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On Sun, 26 Nov 1995, Richard Pyle wrote: > > Pardon my ignorance. How is OW trimix virtually impossible to do as a > > buddy team? I probably just spend way too much time with rocks over my > > head to figure that one out. > > "Virtually impossible" might be a bit strong. "Ususally decreases overall > safety" would be a better way to say it, I think. In a cave, there aren't > too many options of where your buddy could be - s/he is either ahead of > you, or behind you. You're not likely to loose sight of your buddy in a > cave, because you each have huge bright lights, and it's otherwise pretty > dark in there - a buddy is sort of hard to miss. Because you can know the > whreabouts of your buddy almost instantaneously, the buddy can be relied > upon for emergency gas supply. Your buddy could have gone down a different tunnel at a split, he could have stirred up so much silt that you can't find him, he could have a blown light so you can't see him, he could have bailed on you, etc. etc. etc. Most of our caves here in Fla. have multiple tunnels in them, maze like. It would not be hard for a buddy team to get seperated, and it does happen. > In OW, it is relatively easy to loose a buddy, and VERY difficult to find > a buddy once it's lost (especially with a rebreather!!) This means you > cannot rely upon buddies for backup gas - you must work out your own > supply that is independant of your buddy. Once you've gone to all the > trouble to ensure you can deal with any problem without a buddy, then the > buddy starts to become a liability. Just one example: Which of the buddy > pair does the surface support tend to when decompressing buddies have been > separated? Don't really have to worry about that in caves, do you? There > usually is only one access point to the surface. No, this is a good point. There are some traverses where you have different entrances, some with a decent distance (friedman's to manatee is almost 1/2 mile apart), but yes, I will concede that usually there's only one entrance and exit. > Hope that clears things up. > > Aloha, > Rich It does point out a wrinkle I hadn't thought of, yes.. But overall, I would think rule #1 should keep that one clear. Ken -- ================================================================== Ken Sallot "Your trim goes to hell when you run out of air" afn35346@af*.or* - Jim Wei http://grove.ufl.edu/~ken/
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