Finnaly, I got some 104s! And now I have to walk them down this steep little path covered with loose rocks, and exposed tree roots, and one false move I will fall to my death. I don't care, I now have man tanks like everyone else.
GUE Cave 1 / NSS-CDS Apprentice
Page 5
Day 4, no lecture today, just diving. After getting fills, we head over to Peacock Springs. Tamara says today we start diving thirds! Both dives today were at Olsen Sink.
Finnaly, I got some 104s! And now I have to walk them down this steep little
path covered with loose rocks, and exposed tree roots, and one false move I will fall to
my death. I don't care, I now have man tanks like everyone else.
First dive is in the upstream section, I am leading, followed by Francis, and then Pat. I run the reel to the main line and tie off. In the cave we come to opposing line arrows, so I place a clothes pin to mark our exit. On the way out Francis has a right post failure, and then he must have gotten excited, because he runs out of air 600' from the exit. I share air with Francis and we head out. We leave the reel in place since we are sharing air, and Tamara picks it up. As we were leaving the cave, and doing our deco, two other guys were hanging out in the cave entrence. I thought they were also on deco, so I thought nothing of it. It turns out they want to get into the cave, finally they make there way in past us. I felt bad, if I knew they wanted to get in, I would have moved more out of the way. After deco I watch Tamara unclip my reel from her left d-ring trying to unclip the emergency O2 bottle. My reel falls down in 4' of water. Seeing an opportunity, I snatch up the reel. On the surface I ask Tamara if she has my reel. She says yes, and we start the debriefing. After the debriefing I ask for my reel back. She looks for it and can't find it. So I show it to her, and tell her she needs to be more aware of her equipment (with a smile).
Another group of divers in olsen.
Since now we are doing longer dives on thirds, we have to bring two sets of doubles. For the second dive I am back in my 95s. This dive is lead by Pat, followed by Francis, and then me. The plan was to do a jump off the main line into a side passage, when we got to the passage, another team already had a reel in place, and the passage looked badily silted, so we kept going. At Pothole, Tamara told Pat to continue, but Pat thought she was saying to skip placing a reel. I signaled Pat to stop, and place a gap reel. A little ways past Pothole, my left post failed, I signaled my buddies and shut it down. The dive was called, and we changed positions to Francis, Me, Pat. Right before a tight passage, I ran out of gas. I spun around to Pat and signaled out of air. We got sorted out, and headed out of the cave. Francises primary light failed, then his backup light failed, then his other light failed. Pat and I started laughing at "Pretty Boy" having all the problems. Pat passed Francis another backup light, and to my surprise, that one actually worked.
After the dive, Pat and Francis walked up the hill breathing their Nitrox back gas. It sounded like two Darth Vaders coming up the path.
On the way home Pat and Francis followed me, I guess the last time we went to Peacock, they got lost and had trouble getting back to High Springs. At some point on the way home, I turned left onto a road, and later Francis and Pat turned left and tried to catch up with me. I see a cop comming towards me so I slam on my brakes, and feel the hard thud from the 2 sets of doubles sliding around in the pickup bed. Then the cop makes a u turn, and comes after us. All three of us pull over, but the cop only wants to talk to Francis in the middle car :) Ha Ha Ha! The cop lets Francis go with a warning but for the rest of the week we heard, "Damn Boy, do you drive that fast in England?".