Safety Bottle Caching At JB

[DA Aquamaster]

There are some gems from flying that are worthwhile to remember:

There's nothing more useless to you then the runway behind you, the altitude above you, the fuel still in the truck, the airspeed you don't have, and a half second ago. Here it is a gas reserve that you do not have...

...While flying under imc (bad weather) the faa requires me to have enough fuel to get to my destination, then to my alternate and then be able to fly for at least 45 minutes...i always took comfort in knowing i had enough fuel for much more than an additional 45 minutes. Likewise i like diving with a spare bottle in the cave even though my gas planning ignores it. I like to think of this as engineered redundancy. So, simply, is it more safe or less safe?

I used IFR flight analogies as well - the concepts of a very high level of situational awareness, staying ahead of the airplane and the much higher levels of planning and reserves lend themselves very well to cave diving. Having learned to fly in some of the more remote areas of the country, your alternate was often the same as your point of departure as no other suitable airfield was available - a concept that is very similar to cave diving and is in essence almost identical in concept to the rule of thirds.

My concerns with a cache however would be that a diver, feeling bolder than usual by the presence of the community cache, pushes his penetration with something like a 1/2 plus 200 gas planning schedule and then encounters a problem. Upon reaching the comunity cache he was counting on for his reserve, he discovers there is not one that day, or that the tanks are empty, or temporarily removed for maintence, or were just taken by a similarly minded team just ahead of him, etc, etc, etc. So, lacking any other options, he takes my stage bottle and leaves me in a situation where I am at best at the edge of my reserve, or at worst, if delayed by whatever delayed him, basically a dead man swimming because Mr. Piss Poor Planning just stole my gas.

When instrument flying I had all my own required gas and reserve aboard and no one was going to cut into that with inflight refueling etc. I'd like to ensure that remains the case in cave diving and I'd like assurance that if I leave a bottle in a cave for my use, it will remain there for my use. That concept gets a bit soft and squishy with the community cache idea where taking a botle that ain't yours is allowable in some circumstances.

I think for many reasons, a cache system would only work toward increasing safety in guided caves where the guide(s) knows what is what and keeps the gas planning reasonable - which also ensures the cached gas will never get used, so it is a wash and not worth the effort. In an unguided cave there are just more problems than benefits and in the end I don't think greater safety will result.

I usually swim in a two person team, and given that we both have low SACs and can achieve long penetrations and dives times on back gas, where a 1/3rd reserve is potentially marginal if the team loses half its total reserve gas, we carry a safety bottle to add what amounts to the reserve third from a third team member that is not included in the gas plan.

So I am not opposed to safety bottles, I am just opposed to creating the opportunity for people to become reliant on community stage bottles and start including them in their "oh ****, something went wrong" gas planning rather than using properly conservative and appropriate gas planning.

[SLIM]

K I will admit that I have used and helped to place a cache of tanks. The one thing is we weere doing exploraiont dives. Survey and laying new line. That can be task loading alone when you are stoping on the way out getting the info that is needed. I will also have to say that we never touched them. We had to do a extra dive that was not planned to get them out since we were done. We had over 15 tanks in a system placed along the way at strategic locations.

We did several set up dives to find the run times on going differant routs and to find out what we would need for a gas as we perfromed the dives for exploration. But we did do this one sive at a time and wich would be to figure out logistitcs and we learned from each dive. After a weeks worth of diving they were all pulled out.

For dives uf that nature, explortion of a system I can see the use of them. For mearly keeping them in a system for publinc or just to do extgended dives I do not see the need. You wouldhave to be going way and I do mean way back in JB to have to have any need of a stash of tanks for SAFTEY because you did not plan a proper dive for gas. Now if you do not have a scooter and were to take a stage that is full with you as you breathed down another stage to the proper gas manegment and then drop the fresh one and plan to come back the next day, not a problem. But is it worth it? Are we using a scooter and scared that if we have problem with one then the distance to swim out is to great on the gas we have? There are so many questions and senerios that have to be discused and thought out properly to determin what is the proper thinng to do??

SLIM

[JDostal]

My concerns with a cache however would be that a diver, feeling bolder than usual by the presence of the community cache...

I've seen that happen in the great lakes. Last summer, had had a great dive on a wreck. Finished up our deco and we were hanging out on our boat. Another boat (a friend that runs charters...) was tied up to us. All of a sudden the emergency 02 reg starts going on the deck of the boat - it had a long reg on it hung at 20' on the line. Oh crap...we are worried about what is going on.

The diver eventually came up, and we asked him in a concerned fashion if he was ok. The response? Hey, of course I'm ok, I was planning on using that all along!

Keep in mind it was not the boats intention to hang that as deco gas...it was *emergency* gas.

/facepalm

[tflaris]

Well, if you DO establish a cache, I hope I'm not expected to pay for it, directly or indirectly. Because there's no way I'm going to plan my dives based on the assumption that someone else did/didn't set up the cylinder properly. And given that I think it's a bad idea, I'd hate to be taxed somewhere for something I don't want.

I pay enough educating my neighbors' kids as it is.

Plan your dives properly and you will not need a safety bottle cache. Besides the tanks and regs pulled out Weekie Wachie were heavily pitted (tanks) and regs were completely ruined after 2 years.

I don't see a safety bottle cache as the answer. just my opinion.