Pat on the left, Francis on the right. The Devil's Ear.
GUE Cave 1 / NSS-CDS Apprentice
Page 6
Day 5, no lecture today, just diving. After getting fills, we head over to Ginnie Springs. For our last dives of the class!
Pat on the left, Francis on the right. The Devil's Ear.
Today we start diving with Oxygen deco gas. This dive was to setup reels for our circuit on the next dive (going in and coming back a different route). I lead the dive, followed by Pat, and then "Pretty Boy". We clipped off our deco bottles to the log, and headed down into the ear. Right before I tied off my reel, two guys with Gavin Scooters started to come out the ear. I tried to get as close to the bottom as possible, and wedged myself in, to avoid getting blown back by the strong flow. The guys went over us, and I did my primary tie off. We made it into the ear, and I tied off to the primary line. I checked my pressure and noticed my gauge hadn't moved since the surface. I reached back and turned my isolator, "the force" must have closed it. We swam until the 3rd jump, the one leading to the express way tunnel. The first spool had too small a loop on it to use, so I tried to make it work. Giving up on the spool, I pulled out another, and made the jump. As I tied off the line, I noticed the line arrow on the other line had Steve written on it, must have been Steve Berman's? I gave Tamara the first Spool, and used my middle finger to indicate it had a problem (It was her spool). Then I made the jump to the Big Room Line, and called the dive on thirds. On the way out, Francis ran out of gas, and shared with Pat. I moved into the #1 position and we headed out. I did my 30' deco stop for 1 minute, and moved up to the log to get my oxygen bottle. Pat and Francis had to share air through the ear, into their 30' deco stop, and until they switched to oxygen. I got my oxygen bottle, and did 6 minutes at 20, and 2 minutes at 10. After the dive as I was swimming back to the stairs I was attacked by Francis and Pat, they started pulling on my fins and messing with my gear, I pulled out my knife and started slashing at them. One of our favorite deco games during the class was to grab the other persons manifold and try to not get thrown off. Later as we were waiting for Tamara to setup a Deco bottle hanger on the stairs, Pat clipped his Oxygen bottle to my butt d-ring, another reason not to have a d-ring there.
I was the second diver to use the new stairs at Ginnie, Tamara beat me by a
few minutes.
The deco log in the Devil's Ear. The river water flows close to the Devil's
Ear.
The Last Dive! This time Pat lead, then Francis, and I got the "pretty boy" position. We swam to the first junction and Pat placed a jumb between the mainline and the bone line. Then he placed a spool from the bone line to the big room line. When we got to my clothes pin and spools from the last dive, I removed them. On the way out, Tamara stopped Francis and told him to stop and let the distance between him and Pat increase. Then she told him he was out of air and to go to Pat. This was the pass or fail for Pat, if he dropped his legs, he would fail. He did well, and Tamara broke off the air share.
Graduation photo.
After class, we told Tamara we were going to rent scooters, and do a triple stage, scooter, sneak dive at Walkula. She didn't find it very funny.
Pat and I got Cave 1 and NSS-CDS Apprentice cards, so for the next year we can dive doubles to thirds, and get oxygen for deco. Pat and I plan to finish up our Cave 2 next summer. Francis took a short break and went on to Cave 2.