Random thoughts during a cave dive, by a clumsy, ageing diver by Gary Lemme
When we go cave diving, what seems like minor,routine inconveniences to us might seem like epic, life or death struggles to our non cave diving friends or family. After a marathon 35 day in a row work "week" I finally got a full day off and had planned to go do some worshipping at the same cathedral that I spent my last full day off 35 days ago, Devils Eye cave system. While watching the Tampa Bay Buccaneers football game with my Mother the afternoon before I casually mentioned that I had gotten tangled in the guideline on my last dive there. My Mom looked at me with a serious, concerned look on her face, making me realize that I should've kept my
mouth shut. After all minor entanglements are pretty common. But that particular one had stuck in my mind because it had the potential to become a disaster, with a cave diver waiting to enter the cave witnessing the
whole thing . To regress a little more, when I first descended into the devils ear I noticed 2 guidelines, 1 on each side wall, heading into the cave. I chose to run my line along the right side wall slightly below the other guideline. At the end of my dive, while exitng the cave I was checking my line, trying to make sure it was out of the way of any passing divers, when upon reaching the narrowist part of the entrance, where the water velocity is at its strongest, threatening to blow the exiting diver right out of the cave, past their decompression depth, right to the surface, I felt my left leg get caught on one of the other dive teams line. It was all I could do to stop my foward movement, let alone reach back and remove the line from around my lower leg. Fortuatly I was able to free
myself and get out of the torrent and the other diver's way. After letting the waiting diver pass and dropping off my dive buddy (my nickname for an aluminum 80 scuba tank I carry along with my double 104's when solo diving, hence when my mom asks if I'm going diving with some one I can say yes I'm diving with "my buddy") I turned around to check the line to see if I had pulled it loose or damaged it in any way. The line showed no sign of my clumsy entanglement, no doubt due to the skill of the diver that had laid it into the cave.
So with that near fiasco fresh in my mind, I returned to Devils Eye and this time damned the rules, I tied off my line where I usually do, inside the cave entrance, just past the bottleneck and raging flow. Oh yeah I almost forgot, when descending into the ear I got a small tree branch snagged somewhere on my gear that stopped my forward progress. It wasn't until I ascended a few feet that I got free and turned around to identify the culprit.
O.K., so I'm tying off my line to the main line and once again I got the line wrapped around my fin. No problem, remove it and move on. Wow, two minutes into the dive, two entanglements. So I'm swimming and pulling my way through the first part of the cave making slow progress against the incredible amount of water that moves out of this cave when the first scooter diver goes zooming past me. On I go thru the horizontal fracture known as the lips, through the narrow winding area known as the cornflakes(named for large flake like rock fragments that have long ago been pummeled into gravel by an endless parade of divers) I do get a smug sense of superiority as I traverse this area for only a cave diver as old as I can say they have viewed these rocks in their original form. Finally past the cornflakes the cave opens up enough for the current to be a little more managable. Thank God, this cave is kicking my ass!
Did I say I was old? Yesterday, while watching the football game, my mother remarked that a certain player was old. I have(certain bodypart)hairs older than him I blurted out without thinking first. As an almost perfect soundtrack for an ageing diver swimming through a cave there is a frequent squeeking sound, like a rusty hinge, or old knee and ankle joints in need of a lube job, which I quickly figured out was caused by the movement of the brass clip that connects my "buddy tank" through the stainless steel d-ring that connects to my back mounted tanks. As I've gotten older I've also developed tinitus, a constant ringing in the ears. Probably caused by loud music in my youth, in addition to playing the drums. It is most noticeable when things around me are very quiet, and for some reason also when diving. So I am frequently putting my dive computer to my ear, thinking one of it's many audible alarms are going off only to realize it's just the ringing in my ears.
It is a beautiful sight to watch approaching divers, the cave illuminated by their high powered L.E.D. lights, as they zoom past on their diver propulsion vehicles(scooters) but as they dissapear ahead of me I am tempted, in a gesture of jealousy, to secretly salute them for being smarter than me, for having better jobs than me, for having more "disposable income" than me,if not for the arthritis tht has been bothring my middle finger.
About 500 feet into the cave there is a side passage named the hill 400 tunnel.That was my destination for today. Upon reaching the intersection of the two tunnels I reached back for my small red "gap" reel. I keep it clipped off on the left side of my double tanks with another, slightly larger blue reel. While trying to unclip it I realized that the red reel was actually jammed inside the handle of the blue reel. Wow, thats the first time that has happened. It took a few minutes to sort them out before I could tie the line from my red reel into the main line and then swim the short distance to the hill 400 line. While tying off my reel to the hill 400 line my aluminum 80's pressure gauge got snagged on the line. I guess these qualify for entanglements number 3 and 4.
Throughout the dive I had been plagued with the little anoyance of sometimes when I pushed the inflator button on my buoyancy compensator a little stream of bubbles would flow from the attactchment of the inflator hose. Most of the time a tap on the inflator button would make it stop but a few times it took a much harder slap with my hand to teach it who was boss. Now I know keeping your life support system in optimum condition is of paramount importance for cave diving and I don't mean to be a slacker but I have a hard time remembering to get this thing fixed. Besides, its just a few bubbles here and there. I have been making a concerted effort to upgrade my older gear.( I was once given the nickname by a cave diving buddy of "the Curator" because "all the gear I dive with belongs in a museum".)
So I swam up the hill 400 tunnel till I reached the 1,200 foot marker and turned around having used up 1/3 of my back mounted gas supply. It was a beautiful tunnel and I was fairly self absorbed as I descended the tunnel, slapping my b.c. inflator to stop the flow of bubbles. As I rounded the bend I encountered another diver heading up the tunnel. Whether he noticed me beating on my dive gear or not I'm not sure, but if he did its probably a safe bet that he wouldn't want to dive with me. Hell, after thinking about it I'm not so sure even I would want to dive with me.
On a more serious note, I have over 1,000 safe scuba dives under my belt with well over half of them being in underwater caves.
