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Anthony, we worked our way into longer and longer dives , which are required
to explore these cave systems. First we did it in shallow cave to see what was
needed for time, and then took it deep , with the deco being the unknown. As we
found out what worked and did not, and as we took an intense interest in why,
we
discovered a whole new set of problems.
Some of the earlier guys, like Bill Main and Bill Gavin, took a real beating,
and Gavin's answer was speed, thus the evolution of the gear system, and the
fast responnse to problems. Gavin always was a big believer in conditioning,
but
I took that one to the max, and went to screenings for PFO, etc. I asked
Hamilton to "accellerate" the deco to fit the conditon of my divers, and then
used Eric Maiken's stuff and some commercial profile shapes to smooth the whole
thing out. I then experimented with myself , and worked it out, coming up with
methods that will work on the fly with no tables, and our 155 minute bt at 285
in Wakulla was proof of that - we got delayed ( too much cave ) and were faced
with an unknown .
Since the other two divers were JJ and Brent, I never got concerned. Rat and
Steve came to meet us with a crew, and we spent a long time in the first room
videoing and doing deep stops - stops that conventional wisdom would call
"bottom time". My bottom time starts when I get to the bottom, and ends when I
leave the bottom, in that case when I crossed the B Tunnel entrance and got two
ata's off of my profile. This is the video where you see Brent with seven
stages
on the left hip. Those shots are all below 200 feet.
When I go out on the wreck boats, I see divers doing 12 minute bottom times
and calling it 25 or 30, and doing a huge deco based on that, but all the wrong
shape. They do not get hit because they could surface directly with NO deco
from
most of what they do - all they get is exposed to high PPO2's unnecessarily,
and
develop a false sense of what works. When faced with a real deco, and I do not
recommmend incurring one in the ocean ( I would do two or three short dives
rather than one long one), they do not know how it will effect them. Cave
diving
causes big bottom times due to the time required to view an underwater cave,
and
the fact that you can not come up until the cave does.
Since this kind of divng is fun, and since cave and sinks are well suited
for
decompressing and staging the necessary supplies, longer bottom times and
decoes
are more the norm, but like the old line practicioners of the sport itself
demonstrate so perfectly , doing it wrong for a long time gets you nowhere -
finding out the truth pror to facing the reality would be nice, as the guy who
started thiws thread indicated. - G
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