Lost on deco

I got lost while on an extended decompression stop at 60 feet. It was the second time I was ever at this place. Visibility was very poor, maybe 2 feet.

The first dive here, just days before, was an exploratory dive in someone's pond, to check out a 'hole'. It turned out that it opened up at 140 feet and the bottom was at 239 feet, straight down. That first trip was uneventful except for the discovery of something significant to further check out.

The second trip included a couple friends, all on trimix this time, to further survey this 'new' cave. Two of us (myself included) were open circuit, sidemount, just in case things got tight. The third, on CCR, had the mission of checking out the ceiling and then the walls. After an extended bottom time of 45 minutes or so, we returned with a bit of decompression. We followed our ascent line up, totally vertical, doing our stops. Our deco bottles were there hanging at the appropriate depths. I was on 32% from 110 feet.

During decompression, in open water, I like to stretch, which might mean a little swim around, maintaining that deco depth, with zero exertion, just to relieve the boredom. When we got to a longer stop, the 60 feet one, I decided to do a bit of informal survey. I had plenty of time since we had another 60 minutes total decompression, and this stop was over 5 minutes. It would, after all, be nice to roughly determine the shape and size of the shaft we were in. With my face just inches from the east limestone wall I slowly traveled counter clockwise to familiarize myself with this shaft. It turned out, soon, that the shaft wasn't round. It rotated a bit easterly again, then back north, then westerly, then southerly, then east, then north again. Oops! I had not passed my deco buddies or the down line. WTF I thought. No logic in this until I checked my depth. Oops again, I was at 63 feet. I ascended back up 3 feet and continued moving counter clockwise, being more aware of some unexpected formation, and sure enough on the south side was an entry about 4 feet high and 3 feet wide that I had unknowingly entered. On exiting I immediately ran into one of my team there hovering on deco.

Lessons learned?

Consider POOR vis, in a new location that has a cave in it, as an overhead, and run a line.

I never like decompression as much as I did after finding my way out of that room.