Slow and easy vs hard and fast... (why the tortoise beats the hare}

[ScubaDocER]

Here are some lessons I learned.

• Don't allow the leader to set too quick of a pace. He can slow to your pace far more easily than you can speed up to his.
• Take time to enjoy the cave. There is no mission, except to have fun.
• Evaluate your techniques for the environment you are diving in. Low flow caves do not need high flow techniques.

To be sure, I would dive with either of these gentlemen again. I would just be sure to keep things slow: NetDoc slow!

Good lessons indeed!! Not learned nor appreciated by everyone I am afraid.

During my checkout dive through NSS-CDS we did the mile run (Orange to the opening at P2). It was a 4 man team and my Instructor was with us all the way. I was the 2nd guy on the team and we started out great. The problem occurred when we got to Olsen. For some reason, the lead guy just took off. I mean he was MOVING!! I tried to keep up with him but then noticed I could not see the light of the diver behind me. I tried to stay in the middle of divers 1 and 3 for as long as I could but when the leader disappeared for good I decided to stay with the other team members (divers 3 and 4). When we got to our deco stop I was beyond pissed!! I was livid. I don't think the Instructor saw what he did. Nothing like spending 10 minutes of deco fuming. When we surfaced I asked him (in not so pleasant terms) why he did that. His response? "I wasn't diving Nitrox and did not want to spend a lot of time decoing so I headed for the exit. I knew you guys knew where you were."

The irony is that this guy was my DM when I was an OW student. Needless to say I never dove with him again. His reasoning was poor and his justification was dangerous. He knew what he was doing but did not appreciate the danger that decision put him or the team in. While I am sure the guys you dove with are not that type Pete I hope that other cave divers who read your post will make note of their speed when they are leading. Just slow down!!

 

[LiteHedded]

Good lessons indeed!! Not learned nor appreciated by everyone I am afraid.

During my checkout dive through NSS-CDS we did the mile run (Orange to the opening at P2). It was a 4 man team and my Instructor was with us all the way. I was the 2nd guy on the team and we started out great. The problem occurred when we got to Olsen. For some reason, the lead guy just took off. I mean he was MOVING!! I tried to keep up with him but then noticed I could not see the light of the diver behind me. I tried to stay in the middle of divers 1 and 3 for as long as I could but when the leader disappeared for good I decided to stay with the other team members (divers 3 and 4). When we got to our deco stop I was beyond pissed!! I was livid. I don't think the Instructor saw what he did. Nothing like spending 10 minutes of deco fuming. When we surfaced I asked him (in not so pleasant terms) why he did that. His response? "I wasn't diving Nitrox and did not want to spend a lot of time decoing so I headed for the exit. I knew you guys knew where you were."

The irony is that this guy was my DM when I was an OW student. Needless to say I never dove with him again. His reasoning was poor and his justification was dangerous. He knew what he was doing but did not appreciate the danger that decision put him or the team in. While I am sure the guys you dove with are not that type Pete I hope that other cave divers who read your post will make note of their speed when they are leading. Just slow down!!

just goes to show you how important choosing a dive buddy is when the dives matter.

 

[TSandM]

ScubaDoc, what did your instructor have to say about that experience? As I said, my Full Cave instructor set up an experience like that, to make sure I had enough assertiveness to tell the leader to slow the *&%$ down.

On the other hand, my Cave 2 instructor told my buddies they were swimming too fast, but told me I was swimming too slowly.

Curious as to what your instructor's take on the whole thing was.

 

[ScubaDocER]

just goes to show you how important choosing a dive buddy is when the dives matter.

Agreed. The distance between Olsen and P2 main is 1200 feet I believe. That's a LONG distance to swim and not see your team leader. Not once during that section until we made it to our deco stop!! There were SO many places Murphy could have reared his head. Sorry. I get pissed all over again just thinking about it. I was taught to be anal about my team members position in the water and to be prepared to assist if necessary. This violated so many of the basic tenets of cave diving that I did not know where to begin to complain. Whew!! I feel better know

 

[ScubaDocER]

ScubaDoc, what did your instructor have to say about that experience? As I said, my Full Cave instructor set up an experience like that, to make sure I had enough assertiveness to tell the leader to slow the *&%$ down.

On the other hand, my Cave 2 instructor told my buddies they were swimming too fast, but told me I was swimming too slowly.

Curious as to what your instructor's take on the whole thing was.

Hey Lynne,

I don't think my Instructor saw what he did. It was our last dive and I was certified after that and did not have the energy to get into a heated discussion about it. In hind sight I probably should have. I knew I wasn't going to dive with him again so I just let it go. I am sure he would have been just as irritated as I was.

I think a 4 man team was probably too big for our check out dive. I don't think it was easy to keep an eye on all of us.

My Cave 2 class was a 3 man team and it was obvious that Tyler was with us every step of the way. He kept snatching our back up lights . The team concept was reinforced ad nauseum with him and I began to develop an appreciation for choosing dive buddies more carefully. As a matter of fact, I can count on one hand the number of people I feel comfortable cave diving with. Not that I am a great cave diver, but I need to know that the people in the water with me have a similar team concept.

 

[Meister481]

The pace should be set during the briefing, buddy checked underwater by the lead and dictated by conditions of the passages you choose.

I can swim fast, but when I'm diving with a slower person I act accordingly. It's not like I'm going to miss anything by going slow. A nice slow dive in a place I've been before is like a homecoming, it allows a person to see new nuances that you've missed in your many travels. There isn't a single cave I dive that I've seen every part of the first 2000 feet, or even the cavern for that matter.

The only time I go fast is if it's agreed upon in advance, turn and drift out of a flowing cave. Then it's worth the exertion to enjoy the ride out.

As for stirring it up, you should know your limits. Practice in OW or a place that clears quickly before you go to a low flow cave and blow out vis and ruin it for everyone who dives behind you.

There are several trends I see causing problems within teams.
1. Breaking the rules
2. Lack of preparedness
3. Trading speed for proper technique
4. Improper briefing
5. Members of a team having different goals

Many times people take a class in Back Mount, then immediately switch to sidemount without proper practice/learning. Backmount teaches buoyancy control and trim, whereas sidemount makes buoyancy easy as long as you trim the system out properly. Dive a little bit in backmount before jumping to something else, you might learn more than you think. If you can dive small silty passages in BM without silting you have mastered it. If a person can't pass full cave BM then IMO they shouldn't be there.

The most disturbing trend: I was chatting at a shop in cave country and a diver I was speaking to said they chose their instructor because they heard their instructor was easier to pass than most. My heart fell.

 

[ucfdiver]

For me it depends on the dive. If I'm at Ginnie, where the first 1000ft of the cave would be better described as a sculpture than a cave due to all the damage, I blow past it. At Peacock where I've done the Pothole Tunnel several times, I take a fairly fast pace and don't typically don't slow it down until I get close to Olsen (this is where it gets pretty to me). Obviously you can't expect anyone to swim the same speed in a trashed cave like Little River where you're going to a specific area and mainline is just the price you pay to get there as you would a cave as pretty as Hole in the Wall.

I've found on bigger dives you plan the swim speed ahead of time anyways. Let's say we're swimming to the Heinkle (no logical reason to do this, Rodney George and Ben all make better tools for this dive, but I was stupid and did it once). Hopefully if you're attempting this dive, you know your SAC rates, know the distance, know how much gas we have, so we have to keep at least a certain pace. If you start dropping below that pace, especially on the exit, you can easily get back to your deco bottle and find yourselves without that 50% reserve in an AL40 to cover the lost, stolen, or failed deco gas due to the additional deco. Even worse, the massive reserves and high flow can give a false sense of security where you check out too many side tunnels on the way home and find yourself suddenly thin on reserves, maybe not even enough to get out with the flow. I'm not doing deep cave dives, but logic says that the deeper you go, the more "on schedule" you'd need to be (think about the deco you'd add for being 10 minutes late at 200ft deep). For the dives we plan to get to point ______, I've found our plans to be surprisingly accurate when we choose 50fpm as the swim rate and all team members know ahead of time.

Other situations that come to mind are the Madison Courtyard, where you might be doing a setup dive and want to rush to beat deco obligations to save o2 because there's not a nearby fill station, or because the park closes at sunset and you need a surface interval before the next dive.

I guess in summary, a clear dive plan solves this issue above water, and selecting a good dive buddy makes it easy to deal with if it comes up below water.

There's some passages that justify silting in my opinion, but Waterhole isn't one of them. Telford is a good example of a site where I really don't think you can dive there and NOT noticeably silt the place up, aside from maybe a side mount CCR?

 

[TSandM]

I was chatting at a shop in cave country and a diver I was speaking to said they chose their instructor because they heard their instructor was easier to pass than most.

This is truly sad. I was having a discussion with my husband yesterday, where I told him that, although I have struggled to pass some of the classes I have taken (and sometimes failed), I am really and truly glad that my instructors were as demanding as they were. Even where I can't yet meet their standard of good performance, I at least know what it IS, and can keep working toward it. Cave diving is one place where I don't think anybody can get TOO good at it -- you can always be cleaner, or more alert, or do a better job as a team. Taking cave training with the intention of doing the minimum possible is just SO wrong, on so many levels. This is one place I won't be tactful.

massive reserves and high flow can give a false sense of security where you check out too many side tunnels on the way home and find yourself suddenly thin on reserves, maybe not even enough to get out with the flow.

This is one of the reasons Peter and I fight about exit strategies. I was taught that, once you turn the dive, your one goal is to get out. I don't sightsee on exit -- I go in slowly, and sightsee there, and try new side passages on the way IN. That way, I know darned well that once I turn around, I've got tons of gas on my back to get back to daylight. I think flow seduces people into thinking it's reasonable to do a bunch of sidetracking on the way home, and you can get into trouble that way, as you have pointed out.

 

[DA Aquamaster]

I agree. Marci and I will at times do what amounts to a few short dives on a single dive, (for example surface and take a look at pothole, then go down the well, then maybe take a trip up the peanut line and checkout one of the small offshoot tunnels. Or for example, do a major dive in P3, then play aroud in the balcony at P3 or take the tunnel toward P2. But we will either do the whole thing on thirds or recalculate the gas in the cavern zone in between legs of the dive. So there is never any doubt about gas reserves as there is always at least twice the gas available for exit as was used to get to that point in the dive.

 

[Dive-aholic]

This is one of the reasons Peter and I fight about exit strategies. I was taught that, once you turn the dive, your one goal is to get out. I don't sightsee on exit -- I go in slowly, and sightsee there, and try new side passages on the way IN. That way, I know darned well that once I turn around, I've got tons of gas on my back to get back to daylight. I think flow seduces people into thinking it's reasonable to do a bunch of sidetracking on the way home, and you can get into trouble that way, as you have pointed out.

But once you're pretty comfortable with your breathing rate and know what it takes to get you out, you'll find you have a lot more time on exit. I haven't used the same amount of gas to exit as I have to enter in a few years, both in high flow and low flow. And I do sight see on the way out. I don't do a lot of sidetracking, but I do learn the cave even more on the way out than on the way in. If SHTF, I want to know that cave better exiting than entering because that's when it's really going to make a difference!