GUE Cave-2 with Danny Riordan

[Al_Star]

I’d been keen to do cave-2 for a little while now but due to last minute circumstances I ended up with only myself left booked on the class. Our plan had been for me to do cave-2 while Clare went scootering as it happens she kindly volunteered to be my buddy for the class and the guys at DIR- Mexico were happy to accommodate.

We arrived in Mexico and had left a day to acclimatise and do a couple of dives. We went to Carwash which was one of my favourite cave dives from the last trip. We did a couple of nice dives to check weighting and give me some more time running a reel. We had a couple of nice dives and identified a bust primary light (broke in transit) before we started the class, luckily Clare brought two lights just in case.

Monday dawns and we meet Danny at Zero Gravity for the class to start. Danny introduces himself and asks if I mind if Fred Devos joins the class as an intern. He’s working on becoming a cave-2 instructor and it also meant Danny could add Fred as a third team member to allow for some more complex scenarios. I realised at this point that my cave-2 class now consisted of 3 GUE instructors and only one student – me. This meant I got the undivided attention of everyone – talk about always being in the spotlight

Our first days diving were at Pon De Rosa and we immediately started adding skills. Straight away we had 40’s for oxygen added to us and started off with jumps, T’s and complex navigation. The by now familiar scenario of an easy trip in followed by failures all the way out almost had me smiling as the fun began.


Taj Mahal

Day two and we went to Taj Mahal with the intention of setting up a circuit and completing it. On cave-2 gas limits and with the ability to jump off the main line we find a completely different style of cave to the one I remembered. This became quite noticeable over the week as I began to see just how much further cave-2 could take me. The usual scenarios continued with lots of valve failures, light failures, gas sharing etc. We successfully completed the circuit on dive-2 encountering numerous failures on the exit.

Day three and we were off to Mayan Blue and some really amazing cave. The cave has an amazing blue tinge to it below the halocline and really does look stunning. Dive two and we jump off the main line almost immediately into a side passage which doesn’t see a lot of diver traffic. It’s quite restrictive and we follow it for several jumps before turning on gas. When we get back to the restrictive section we encounter a full-on silt out due to our bubbles. Needless to say we were already dealing with some failures and less than 0.5m of vis did slow us slightly. I ended up relying on the glow from Fred’s light in position 2 giving me enough info to keep moving rather than ending up in touch contact. Fred and Clare adopt the same approach and we keep it moving. Danny’s choice of dives managed to inject some very real scenarios – bit of a theme for the week.


Carwash surveying lecture

Day four and we went to Carwash. Due to me being happy with deco theory Danny decided to spend time with some lectures on surveying which one of Fred’s main interests. The goal was to survey the room of the ancients and our objective was produce a map similar to Joe Hesketh and Jamie. (BTW Joe – Danny nominated you for the DIR-X geek of the year award). With the sort of competition we were facing we knew we had a difficult task ahead of us. We completed the loop and survey as we pretty much hit turn pressure and exited the cave. I found the surveying quite a change from the normal cave dives and quite enjoyed it. Our map actually turned out OK although it didn’t actually complete properly (which on a circuit it should) more practise needed.

Day five and we started off at Tortuga. This is a proper jungle site and the Cenote sits at the side of a swamp. The vis to start was interesting with the water being extremely tannic. The lights all looked a redish/yellow in the cenote and we had to move through the opening restriction single file. This was the first dive we were using a bottom stage on and was actually my favourite dive of the week. Our plan consisted of 3 T’s and 2 jumps passing through a 50m long restriction. The cave itself was like three caves in one. We started off in lots of tannic rooms where the white limestone was stained black, we moved into lots of white limestone below the halocline before ascending into some very tannic water where the vis was maybe only 3m due to the level of tannic acid and the formations were incredibly stained. On the way out we had a full on gas sharing exit with the loss of my twinset from a very long way back in the cave. We passed two hours on this dive by the time we’d done the deco and exited very happy with such a cool dive.


Tortuga Entrance

The final dive of the course was something else at a cenote Kim Ha. It including hydrogen sulphide, bacterial orange silt that looked like roof insulation and the need to crawl through trees roots to get into the cave. Danny described it as an experience dive and it certainly was. It’s really worth a write up of it’s own so I’ll leave Clare to write it up.

Over the course of the week we managed some excellent dives and we did quite a few deeper cave dives accruing some real deco. I thoroughly enjoyed the week and by being the only student ended up laying the line and setting all the jumps for the week rather than splitting the roles between the team. It made for an intense experience and a huge amount of instruction which I’m sure has upped my game. I can’t wait to do some more now – talk about hooked.

Finally we finished the trip spending close to 3 hours in Dos Ojos with Danny doing some photos and learning how to be underwater models. It’s produced the most amazing photos and was well worth it.

I can’t thank Danny, Fred or Clare enough for such a stunning week.


Dos Ojos

[Bardo]

Congratulations of achieving Cave-2, Al - you deserve it!

The cave photo is absolutely superb! Cave is probably the most difficult environment to photograph well so I can really appreciate just how good this photo is, both from an aesthetic and technical perspective. If you've got any more, why not post them up? I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd love to see them....

[Al_Star]

Well we did get a few done and it's really hard to pic but here's a couple:

[Ali]

Nice one Al,
Looks a lot nicer than Hodge.

Ali

[Mal Bridgeman]

Have you any idea how much it is going to cost me as a consequence of looking at these pictures
Mal

[wilbo]

Originally Posted by Mal Bridgeman

Have you any idea how much it is going to cost me as a consequence of looking at these pictures
Mal

Ummm.. Lots?

[PBrown]

Originally Posted by Mal Bridgeman

Have you any idea how much it is going to cost me as a consequence of looking at these pictures
Mal

Not as much as me, I'm off to buy more strobes.

cheers,
Paul

[Howard Payne]

Don't - I was just thinking exactly the same thing - wow - stunning

[Al_Star]

Lets just say Mexico cave diving really does look that good. What's worse is Florida cave diving is equally good albeit with a different look and type of cave. And then France is really awesome as well....

Next year I'd like to visit all three

[Noel Johnson]

Well done Al. That's a top effort.

Congrats mate,

Noel.
ps, I trust you've managed to pick the twins up at last... (that's a joke BTW)