Spring Into Safe Cave Diving - April 10

[NACD]

Spring Into Safe Cave Diving
Skill Review & Refresher
Ginnie Springs Outdoors
New Devil’s Pavilion
April 10, 2010 / 9AM – 4PM

On April 10, 2010, the NACD is hosting the 2nd annual “Spring Into Safe Cave Diving” at Ginnie Springs Outdoors. The event is designed to allow anyone with a cavern or cave certification to review safety-related diving skills with NACD instructors. This will be primarily an in-water, practical event, but will begin with a brief orientation in the shelter near Little Devils starting at 9 am. Skills such as “S”-drill, valve drills, air sharing and many others will be reviewed. The nature of the in-water sessions will depend on the number of participants and their certification levels. Following drills, active NACD instructors will lead divers on cavern, intro to cave and cave dives where further skill practice may occur.

Open water divers are also invited to attend and view the NACD Safety Video, which discusses the hazards of entering an underwater cavern or cave without first having received proper instruction and training. NACD representatives will be available to answer questions about cave diving training, provide listings of instructors and business facilities and other educational materials. There will be an information booth on display all day for divers/participants.

There will be no in-water activities for open water divers. All participants/divers are required to sign NACD waivers and a medical form for participation in the activities. The instructor may also require his own personal waiver to be signed. DAN insurance, Dive Assure insurance or equivalent is required for all divers.

Following the in-water sessions, we will meet back at the shelter for debriefing and discussion.

Register online at http://www.safecavediving.com/. Anyone registering by March 25 will receive a T-shirt especially designed for the event. All registrations include lunch. Registration is $20 for NACD members and $25 for non-members.

[Sam2000001]

Last years event was very informative! Met a bunch of cool new people and got to dive! Plus I ruined my shirt and need a new one.

[Serota]

The 2nd annual "Spring Into Safe Cave Diving" event sponsored by NACD will take place at Ginnie Springs on April 10. This event was very well received last year and I encourage any cavern or cave diver who wants to take the opportunity to discuss safety and review skills with an NACD instructor to register at www.safecavediving.com/ and plan to spend the day beginning at 9 am on April 10. Please register by March 25 to receive the specially designed T-shirt. Lunch is included with all registrations. At $20 for NACD members and $25 for non-members, this event is a serious bargain.

I hope to see everyone there!

[FW]

The first post says April 10, th 3rd post says April 11???

[Serota]

My mistake, I corrected it in the previous post.

The event is April 10 from 9 until around 4.

[Serota]

We now have 7 NACD instructors planning to participate in Safety Day.

[BabyDuck]

i liked the discussions. it seemed everyone felt free to speak up, and i thought the topics were pretty good. my only feedback there is that if the purpose of writing them down was anonymity, looking around for someone to admit to asking kinda defeated that. (however, it seemed like it was more to keep track of topics than to be anonymous, so no harm done.)

our plan was to go to the talking & then dive, so i can't add anything about the skills part, but we had a couple of great dives.

it was low key, pleasant, nice to meet folks, lots of serious diver girls - successful as far as i'm concerned!

[DA Aquamaster]

I enjoyed it. It was nice to be exposed to thinking cave divers and was in many respects was very validating to hear the need expressed for more divers to actually think about what they do and why - rather than just repeating rote learned skills. And in that regard the need for more instructors to actually teach critical thinking skills as they relate to cave diving practices and procedures.

The discussion itself was very good. As Marci noted, it was our last day in cave country for this quarterly trip, so our intent was to participate in the discussion, but then make a couple dives rather than engage in the dirt diving and in water drills. Paying $22 plus tax for each of us for the Ginnie entry fee tended to accentuate the feeling of needing to get the most for the diving buck. Changing to a less expensive venue might make divers more ammenable to fully participating, but again with limited time in N FL, we may have done exactly the same thing even without the Ginnie fees.