Back To Wetsuits

Our ears were still sore on Sunday, but we decided to dive anyway. We just wanted to do a checkout dive with all the changes we'd been plotting to make since the DPV course ended.

Here are some of the modifications we made:

• Soft glove handle for the torch that your thumb hooks into so the torch can't slip off and you don't have metal digging into your knuckles
• Kev removed the switches from both torches and set them permanently to 21 HID (huge improvement in light)
• Moved our BCDs down to the lowest notch on our harness to help keep the air away from our heads
• I removed the weight from the top of my BCD at my neck because I don't think it's helping keep my shoulders down, I think it's just stopping me from looking up
• Wetsuits which meant adjusting our harnesses to fit
• Wetsuits meant I had to buy new fins (the fins for the dry suit are a size too big)
• Tiny torches attached to our masks so we can have torchlight to see when we're reeling and look at our Hammerhead handsets without using a hand to turn on their backlights
• Wetsuits meant that we had to find a place for our backup torches, safety reels and cookies
• Names on our cookies so we won't get lost with all the markers in the maze of line
• Finding a way to stow the wiring from my rebreather head to my handsets because on me the wire loops and is a big entanglement risk
• Hooking my O2 and Dil pressure gauges over my BCD so that they don't hang down lower than me when I'm horizontal

Cookies named with Bean and Scrat so we don't get lost

 

Mangrove heated wetsuit vest (battery powered)

Back in South Africa I had also ordered an underwater heated wetsuit vest by Mangrove. I knew my dry suit was leaking and I wanted a backup plan. This came into stock just before the course started and was delivered to Cave Adventurers.

Finally I also managed to get a few pics of the Jackson Blue kit up area. We only dived to the STOP sign in the cave, and I got out a few times to adjust weights in my lungs and a few other things so that I was comfortable in the water. Our ears were aching by the time we finished, but Edd gave us a tip to use a solution of 50% alcohol and 50% hydrogen peroxide and let it bubble away in our ear for 5min, so we grabbed the ingredients and headed home to try fix everything up for some nice diving on Monday.

Kev at our kit-up table in front of Jackson Blue Spring

Looking out into Merritt's Mill Pond from the entrance to Jackson Blue

Kev swimming in front of the Jackson Blue entrance