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Hi Guys, I'd like to tell you about a new small cave we've found and about our form of genteel cave exploration. I have a great deal of respect for the intrepid cave explorers that brave all kinds of weather, terrain, wildlife and the myriad of other logistical horrors to be the first to venture into some new underwater passage. Well, a few friends and I have come across an apparently unexplored cave just off the east coast of Belize. And we are slowly proceeding to have a look around. Now most cave explorations with which I am familiar involve a dedicated group of people who have the overriding objective of rapidly laying as much line as possible, penetrating as far as possible and finding out as much information as possible. Not so with our little group at the Akumal Dive Shop. Our objective is to have as many enjoyable weekends as possible, drag the exploration out as far as possible so as to enjoy each new discovery, and basically to have a hellofa good time in the process. And we don't believe in roughing it. About every other weekend we travel to a hotel on the Caribbean coast. Well, not really a regular hotel, but they do have really friendly and helpful people, about a dozen palapas that serve as bungalows, a bar/restaurant/lounge, a 6.5 Kw wind generator, a dive shop with several boats and a compressor nearby. It's basically the kind of place you would take your favorite lover to get away from it all and lose yourself for a week or two on a beautiful palm lined, white, sandy beach. This place forms the base camp for our operation. A typical day of our cave exploration might start something like this. Get up not too early at 8:00 or 8:30, eat a leisurely breakfast of fresh squeezed orange juice, hot cakes and eggs, fresh fruit and coffee, and then return to the room to get our scuba gear. The boatman then comes to carry our stuff out on the dock and load it into the boat. We need only meander over to the boat and hop on. After less than an hour boat ride (inside the barrier reef) seeing palm trees along the sandy beach and with huge seas of maybe 6 inches, then through the wondering passages of a gorgeous mangrove growth (which somehow remind me of a trip through the Okeefenokee swamp) and into a large open water area, we come across a sand bar about 3 to 4 feet below the surface and a dark spot in the water. We tie the boat to a piece of driftwood conveniently embedded in the sand bar and rising about a foot out of the water (naturally there to mark the spot, of course). Here we toss our gear out of the boat (after inflating our wings of course), hop out of the boat, and stand on the sand bar while we don our equipment. And after a gear and bubble check, S-drill and quick dive plan review, we start the long journey to the cave entrance; about twenty feet from our present position and at a fifteen foot depth. Boy is that tough. This is where we make our primary tie off. The cave entrance is about 3 feet high and twenty feet wide. The passage drops at about a 45 degree angle to around 70 feet where the cave opens up to a room about 6 feet high and twenty five feet wide. And here is where we tie off our primary line and have started our exploration line. Now I have read about some of the explorations in the Yucatan where several thousand feet of line have been laid in a single day. We subscribe to the "less is more" concept. We're happy if we put in several hundred feet in a day. Remember our main objective is to have a good time and leave room for further fun weekends. During the first day Lucy and Steve put in about 300 feet of line (swimming against a strong outward flow). That was all for that weekend. On the second dive Steve and I laid 800 feet, enough for that weekend. On the third dive Steve and I added another 250 feet and on the fourth dive we put in around 550 feet more. So we are now in around 1,900 feet in an easterly direction; pointing directly toward a cenote in the mangrove growth that our GPS readings say is about 4,000 feet away. The cave height varies from 2 feet to around 15 feet and shows no signs of ending. There are several other branching main tunnels which should each supply additional fun weekends. We also have various interesting cave features, including silt covered stalactites and stalagmites, clearly indicating a solution cave. We are starting to run into some logistical problems in that our last dive required 90 minutes of swimming and then needed a half hour of deco. This must be followed of course by the horrendously long 20 foot swim back to the boat. Since the average cave depth is around 70 feet, nitrox will reduce the deco but after another 500 feet or so of line, we will need to start staging tanks in the cave to continue the line. That should make for a few more enjoyable weekends. We have spoken to some local caretakers who are employed by the Belizean government and they have encouraged us to continue our explorations, given us permission to go into areas that are off limits to boating and fishing and shown us where nine different cenotes are located. All in all our little effort is turning in to a real fun type project. It kind of reminds me of the situation where the police found a large stash of marijuana and decided to burn it. The neighbors agreed that if they were really careful, they could keep the fire going for three days. Well for us if we work hard at it, we figure we should be able to drag out the exploration for quite a while. As opposed to the claims of the longest underwater cave, the most line laid, the longest traverse or the deepest dive or cave or whatever, the way I like to think about our little cave is "It may not be the largest, is certainly not the prettiest, is definitely not even real deep and may be real silty but ... IT'S ... ALL ... OURS." And we are going to do our damnedest to enjoy it. After all, isn't this what we all started cave diving to be able to do? Take care and safe diving, Scott
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