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F16CJ/CCQ wrote:
> George,
> Can you post to the Caver's List your mixes
> (# of stages and scooters), depths, deco time, and total in water
> time. I am interested as well as others on how big this dive was and
> the number of people involved to pull this off. Congrats of the new world
record!!!
>
---------
John, thanks for asking. It took several years to find the
tunnels that connected. One big problem was the water clarity, another
was access, the last was having a team to do it.
Early WKPP dives were done more Kamikaze style, with less scooters,
gas, and people. Gavin and I did most of them by oursleves with one or
no people helping. For instance, we put in the line at Turner with just
the two of us and one paramedic who came back a few hours later when he
had a break in his job to see if we were ok. JJ and I set up the
upstream dives ourselves, but bottles were only placed out to the second
stage drop at that time. There was a shortage of scooters since nobody
wanted to put up money until they were proven, since we had been through
several iffy designs before we hit on the current models. The old timers
would not dive with my young guns at the time, and in fact I was
considered a prime candidate for disaster, but then when it came to
putting the hammer down and collecting the survey, they still took me
along anyway since everyone else had been killed ,quit, or could not
high speed survey with accuracy. JJ and I outlasted all of them and
built the team.
Modern day we have a team of 158 people with all kinds of talents. At
Big Dismal we lowered a four-piece inflatable/sinkable platform onto the
surface of the sinkhole and used a simple block and tackle to move the
gear up and down to it. Operating with information passed on to me by
Exley right before he died we had little problem locating the correct
tunnel in Big D which led to the Bitter End. We actually executed that
part by preparing to send multimple two man teams further and further
into the cave on one day until they found it and dropped off our ongoing
stages. The first guys could not even find the line before they got low
on gas, but by the time Scarabin and Sankey hit the water, they made it
to the deep drop off nearly 4,000 feet into the cave, and set up JJ,
Casey and me. This type of planning and execution is my specialty, and
the area that Stone most critcizes of the WKPP, because he understands
it the least. We connected the caves in one day, the first day, the
first time any of us had ever been in the cave. So much for the critics.
That was a few years ago. From the other side I already knew what it
took there since I had done all but one of the dives upstream. I skipped
the one where Sherwood got killed.
The big elements of the dive on Saturday are 1) being sure the cave is
still there - no joke in Leon Sinks. We lost our Project Director in
1991 to a cave that changed, Wakulla Beach collapesed on us a few weeks
ago, and the Black Abyss started collapsing on this dive on our support
divers.
Brent Scarabin and I ran the cave to 9,500 upstream to check the
connection a few weeksa ago , Chris Werner replaced the line downstream
Big D for 3500 feet, and JJ and I checked the Abyss, the shortcut, the
long route, the Bitter End, and the safeties the night before the dive (
Friday night ).
NOTE: IF ANYONE EVER TRIES TO GET YOU TO DO A CIRCUIT THAT HAS NOT BEEN
SET UP AND CHECKED FROM BOTH SIDES, DO NOT DIVE WITH THEM, ESPECIALLY IN
MEXICO. WE HEAR THAT SOME OF THE MORE EGREGIOUSLY DANGEROUS STROKES DOWN
THERE ARE DOING JUST THAT, DESPITE THEIR DEATH TOLL AND TRACK RECORD.
2) Ability to abort and get out either way from any distance. We ran
the ingoing bottles like normal stages and reverse deco gas, dropping
them at half plus two ( we always maintain full back gas as bailout) and
placing 40 cubic foot deco bottles in the Big D sink. The profile would
allow for a good deco just scootering out of the cave , with the 40
bottle being plenty to finish the job. I personlly do not use oxygen
unless it is absolutely necesary, Ted and JJ put in tiny O2 bottles at
Big D, but those two guys dive every day, I only dive once in a great
while. In fact , this was my sixth dive of 1999 of any kind whatsoever .
The first bottle was set for 130 depth, the next for 200. We
carried two other stages with bottom gas ( 11X55 ) for the trip from the
droppoff to the Second Black Abyss. If we had to turn around at that
point due to a collapse, we would have the normal amount of gas for a
normal downstream dive from that point. We reached the Second Abyss on
one bottle, leaving us at that point with a full stage, a scooter and
2/3'ds, safeties and another stage 800 feet ahead of us, and six more
after that between us and the door. We had a crew who retrieved the
fist stage and deco gas from the Big D side once we were reported at the
Cheryl side.
3) Scooter power - we each ran two big scooters . JJ and I
each had one with a three hour burn time and one with a two hour burn
time, Ted had two two's. We feathered them back in the shallow water to
spare them while carrying all of the bottles , threw the hammer down in
the deep water. We could get out from either end with that at any point.
4) Safety gas. At the Bitter end we started the safeties.
Three every 1400 feet all the way out, with deco gas in the Black Abyss
( 900 feet into the cave). For any problems past 1/3 in, the Cheryl side
was the out due to the flow direction , for any problems with the cave,
this provided enough gas and scooter to get us all the way back without
ever touching back gas or backup scooters from anywhere in the dive. For
light we were running the big lights or big nicads with mulitple bulbs.
JJ ran video with replaceable heads to the normal light.
DECOMPRESSION ; the run time for the dive portion was 100
minutes. The run time for the setup was 70 minutes. Our last bottle was
an 18X40 trimix, so we switched to that approaching the Black Abyss to
use it to deco up to the 120 trimix deco bottles (35% oxygen, various
heliums). JJ uses 1/3 helium in those, I had an old bottle from two
years ago that still had 35% nitrox. We generally prefer helium in all
of our decompression mixes - works beter, easier to breathe, less mental
impairment and physical damage - JJ and his organization are working
that out exactly and attempting to quantify the results we have had. JJ
has a team of people including Dr. Hamilton studying our profiles and
attempting to put numbers to what we have found by experiment and
theory.
We had our crew place the 120 deco bottles ( 35 oxygen trimix ) at
the Abyss, with the other two bottles ( 50% oxygen and 100% oxygen )
placed near the Cheryl sinkhole. I used the same bottles for both dives,
an 80 of 50% and a 72 of 100%, just running out as I completed the
second deco. The crew had placed extra oxygen and 50 gas just in case.
For deompression steps , we had a multiple profile and gasses to
deal with : 80-100 on a 35% bottle going in for 18 minutes, 130-220 on
an 18X40 for 18 minutes, 200-250 on 11X55 for 25 minutes, and then we
had to decompress up to 100 feet for about 10 minutes in the Second
Black Abyss on that gas or use our back gas (16X50). I used the 11X55
since it makes no difference to me - I would rather have the helium than
the high oxygen. Five more minutes run at 100 feet on 11X55, and then we
dropped back to 235-200 for the rest of the trip out, the last 30
minutes, switching to the 18X40 bottle(that we picked up at the Bitter
End as we passed through on the way back down) about 1500 feet prior to
the Back Abyss as the cave started coming up in the long route loop. We
do not come out the "Shortcut" anymore. We decompressed up the Anyss
from 180 feet to 120 on that 18X40 gas, taking our time with those
stops.
After we switched to the 120 gas and did the steps up to 80 feet, we
scootered 800 feet at 80-100 into the sinkhole area to pick up the 70
foot bottle. Our greet team had taken our original scooters and our
three other bottles out . I did 120 minutes total of deco from the 180
mark in the Abyss. I did 24 minutes at 20 on oxygen in two 12 minute
rounds, 12 at 15, and 5 at 10 . JJ and Ted spent one more round on
oxygen at 20 . We break off of the oxygen and other high ppo2 gases
about every 15 minutes or less for five or more on bottom gas or
whatever is breathable at the depth. I used by backgas ( 16X50).
Including wing inflation and breaks, I used 300 PSI out of my backgas,
leaving the tanks diveable once more. I considered the deeper stops for
me to be run from the Loop Tunnel, JJ and Ted did a little more time on
them in the Abyss to be sure. This is the area where you get bent or you
do not - the deep stops. Blow them and you will get bent, do them right
and you can get away with most anything. Remember this was a repet for
me and JJ.
The dive took 80 cu feet for the Big D portion, 160 cubic feet for
the deep portion, 40 cubic feet for the deep deco, 50 cubic feet for the
120-80, 40 for the 70-30, and 30 for the 20-10. One scooter and light
lasted the whole way including deco. We videoed the middle section from
the dropoff to the Second Abyss.
One of the best cave dives I ever did. This is true technical
diving, and I wil bet any amount of money that this is absolutely
nothing like what gets taught and practiced out there outside of G.U.E.,
but then, as Bill Main says, "look who ......" etc.
Let me suggest that if any of you out ther are really into doing
this properly in your own countries or areas of this country and being
able to do them going forward in cave diving with good access, take a
close look at what GUE and WKPP do, and stay as far away from the
organizations in tech and cave diving under current programs. Thes guys
will end up having noplace to dive and not being allowed to do it
anyway. All of us who are serious about this have a lot of work to do to
offset the track records of the training aganecies , including the two
cave divtng "organizations" which are nothing more than "instructors"
trying to commercialize the sport, ruining it for all of us, and then
"projects" like the sell-a-rebreather fiasco at Wakulla that set us back
years.
Strokes are your worst enemey - they will ruin your fun and kill
you, and will bury this sport. Give them all a side berth, and get with
the winners with a game plan if you hope to do this in the future.
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