Posted by Maddiver on February 07, 2002 at 02:00:54:
Yucatan continued:
At this point many are wondering what is the deal with my dive buddy. I was wondering the same thing, as he had never exhibited this type of behavior or lack of execution on any dive much less so many. I would later learn that he was focused on things other than cave diving. Our trip was unwinding and we had two more dives planned which we revised the dive plans for given the experiences of the past two days.
Like I mentioned this is someone who I had been diving with before and he had a fair number of cave dives (~100) enough to be beyond this type of performance. I believe in giving people chances and that some have off days but this was getting bad, for me as well as him. Its not that I couldn't handle the individual problems that occurred but my cave training and more importantly my experience leads me to believe you should nip problems in the bud before they occur rather than be forced to manage them.
There could come a point where a combination of factors was beyond my control. And I started to approach the dives as if I were solo diving or worse that my buddy could become a liability needing an inordinate amount of gas or leaving me to my own devices in a serious situation. I fought internally with several issues including the suggestion that he become re-orientated through remedial training by a gue cave instructor. Also he should re-evaluate if cave diving was for him at this point in his life or at all in the future. As Harry Averal says "Cave Diving is not for Everyone". I am not a cave instructor nor do I want to be. I cave dive for me and historically have had a select group of buddies who know my every move as I know theirs. The moment I stop enjoying cave diving I am done. Back to the diving:
Calimba: Curtailed Dive Plan to check out this 'hole' in the floor on the Calimba circuit. Short dive if you just do it without stopping about 1250-1500 max penetration. But I had a lot of stuff I wanted to check out. My focus on this dive was to carry my stage bottle with me wherever I went (where practical of course). So we set out checking some stuff out along the sides and adding line to some areas I had marked the day before. We got to the hard 90 to the left and I took the jump and continued for ~350 ft to where the floor has 3 distinct holes that drop from 40 to ?.
Most of this system is less than 45 ft and the possibility of a 'lower level' of cave was real especially if I hit the saltwater layer. The third hole was the largest of the three but still really small. I took off the stage and got on the BG for the first time in the dive and tied off my spool and dropped feet first down the shaft until my waist where the canister light and doubles prevented my further progress at this angle. I shifted around where I could just barely squeeze down (I realized that coming back I may have to shoot through this hole as exact as I had positioned to come down and therefore needed to allow extra egress time). I burst into a fair size room with lower level that contained saltwater the beautiful blue clear kind reminiscent of the Temple of Doom type. Salt water started at about 52-55 ft and the room's lower section went to 70 ft deep (the deepest section in Sac Aktun to my knowledge or on any known map).
I was excited but perculation from the ceiling was making things really hard to see and my buddy was not going to come through that hole……his hips were too wide. I quickly checked all potential for leads and they looked like dead ends so I came back through that hole. It took about 1min 45sec to extract myself and this started to concern my buddy since I just didn't slide out and it appeared that I was stuck on several occasions. I extracted myself and got back on my stage (I was going to breath my stage the whole dive and preserve BG as full as possible). Runtime of 107min. Max depth 70 with avg depth 40.
Tortuga: This was the last dive and as such I felt like we had finally shaken Mr. Murphy from our previous dives. We were gassed up with 36% in doubles and had fresh charges on the DPV's. We elected not to use stages in this cave and just to have fun speeding around. Tortuga is located on the same property as Vaca Ha only much further into the jungle (about 10min drive on a two track sascab road). It was dark and we quickly suited up avoiding the mosquitoes (yep there were lots of those damn things at night).
I placed the DPVs in the water looking for signs of the 2ft Cayman that Steve Gerard had been feeding ground beef to. It looks like a little crocodile. I didn't see him which made me feel worse than if I could keep an eye on him since he now associates food with people and Kate (Steve's wife) refuses to bring the dog like she used to when visiting this cenote. The basin was clear which only happens in the winter at Tortuga but was quickly zeroed out due to the plant material at the bottom. My buddy left an extra safety light on the edge of the cenote turned off for our return to aid in climbing out. (This 'disappeared'-read was stolen by the time we returned. Kind of spooky way out in the jungle if you ask me).
Tortuga is another deepish cave for Mexico with depths of 70ish not uncommon necessitating more attention to air management and use of nitrox or monitoring/planning of deco times. We hit this cave hard, scootering full blast down the mainline through large rooms with huge columns and stalactites and stalagmites and columns that were brown to darkish red/black in color. As we passed 500 ft we went deep into the salt layer to the left on a jump and took a left turn scootered until the line ended and returned to the main line. We then proceeded to 1000 ft up the mainline and took the left T which sent us into a smaller section testing our scootering skills in a semi-delicate section. This section is characterized by vertical depth variations ending with an ascent into a tannic filled dome at 25ft. U-turn here back to take the right T.
Scootered through large bore like tunnel that was fairly straight at 60ish depth with my buddies prop wash emitting a surreal trail much like the heat dissipating from a jet turbine on an aircraft (this was due to the salt lens/fresh water mixing). Pretty cool contrail. We came to a break down with clay that lead up to 20ish feet but pushing the scooters through this smallish area churned up billowing clouds of silt. My buddy became unnerved at this point and signaled to turn around. I whipped out my wet notes to tell him we needed to continue on swimming only for five minutes to give that slit a chance to disperse before attempting to go through it. He refused and began the return with me begrudgingly in tow. It got so bad that we were unable to maintain contact and before I knew it I was tumbling over backwards with the line pulled from my hand by my scooter which had been activated by the leash (the owner refuses to allow us to pin the trigger).
This was a huge cluster and my immediate need was to regain the line. Somehow the double ender in the my pocket with my car keys on it became tangled in a mat of the line and I could only see a faint glow from my HID when placed toward my mask…it was zeroed out. The scooter wasn't making things any better so I unclipped it and tied it below me (my head is angled down at this point with my feet above me and the line caught around me on my keys and double ender). My buddy was gone and I just had to laugh and actually said that this has to be a joke as I haven't had this many things go wrong in the last 450 cave dives.
I had plenty of gas and my focus surrounded extracting myself without losing my keys. As the prospect of walking out of the jungle at midnight to try and find someone who could make another key so you could leave by 5am to make your flight somehow didn't seem real appealing. I unlatched the keys and attached them to my back up light clip, then proceeded to undo the double ender which extracted me from the line. Out of that mess I quickly stowed my keys back on the double ender in my pocket and made my way slowly through the silt. At the bottom I came into clear water and looked down the straight tunnel for my buddy. He wasn't there and this was cause for alarm as I wondered if he too had lost the line. I waited holding my breath and listening, punctuated by screaming through my reg lots of expletives in hopes of a reply…none.
Just about his time here came a light at the end of that long tunnel. He had scootered out to the T on me, 600 ft and waited five minutes before returning. We hit the exit without any further incidents although this pretty much convinced me never to dive with him again, personal problem or not…you don't leave your buddy. WE piled the doubles in the car turned on the car's defrost for the windows and started the engine to ensure lights and sufficient battery power and then I went to pick up the scooters. The ladder at Tortuga is really slimy and tilts to the right. I slipped back and fell into the water backwards with my foot catching up above on a rung and placing me paddling with my arms to stay afloat. Of course I was yelling for my buddy at this point who was sitting in the car with the vent turned way up to keep mosquitoes off and supposedly couldn't hear me.
He finally came down and extracted my foot. My wetsuit had aided in my buoyancy but I was shaken buy this experience. Some major lessons: I don't care how good you think you are when this much goes wrong hang it up for the trip and visit some ruins, go to Carlos and Charlie's, but whatever you do stay out of the water. But I guess I'm still young dumb and full of hot water. All in all it was still fun and I got my diving fix, but at what potential price? I should wait until my friends Daryl and Jamie can go cave diving with me so as I never have to worry about any of that garbage taking place. Yeah Daryl this is all your fault, I think you need to take me cave diving ; )