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Rod,
I'm really troubled by this email from you. In the past year two trained
cave divers died while diving solo. One of them was in this same system
that you're telling the world about your solo exploits.
I won't go into the abject sillyness of diving a rebreather solo (since
I'll openly admit my only rebreather experience comes from breathing
balloons of nitrous when I was 15). You know better then this.
Next time you're up in my neck of the woods give me a shout, I'll take
you on the grand tour of Mainland, it's a neat place. We can go get a
beer after too. Just don't go off and do something dumb and get yourself
killed.
Ken
>
> Subject: TOPGUN dive report
> Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1999 07:44:11 -0400
> From: Rodney Nairne <topgunusa@pr*.ne*>
> To: "rebreather@nw*.co*" <rebreather@nw*.co*>
>
> Had 2 days of enjoyable diving with Evie Dudas (Suzies mum) and group of
> divers from PA (Mike Cole, Steve Frederick, Tim Urbanski). Suzie could
> not get the time off work so I did my first few rebreather dives without
> her for quite a while.
>
> I was diving my TOPGUN unit with a 19cf oxygen cylinder and 40cf air
> cylinder on my back, and a 80 stage of about 30% Helium, 23% oxygen
> bastard mix as my diluent/bailout. I also had my Predator 2000 up and
> running, it sure beats swimming against the flow in Ginnie Springs.
>
> The 1st dive we scootered to Sweet Surprise which is a scooter / swim
> dive somewhere up the gold line in the 1000-2000 foot range. We did not
> make it to the place we wanted to see, one of the team members reaching
> 1/3rds. So we swam out to the scooter drop on the gold line at 40-45
> minutes, and I waved the group good-bye and scootered up the gold line,
> where I dropped my scooter at the Hinkle/Rouse restriction. I swam
> upstream from there just past the 3600ft line arrow; the cave get
> smaller back there, and the flow proportionately stronger. I scootered
> on out for a 125 min bottom time at 100-110ft, P02 of 0.45 to 0.9, and
> did 25 minutes of deco PO2 of 0.8-1.0 at 20-50ft.
>
> The second dive we hooked up with an Australian named Chris who is
> working at Ginnie Springs dive shop. He brought back memories of the
> total strokes in the CDAA (Cave Divers Association of Adelaide) with his
> stories of refusal of permits to dive despite his US cave cert.. I am
> definitely pushing for all CDAA divers visiting Florida to complete US
> cave training from cavern thru full cave before they are allowed to dive
> here, an a purely reciprocal arrangement for this very requirement of
> Chris, who is Full cave in the US.
>
> Unfortunately on this dive to the insulation room, his torch crapped out
> and Evie had to escort him out. Anyway after we dived the insulation
> room, I again waved good-bye to my OC buddies, and scootered up the Gold
> line in search of some jumps to the right. Unfortunately, after several
> scooter drops, all the lines turned sidemount and I had to scooter
> further upstream. Eventually, I found a jump with a nice ledge to drop
> my scooter on, and I ended up stumbling on a dive I have been wanting to
> do for a while: a bit of the cave called mainland.
>
> Mainland was an excellent dive, and I definitely want to get back in
> there again with Suzie, and a spare 80 stage waiting outside "just in
> case" despite a single 80 being enough gas to swim out from the furthest
> point I eventually turned at, 3900ft. Turned at 80, 105 bottom, 10 deco.
>
> After this dive I put Evie on my rebreather for a while, she dropped
> down to 30ft in little devil and did pretty well considering the
> differences from OC, and 2 minutes of pre-dive instructions. She will be
> diving with us with our spare rebreather real soon.
>
> The last dive Evie and I planned to dive Mainland, and Evie prepared
> with a 80 stage so we could do a good bottom time once in mainland.
> Unfortunately, at about 1500ft, the clutch failed on her scooter, and I
> had to tow her out to what I know as snap and gap, although the bungy
> gap line is no longer in place. There we dropped her Predator 3000 (My
> mother in law has a bigger one than me) and I towed her up to the jump
> to the double lines, where we did a circuit thru the double lines. My
> rebreather came in handy in the bedding plain section here, it is lower
> profile than a single 80.
>
> One thing I was amazed at was that I seemed to loose no speed scootering
> when towing Evie, double 100's, an 80 stage and another scooter. She
> used the WKPP technique of tucking right in, but I still scootered quick
> when she stuck her head out to see where we were going (and give me
> directions!) This dive was shorter than the previous 2, and I ended up
> with 6 hours in water time on my scrubber.
>
> RN
> AARG - US Branch ;)
>
> Proudly NOT trained or associated with the CDAA in any way.
--
"What's terrible is to pretend that the second-rate
is first-rate."
-- Doris Lessing
(British writer)
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