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| Edd's monster truck |
We started out with a lecture, and then packed everything up into Edd's monster truck and headed to Vortex Springs, which is a spring where there is some deep enough open water where we could practice before going into an overhead environment. The drive took about an hour or so.
The first dives were up and down in about 7m of water. We were hopelessly bad and Edd started trying to fix our issues. Our trim in the water was terrible, and Edd wanted nothing but perfectly horizontal diving with knees bent and feet in the air like a sky diver. The course started us on a path of changing nearly every piece of our equipment and configuration in order to get horizontal, pull our gear and wires and pieces of kit tightly in around our bodies, and hang our stages correctly. Kevin and I only ever dive horizontally in an overhead environment, the rest of the time we allow ourselves to come up vertically where the machine sits comfortably. Rebreathers are also not nice to dive above 12m because shallower than this, even a 0.5m depth change causes you to change the loop volume which adjusts your buoyancy, and unlike an open circuit diver, you can't breathe in or out in order to float or sink, you have to use your hands to inflate and dump air from your BCD. In short, it was a disaster. Kevin did much better than me, I was atrocious. And my very wet dry suit wasn't helping the situation, I was shivering and convinced that all the water inside the suit was making my feet even heavier.
At least we also learned about scootering. We learned how to swim with the scooter, how to clip it off, how to tow each other in case one of the scooters dies, etc. The biggest trick I learned was to put my thumb at 90 degrees holding the left side of the handle to prevent the scooter from rolling my arm all the way over anti-clockwise.
The second session we headed into the cave at Vortex which is narrow, silty, dark and ugly. Both Kevin and I had new masks which were still fogging up (this also causes buoyancy issues with clearing it constantly which changes your swimming profile and loop volume). As well as that, I've never been able to hook my torch on to my hand so it doesn't slide off (the handle is metal and too big for my hands), and I've always held my torch in my right hand, leaving the left hand to handle diluent flushes, BCD inflation, etc. Now the scooter was in the right and so the torch had to go in the left. Eventually I just flung the torch over my neck so it hung there, which didn't make Edd happy, but I couldn't effectively use my left hand while holding on to the torch. Needless to say, this dive also didn't go well. Kev and I dinged the tops of our machines into the cave roof many times, and hit the silt on the bottom as well. The drive back to Marianna was sombre.
That night we made some modifications to our kit. I put heavier weights into my lungs, we moved the rebreather cylinders higher over our heads, we changed the angle of our stages so that we could sling them in bungee right up under our arms like a side-mount diver would (Edd is a specialist in side-mount diving and it really makes sense for these caves because your profile in the water on a side-mount is narrow so you can squeeze through passages). We also discussed the torches and decided to use our right hands to steer the scooter and hold the torch.
Day 2 of the course we were at Jackson Blue. Today we would learn how to come out of the cave with no lights (silt out) along the line while swimming the scooter, how to reel in and out with the scooter, and then practice the skills we had learned yesterday, like towing and air sharing and maneuvering.
The first part of the dive went well, lights out was fine, scootering felt easier than yesterday, the stage trim was better, our towing felt 100 times better, and although the torch pointed off in the wrong direction, a least I could keep it on my right hand instead of dropping it all the time. The torch still slipped down the hand every now and again and I'd have to stop to push it back on, and I have given myself a horrible tendon injury on the middle finger knuckle trying to press that metal handle against my hand so that it stayed on.
Then it came time for me to reel. I was really stupid at this point. Edd had reeled in as a demonstration. He had looped the primary tie off onto a little outcropping in the wall on the right of the cavern entrance, then did his secondary tie off on a larger outcropping also on the right wall. None of this was familiar territory for me and given the space available I would have tied off on the floor, keeping the reel to my left. But I didn't think, I just tried to copy. Disaster. Primary tie off was fine, then I had to pull my scooter across in front of me from my left to my right (into the wall) and get my whole body and stage over to the left of the line without tangling. After attempting it, I decided just to leave everything on the left of the line and take it down for tie off number 2. After number 2 I managed to swap over to the right hand side and reel down and in to the cave, I even managed to scooter and reel the passageway to the main line ... yay. But then at the tie off to the main line I thought maybe in Edd's instructions he'd told us to lock the tie off before clipping on to the main line, so I did that which was wrong and took time. Clipping the scooter between my legs to reel back out I went vertical again. Then back at my secondary tie off at the entrance I fouled up the reel. By now (80min dive) I was so cold my whole body was wracked with shivers. I tried to fix the foul up, and eventually Edd came and tried to fix it, but we couldn't and so we just pulled the line out and ended the dive. Oh dear. I think Edd wanted to fail me right then and there.
Dive 2 of day 2, Kev was going to reel in and then lead a dive where Edd would just follow and throw situations at us as we went. Kev was smart and chose familiar tie off points and he reeled perfectly. Then we headed off scootering. This was much more relaxing and I started to enjoy myself and worry less about the course. At 1200', at the T we'd turned at 2 days ago, Kev turned us. Then we towed each other out. It was heading towards another 80min dive and I still had to re-do the reeling. I knew this time I couldn't stuff it up, so I gritted my teeth, tried to ignore the shivering, and reel and dive as I would have back in Komati Springs. It worked. Everything went fine and I didn't do anything stupid this time. Phew.
So we packed up and headed back to Cave Adventurers for the written exam, which went easily. Neither of us were sure if we'd passed the course or not. Edd even told us we were close to failing and that the final dive had saved us. I don't think I've ever come so close to failing something! We were relieved and exhausted. And now that it's over, we know how much we learned that we would never have known if we hadn't done the course. We've been able to fix our diving up, even on the rebreathers, so that we have neater trim and are hopefully safer divers. Being perfectly horizontal all the time is a skill we're going to be practicing every dive until we get it right.
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| Me, Edd and Kevin |
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| Overhead DPV Certs |
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