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Do me a favour. Next time you're at little river, when your deco obligation is over, swim to the end of the gold line. Go slightly negative (say a pound or so, so that when you breathe in deeply you go neutral to positive). Close your eyes and release everything. Report on what happens.Quote:
Originally Posted by Meister481
I've only been in Chan Hol and Gran Cenote a few times. My approach is only in caves I am very familiar with.Quote:
Originally Posted by phillip1
Ahhhh...now your posts make sense. Florida caves are very different than Mexico. I have been diving in both. In Florida I will swim past Ts and not place my own marker because I know the marker there is a permanent one and that no one is going to come in behind me and remove or change it. In my limited experience diving Mexico caves I have already experienced a change in the lines of a system while I was diving that system!Quote:
Originally Posted by phillip1
The tipping point is a good choice of words.Quote:
Originally Posted by aainslie
That is what I was hoping to discuss in the complacency thread.
Don't forget to record the date as well. Some days Little River is pumping ferociously, some days there is very little flow, so much so that you can easily hover motionless in the cavern. Some days it is reversing, just ask the carcass that is in there now.Quote:
Originally Posted by aainslie
And I'll never forget the "dive" I made in there where you couldn't see sunlight from the bottom in the basin. Yes, I aborted when I saw the viz wasn't going to clear up once inside, but it was a good lesson. Being able to see the exit isn't just affected by siltability.Quote:
Originally Posted by crawford
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Originally Posted by crawford
Agreed guys (and gals!). And those would be good days to run a line. That's exactly what a lot of divers do - there are sensible days to run and sensible ones NOT to.Quote:
Originally Posted by sskasser
What worries me is this type of scenario - a new diver sees a few teams not putting lines in on a pumping day. So they say "Oh - no one puts lines in here. Cool!". Next trip, 3 months later, it's reversed and tannic. They don't put a line in, and try to follow the RH wall, and end up lost in Catfish Alley. That would suck. But since they ONLY learn quietly and with no guidance, they come to think it's ALWAYS cool to not run a line.
That's the problem. People are learning from otehr divers' actions but not from conversations with them. So they end up doing stupid stuff.
How many certified cave divers have died between the begining of the main line, and open water while exiting a cave??
Bob Klauck
At least two, that I have heard about.Quote:
Originally Posted by ScubaBob-Squaretank
Most likely they wouldn't die between the end of the line and the entrance, but deeper in the system trying to find the entrance. There are a couple of examples in "Blueprint for Survival" which are old and of course complicated by other issues, but Andrew's point is valid IMO that it's what you do with that bad habit later or somewhere else that gets you.Quote:
Originally Posted by ScubaBob-Squaretank
My point was really about making assumptions, and the fact that caves are dynamic. The more complicated our plans, the more susceptible they are to being undermined by bad assumptions. So you can exit Ginnie on x00 psi from the Hill 400 jump. On what day? Well Ginnie is Ginnie. But apply that assumption to last months dive at Little River where the flow varies greatly and BAM...or worst in TN or somewhere where conditions vary from day to day.
I see it all the time in managing engineers in my job. Very intelligent, bright folks. One has a phD from Stanford, another a masters from Rutgers, etc. And I regularly get looks of terror during the 11th hour of a project when a basic assumption proves to threaten months or years of work. We lose money or miss a product launch deadline, but in the business of cave diving, that assumption costs you your life.