The Phreatic Zone

Christophe Le Maillot, France 05 

The Cave Dive

John Kendal and I arrive at the Ressel, one of Europe’s most well known caves and start analysing our gas, we then start building our equipment and give it a thorough checking over prior to carrying it down to the waters edge.

The air temp is a sticky 36 degrees and the water a steady 12 so we wade in without kit in order to cool down. Once cool, we whip out our wet notes and go through the dive plan.

Roadside at Ressel

Once we’ve ran through this we don our equipment and return to the water for our pre-dive checks, bubble check, equipment check, valve drill, S-drill then ascend from the 1.2m pool we commonly carry these drills out at. We review the dive plan again and work out our 3rds/ 6th’s and 35bar allowed for penetration and swim towards the entrance of the cave.

Waterside at Ressel

We okay each other and begin the descent. I unclip the primary reel and make the primary tie-off to a tree branch then the secondary to a rock in the cave, soon the gold line is upon us and I tie off to it, John checking my work as we go. Check gas, time and do a flow check on the fly and were on our way into this beautiful cave.

The Cistern at Laundenouse

We reach the first T in around 8 minutes, which normally takes us 12 so were doing pretty well. I drop a cookie on the exit side of the T then signal to John who is already removing a clothes peg from his pig tail to re-confirm the exit. We take the right side of the T and progress into the cave. We start up the slope and see team two who are exiting so we move over to allow them to pass without hassle. It appeared they were dealing with a failure or 6!

We ascended the slope which soon levelled off and dropped into a large chamber. The HID’s illuminating the walls, ceiling and floor. We dropped down almost like free falling down into this chamber and I remembered thinking to myself that this was like being what I imagined a space walk to be like. We soon hit 16m where the cave started to ascend again to around 14m and again revealed a deeper chamber at the drop off much like the first one but bigger.

The entry pool at Cabouy

I reached the edge of the drop off which was at 19m and had 1-2 bar left before I hit my 35 bar limit. The depth limitation for the dive was also 20m so I signalled the thumb to John who returned the signal and we began to exit with John out in front and me in 2nd.

The penetration went well with good progress being made from previous dives (270m penetration), but we knew the exit was Chris’s part of the dive.

Soon after we turned the dive my primary light failed so I deployed and activated my backup. John had already noticed the lack of light and turned to see if I was ok. We re-positioned on the fly and carried on with the exit with me now in front.
John’s primary failed and I turned around to see his backup come on so we continued out of the cave. I saw Johns light disappear so I tuned to see him deploy his second backup light, so we re-positioned and moved out.

Suddenly my right post started spewing bubbles, so I referenced the line, stabilised my position, signalled John and shut down my right post. John arrived as I was shutting down the post when I lost my back up. I continued with the shutdown, deployed my last backup and I communicated to John that he needed to check my right post. John tried to fix this 3 times, but told me it was well and truly humped so I moved into position 1 and we carried on with the exit.

Next Chris appears at my side telling me I’m OOA, so I turn around signalling to John that I’m OOA, he deploys his longhose and we move into touch contact and continue on the line with the exit. After the remainder of our light failures, we’re exiting the cave in touch contact with no lights what’s so ever. We pass our reel and make our way to the daylight zone where we need to carry out min deco 2@6, 1@3 so we shake out as best as we can in the limited space available at Ressel. John is then entrapped in the line so I give him the hold signal and try to untangle him, which is luckily successful. I am then asked for my mask which I dually hand over to Chris. John hands me his back up which I don then am immediately asked for yet again. John guides me through deco and we eventually surface erupting in laughter!

After all this and we aint dead, yee haa!

Chris de-briefs us on the surface and we have a general chat then prepare to go back in, this time with John as Captain.

All the dives on the course followed pretty much the same structure with different sequencing and failures so everyone involved had their fair share of captain/#2 and armchair positions….This was my dive

The Structure

Chris’s team (Us) were up at 0630hrs daily to start lectures at 0700 outside on the pick nick table whilst Danny’s team had the cosy luxury of the kitchen complete with filter coffee and warm croissants

After lessons and or line work in the park we would set-off for our respective caves to put into practice the theory and demo’s we covered in the morning.

There were times we weren’t getting to bed until gone midnight, but mostly 2100hrs at night would see us sat down in the kitchen as one big (tired) group sharing stories, pasta and bread.

The Contestants

Team 1 Christophe Le Malliot:-

Rick Huggins, DIR-F, (UK)
John Kendal, Tech-1, (UK)
Patrick Prasse, Tech-1, (DE)

Team 2 Danny Riordan:-

Sawyer Kjell, DIR-F, (NO)
Didrick Veng, Tech-1, (NO)
Harald Stene, Tech-1, (NO)

The Course

As with most GUE courses, the layout follows the building block approach where skills learnt in day 1 are carried on throughout the course but merely added to so that everything is covered and well practiced.

Before every dive, gas was analysed, pre-dive checks were carried out in 1.2m water in your respective team triangle and two dives were done per twinset.

We lost 1/3rd of the students on the course, both Tech 1 divers on day 3. Didrick from team two threw in his towel as he realised his skills were not up to scratch and that he was only holding back his two buddies. This decision IMO took big cahoonas, hat’s off to that man.

We lost Patrick from our team who had problems with the cave environment, which again took muchos manhood to face up to.

The accommodation was set in a really nice quiet location giving all the piece and quiet we needed with excellent facilities for line work and it even had a river for the swim test. Set not far from the town of Carjarc, I would definitely come back here again. Bread and croissants were provided daily and the British owners were a very nice couple …of blokes

Changes to Cave 1 limitations.

Since JJ, Chris, David and Danny arrived in France there have been a few changes to the limitations cave 1 level divers can now dive to. We are now allowed to navigate one T or one Gap and a penetration of 35bar as long as you have at least 120bar in a set of 2×12ltrs.

Day 1:

Lectures: Cave 1 limitations, Gas Planning, Equipment Failures, Re-positioning the team, Communications, Accident analysis.
Demos: None
Dives: 2
Cave: Ressel
Failures: Lights

Day 2:

Lectures: Geology, hydrology, Hazards, Lost Diver Protocol, valve failures
Demos: Lost diver, touch contact
Dives: 2
Cave: Ressel
Failures: Lights, valve failures

Day 3:

Lectures: Stress, Protocol, Awareness, emergency scenarios
Demos: OOA on the line
Dives: 4
Cave: Laundenous
Failures: Lights, valve failures, OOA

Day 4:

Lectures: Lost line procedure
Demos: Lost line
Dives: 4
Cave: Ressel
Failures: Lights, valve failures, OOA, lost line

Day 5:

Lectures: Geology, hydrology, Hazards, Lost Diver Protocol, valve failures
Demos: None
Dives: 2
Cave: Cabouy
Failures: Lights, valve failures, OOA, lost line, lost buddy

The Instructor

Chris is truly a great instructor. From day 1 he made it clear that this game isn’t for everyone and that he doesn’t hand out cards willy nilly. I felt as if he was constantly quizzing us and trying to work out if I was genuinely interested in caves, diving, GUE and DIR. No matter how many questions were asked he always answered them fully and in depth. He is very passionate about both his caves and his diving, his attention to detail still amazes me and his almost perfectionism gives me a bar to aim towards.

He has a good sense of humour and even understands the British humour (especially when I used his best red wine to make a Bolognese sauce).

You can see more of what him and Danny do here http://www.dir-mexico.com and he promised he’d be along to keep and eye on me, John, Andy and the sad puppies!

Conclusion

This course isn’t for everyone but if you have even the slightest interest in caves and or want to continue you experience with GUE you won’t be disappointed.

If you would like any further information that I may have forgotten, please contact me and I’ll try help out.

Chris@dir-mexico.com

http://www.dir-mexico.com/

Fraser Purdon, Grand Cayman, Sept 05

From a place near Hell (Phil Osbourne & Rick Huggins)

I’ve read loads of reports about Tech 1 on YD and one things that stands out in my mind is “Tech 1 … that’s bloody hard that is” . Having completed Tech 1 I can whole heartedly agree – it’s a bugger of a course.

I had originally planned to do the course with a guy I had previously dived with on Cayman but he was unable to make it so I started thinking about those people on YD who would be interested. Within a short time Rick Huggins (Frogman) was on board and flights booked.

So one fine morning in September the Family Frogman dispatched Rick to Heathrow and met up with myself and my wife Sharon. After a flight of about 12 hours we landed on Cayman and quickly picked up our rental 4×4 and headed out to the shops before getting to our timeshare on the East End of Cayman. Once we got there Rick speedily unpacked his fins and mask (no snorkel) and went snorkelling. He came back grunting in a wild manner and all I could make out was “ … big feck off fish ….. coral ….. blue ….”. He needed food, so it was off to the beach bar for a couple of Red Stripes and Jerk Mahi Mahi.

Day 1

The instructor was Fraser Purdon of Oceanfrontiers – if you read Quest I’m sure you’ve seen Oceanfrontiers mentioned a few times. They are an excellent dive outfit and really are highly recommended. We arrived at the dive centre just after 8 o’clock on Sunday morning. Fraser’s first words to us were “Ha ha ha !!! Let the fun begin” . Oh bugger - not the first words I wanted to hear.

The course was to be over 5 days starting generally at 07:30 and finishing around 6 in the evening. Every morning began with us checking our gas mixes for the morning dives. Afternoons were for land based practise and classroom sessions.

We started the day with paperwork, a run through of our kit and GUE procedures and we did all this on the pool deck with the sun beating down on us. Around this point we found out that Rick had pulled a sickie to do this course so we had to make sure he didn’t get a sun tan – difficult to explain a tan when you look like a younger version of Des O’Connor. At one point Frase believed Rick when he was told that not only had he pulled a sickie but he had told his wife he was doing the course at Stoney Cove. It was good to start the week with a laugh at least.

The first dives were done in about 7 metres of water from Oceanfrontiers flat training boat. Fraser wanted us working with our stages from the start so we dropped down to 6m and levelled out after our S-Drills and Valve drills. The vis was unreal, must have been 50m+ with the bluest water we had ever seen. The marine life was fantastic. in the first 5 mins we saw massive Lobsters, Barracuda, Stingray, Corals of every colour, Anenomies etc This place was like something out of “Finding Nemo”!

We shake out and adjust to our new set ups and environment whilst Frase viewed on. We ran through the basics like S-drills, valve drills and fin kicks then surface for a quick de-brief. We drop back down and go through a number of short dives with the usual skills taking Rick straight back to Cave 1. After laying the line we go through a series of events – following the line with no mask, ascents, stage deployment, lift bag deployment and the introduction to Frase’s bubble gun. Having read many Tech 1 reports I new that the instructor would make it tough for us. I knew that he would be stealing things off me and generally mess me around, but I wasn’t going to let that happen as I was prepared for it! What an absurd thought!!! After completing a maskless swim along a line, I found myself tied to the line via a double ender.

At the end of the day I thought that things were going well – it was the only day I felt like that.

Day 2

Early start again to check our gas mixes and kit before we set off on Oceanfrontiers morning dive boat to a site called Jack McKenney’s Canyons. A beautiful site on the south east wall of Grand Cayman although on this dive I didn’t notice any of the beauty. The first dive was all about post failures, stage deployment and ascents.

The second dive of the day was at a site called Snapper Hole on the north east corner of the island. Another great site on the top of the reef at around 17 – 20m depth. One great feature of this site are the swim throughs between the corals and the caverns and Frase had us running line through the canyons first. It seems that all we did on this dive was OOA’s on the line in the caverns. My biggest memory of this dive was the cavern – it seemed to go on for ever and in places was full of Silversides.

Day 3

Today was our first dive on 30/30 and we went down the wall at Anchor Point on the north side of the island. It was also our first attempt at running deco, which didn’t go that badly, or so we thought.

The next dive was at a site called Dragons Lair – how apt. This site also had a maze of coral heads, swim throughs and canyons and we laid line on a trail through all of them. This was the dive that Frase hit us with everything. Rick had almost completed the line laying when he was hit with an OOG. I donated and we turned the dive making our way out of the cavern. Events moved a pace then when Rick lost his mask. I held his arm and made sure he was on the line when I lost my mask. At this point I knew Rick was maskless but he didn’t know I was. I started to get task loaded at this point and wondered how the hell do I tell Rick that I had no mask, while Rick was wondering why we weren’t moving. His Cave course thinking came back to him and he tried to find out if I was maskless … at least I think he was doing that, I’m sure he wasn’t trying to pick my nose. On our ascent we had stops at 12, 9, 6 and 3 – at 3 metres I had a genuine out of gas. The one thing I was pleased about on this dive was the fact that we sorted it and I didn’t bolt to the surface.

That night I was in two minds whether to continue or not. I was not confident at all and had convinced myself that not only was I not good enough to pass Tech 1 but I should never had passed Fundies either. We spoke about the events at the beach bar that evening and it was Rick’s sense of team work that pulled me up – he gave me back the confidence to carry on.

Day 4

We were told by Fraser that this mornings first dive was a turning point in the course – we would either pass and move on to the last day or fail and have to repeat the following day .. .or fail completely.

It was a dive on a site called Black Rock to 36m on 30/30 for 20 minutes with a deco switch at 21m to 50%. Things started well with a good descent and dive along the wall – we queried our deco at 19min and began our ascent at 20 minutes. Deco wasn’t good though – I cocked up the timing on one of the stops and we didn’t hold the stops well. It wasn’t good enough though and Frase was not going to let us continue until we had repeated the dive to his satisfaction. We went back in the water afterwards for more skills and bubble guns.

That afternoon we went through the dive with Fraser and ended up practising our ascents on the dock.

At the beach bar in the evening we were both pissed off – we felt at that time that we had done ok and wondered how high that bloody Tech 1 bar was.

Day 5

We went off to a site called The Lighthouse for a repeat of the previous days 30/30 dive. At 7:30 that morning having already checked our gas mix and gear we started walking the wooden dock – visualising the deco. The other divers on the boat gave us strange glances … and not for the first time. The visualising worked … we nailed this dive completely.

Our second dive that morning was at Black Rock Reef and this was Fraser’s dive – it was his time to really throw stuff at us. OOA’s, multiple post failures, mask losses, loose lines .. all of the stuff that made me feel bad on Day 3, but this time we coped with it better. After completing an OOA and multiple post failure with no masks we tidied up our gear and masks and I started a flow check. Having confirmed my right post and isolator I noticed my stage bottle was missing. Rick and I laughed before I retrieved my stage from Frase. I was carrying an Ally 40 stage and I had to admire his skill – then made a mental note to check my wallet when I got ashore. Everything was put back to normal and we started our ascents and it wasn’t long before time Rick gave me an OOA so I handed Rick my primary and popped my back up into my mouth. You can see it coming can’t you - I breathed in and immediately felt nothing. No gas at all so I signed OOA to Rick. He didn’t hand me my reg back so that confirmed that his OOA wasn’t a drill. Bugger. I could see Frase coming round to the be in front of us and he was preparing to donate when it suddenly came back to me – my left post was still shut off from a previous drill. We finished our stops and rose to the surface .. .a rather choppy surface … and laughed. It was such a different feeling to the time we surfaced 2 days previously.

That afternoon we planned our next days dive to 45 metres and blended our gases. That was a great thing about the course – we learnt to blend our gas.

Day 6

The last dive of the course was at a site called Valley of the Dolls and we were planning to drop down the wall to 45 metres for 25 minutes with the boat picking us up when we completed deco. Our descent was great and we soon reached 45 metre. The vis was brilliant at around 25-30 metres and the wall looked beautiful with black coral reaching out into the blue. The Cayman wall goes down about 2000 metres and normally I like nothing more than to turn away from the wall and just stare into the blue .. not today though, too many things happening.

Rick and I talked this dive through beforehand. We visualised the ascents and went through every detail on land. I’ve never done this before but there is now doubt that it helped with the planning.

At our 6 metre stop Rick was clearly getting bored – he had spotted a Barracuda somewhere near so he thought he would let me know but didn’t know the international sign for “Barracuda near your nuts mate”. I was puzzled by his signs and wondered what on earth he was breathing. Eventually he pointed behind me and signed “SHARK” loudly. I did my best ever helicopter turn and soiled my X-Shorts.

It was a great dive and everything that we had messed up beforehand came together and I was chuffed to bits to be told that we had passed.

Final Thoughts

My buddy – Rick was brilliant. I knew his dive skills were good but it was his team skills that really impressed. He helped me a great deal and there is no doubt that I benefited from this.

Our Instructor – Fraser was great. He gave good honest feedback and was always keen to make sure we understood everything. Also he had the dive skills of a Ninja Turtle.

The Dive centre – I dive at Oceanfrontiers every year. I tried, and eventually bought, my first backplate/wing from Fraser and haven’t looked back. But the big thing about Oceanfrontiers is the level of service given to every diver. It is superb and regularly receives rave reviews on Quest. For the course everything was to hand – it took 2 minutes to go from the classroom to the pool, 2.5 minutes to the gas blending station and 3 minutes to the boat. The longest time on the boat to the dive site was about 20 minutes. All this meant that we could cram more in to the available time.

The location – I come here every year and am an absolute Caymanphile. The weather was not so good this September with a fair amount of rain but better than my visit last year when I ended up in a hurricane shelter at Gunbay for 4 days.

Warm water course – it’s a big difference doing the course in Cayman rather than the UK. I didn’t have to worry about dry suits or the cold or poor vis which undoubtedly makes course tougher. But it doesn’t invalidate the course in Cayman – I found it tough and it has highlighted areas that I still have to work on in my continuing dive education.

Our last night – What a night. All week I had told Rick about the island favourites but it wasn’t until the last night that I dare offer him a Mudslide .This is a fine cocktail of crushed ice, Vodka, Baileys and Kahlua topped with whipped cream and more Kahlua. For some reason that night was the best I had slept all week.

All in all a brilliant course and I’m busy planning my next trip to Cayman next year when I hope to dive some of the currently un-dived sites on the wall.

Here’s some pics for y’all

Tech 1 in a place near Hell

Fraser prepares for post course de-brief

The Jetty and one of the OF boats

The bay

The beach

3rd Team Member

Tech 1 Divers awaiting collection

The profile

fraser@oceanfrontiers.com

http://www.oceanfrontiers.com/

Andy Kerslake & Rich Walker, Capernwray UK Oct 04 

Friday night was a laugh; after a brief intro from each student and a general intro into GUE & DIR we hit the tables, practicing frog kicks, modified frog kicks, flutter, modified flutter, helicopter right/left and backwards frog kick.. How funny was that!

So things looking good, we finished off about 2300hrs and headed back to our abodes. Me and Will stopped at the Kings Arms in Burton, reasonable accomodation and good food!

With a 0900 start on Saturday we continued with a slide presentation on the fundamentals, skills required. Backplates/Harnesses were set up (Correctly) etc then headed off to practice what we had learned.

The skills/experience of the students ranged from 20 dive novices to dive leaders and instructors with 300+ dives.

Once in the water (6m) all hell broke loose. The guys had layed two triangle lines for each of the groups. Single tanks/Double tanks. There were folk on the suface, folk at the bottom, some stuck in the silt, some upside down, some landing on top of others etc…total pandemonium.

We all got the thumbs and headed to the surface for a little chat with Mr Kerslake and Mr Walker.

Once clear what was meant to happen we descended in our groups and started practicing S-Drills, Finning techniques, valve drills etc. It was still chaos down there with plenty of buddy seperations, ascents, descents and line loosing. What a bag of sh*t I thought!

After a brief SI for the singles to get a fill, we were back in on dive 2. This was better, we had started to move in distinct teams within the teams, trim was better and bouyancy was getting there.

At this point, I must stress that I and others thought that there bouyancy/trim was pretty good prior to starting the course. At 6M one small breath whilst removing a mast will send you northwards, all under the watchfull eye of the video guys Andy & John. They always seemed to be there when you least wanted them to be, frustratingly!! 

Anyway it all started to come together; well, better than the previous dive.

Back to the class and continued the slide discussions. At the end of the day, I must say I felt a little disapointed by the lack of footage of myself and Will. Not being vein of course, but to criticise and analyse our position/trim and dangly bits etc. (That was soon taken care of the next day by Andy and John and TBH I wished I had shut my big trap. Having read the fundamentals book and workbook, I truely didn’t think I had learned a lot more from attending the course that I already had whilst reading researching DIR.

Oh well day 2 down, what will tomorrow bring?

Back in the class for a brief spell then back into the water to practice all the skills we learned the previous day plus more.

This was really beginning to come together. Basic 5, Reg out, exchange, mask clear, mask removal, modified S-Drill. Then onto Full S-Drills, valve drills and bag deployment.

Sound easy?

Try all this totally horizontaly, facing your buddy/team, manouvering without hands (fin kicks only) without ascending because of a mis-placed breath..But we were slowly getting there!

On the way to the SI we finned past a group of trainee’s by one of the large trailers at the cape. God knows what they must have thought as we went past with HID’s ablaze in V formation. I thought they were gonna spit their regs

Anyway, Dive 4 was upon us and we went through the whole caboodle again, but this time it was really geared towards the team and it felt great. Everyone knew where everyone was this time around, drills were getting slicker, trim and bouyancy was becoming second nature. Still a few flaws but all in all…it was good.

Down to the pool for a quick swim and a breath hold (I should have stopped smoking long before the night before the course), then it was back to the class. Finished off the slides, watched the videos then we had our idividual debriefs.

To conclude.

A great course, well worth doing even if you have the slightest interest in bettering your skills.
Now you might be thinking “my bouyancy is fine”; well everyone on the course “thought” that!

Just seeing the likes of Andy and Rich in the water makes you realise that youve been or are doing something wrong which you can right with the correct instruction.

I think I speak for all the guys when I say that we all took something very important from this course, something you need to see to believe.

I personally got a provisional pass, which means I need to go away and polish the skills that I learned, come back and prove that I own the skills to be an efficient member of a DIR team.

However, supposing I decide not to further my training with GUE, these skills are the simple building blocks of diving and I would urge anyone to go give it a try.

P.S I will continue with GUE and hope to do Cave 1 in Florida sometime next year. 

A big thanks to Andy Kerslake and Rich Walker for the course, all the guys on the course, the video men (stealthy back finners) Andy Carrol & John Kendal, Dave Willo and others who popped in to wish us luck and Adam Hanlon for the coffee and scran.