnel is not one of those places and it is rare that the flow in the peanut tunnel would be high enough to justify a faster than normal pace.
Of course, you will encounter divers who swim fast and skip breathe in order to maximize penetration. Those are also people who end up being more susceptible to narcosis due to the exacerbation by the elevated CO2 levels, in addition to the effects of the CO2 itself, and they often end up with CO2 headaches during and after the dive. If you need more distance in a cave, bring a stage or larger tanks.
runawaylobster
Guest
I had a similar experience this weekend...getting asked about diving by an unknown buddy. Buddy being middle and me at the back.
Eventually I just stopped and waited because buddy made so much silt I couldn't see him, and I did spy a flutter kick or two as well. Buddy eventually did come back to figure out what had happened to me although I'm not sure if that was worse because he had to turn in a very bad place that made the silt problem worse than it was. Fortunately it was a downstream tunnel so we had a better swim out than we would have had..
The thing is, even though I was comfortable in the situation you just never know when murphy will visit, and continuing forward was definitely a bad idea.
the funny part is that I swear that buddy thought it was me that had made the mess because as downstream the mess was following as it was made LOL!!!
LL
Eventually I just stopped and waited because buddy made so much silt I couldn't see him, and I did spy a flutter kick or two as well. Buddy eventually did come back to figure out what had happened to me although I'm not sure if that was worse because he had to turn in a very bad place that made the silt problem worse than it was. Fortunately it was a downstream tunnel so we had a better swim out than we would have had..
The thing is, even though I was comfortable in the situation you just never know when murphy will visit, and continuing forward was definitely a bad idea.
the funny part is that I swear that buddy thought it was me that had made the mess because as downstream the mess was following as it was made LOL!!!
LL
You mean it WASN'T YOU
eeeesssshhhh Ya know, I have no problem doing pick up dives, but when someone spends 30 minutes talking my ear off about how much experience they have and the secret exploration they have been doing I expect them to at minimum know how to handle themselves in a cave. That guy tried to make some of the less experienced cavers feel like idiots when he didn't want to dive with us again . . . all we could think was THANK GOODNESS !!! We did a tighter tunnel with a team of 3 and had NO problems with silt . . .
How are these people who are silting out caves getting through their classes? NONE of the five cave instructors I've worked with would have passed me if I'd silted out a tunnel, even under stress.
Similar threads
