Bill, I sent an email to Stone two months ago asking him to leave the
back lines alone so my people could rely on them and warning him of
potential breaks. I personally got hung up in the K line and JJ could
not find the other end since the vis was 5 feet, and I also broke the O
line in a bad vis spot picking up bottles. 

When we put the K line in on open circuit several years ago, JJ started
the next reel without looping it in to the old loop since he did not
want to risk the whole line on that tie off point. We were not dealing
with the prefect conditions that these guys are getting.

When I got hung in it, I obviously pulled it from its tie point for a
long way before I felt is slow me down. We would have fixed it on the
next dive, but the cave went under and we never went back.

Clearly guys like Kakuk are not familiar with cave exploration  other
than deep air diving in clear water in the Bahamas or Mexico, like the
rest of the big timers out there who leave the USA to go where they can
be big fish in the kiddie pool. I don't see the Brits complaining.


Bill Mee wrote:
> 
> Brian Kakuk composed a fine narrative describing his courageous mission
> following the WKPPs line through K tunnel around the mountain and back to A.
> He then went on to describe how he and his buddy fled from the cave at the
> first hint of a restriction.  This section will henceforth be known as Kakuk
> ’s Retreat.  What was he thinking, that all of the main tunnels feeding
> Wakulla Springs are Leon Sinks power cave?  There are lots of restrictions
> out in the back section and it is simply accepted that one must pass through
> some difficult ones on the way to the next 10,000 feet of huge passage
> before the USDCT can begin to “Triple the Distance”.  Remember that all of
> these lines that the USDCT are just “discovering” were put in on open
> circuit on one of our  “little piker weekends” and that it has taken this
> dynamic duo nearly 52 days of foot dragging to get where the WKPP was
> several years ago.
> 
> Kakuk’s  sarcastic whining about the displaced section of line in K tunnel
> represents the worst of ingratitude and demonstrates a total lack of
> understanding of the basics of cave exploration.  It is standard practice to
> terminate the temporary end of an exploration line with a loop.  In the case
> of the K tunnel line when the exploration resumed  a new anchoring point was
> selected to start the line extension. The K tunnel is deep and the line runs
> along the ceiling of the passage and there are not a lot of good tie off
> points.  On the way out during the last exploration mission one of the ends,
> which was looped on a pendant, got caught on a stage bottle and was pulled
> off. The intention was to replace it on a future dive, which unfortunately,
> due to the bad weather, never materialized.
> 
> So what did Kakuk  want, day glow road signs to make it easier to follow our
> lines?  The WKPP never had the sort of visibility that the USDCT has to work
> with and still they complain about the WKPP and 52 days later they are still
> trying to find the way on to the end of our lines. Keep up the good work
> USDCT and just think how many more months it would take you if there was no
> line in the cave?


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