Emergency Exit Drills???

[Herbie]

I am planning on doing some exit drills , mainly lights out, on the line, exit to open water for starters. The idea is to have my partner follow along with his lights on while I attempt to exit with my eyes closed. I plan on having my light on but clipped, so if anything should arise its just a matter of opening my eyes and dealing. We would alternate to get equal practice. My questions to you all are 1) Most main lines run in areas that if a diver were feeling his way out would definitely cause silt to stir. So which caves and sections would anyone recommend for this? 2) Do any of you practice these skills outside of your initial training?
Right now the plan is to do these at PSSP Monday thru Thursdays to avoid the weekends when most go cavediving. The idea is to progress and do air sharing exits, direct contact touch exits , etc.. I belive that being experienced and comfortable in these skills should be key for any cavediver. Any input or opinion would be appreciated, thanks and take care.

[FW]

I am planning on doing some exit drills , mainly lights out, on the line, exit to open water for starters. The idea is to have my partner follow along with his lights on while I attempt to exit with my eyes closed. I plan on having my light on but clipped, so if anything should arise its just a matter of opening my eyes and dealing. We would alternate to get equal practice. My questions to you all are 1) Most main lines run in areas that if a diver were feeling his way out would definitely cause silt to stir. So which caves and sections would anyone recommend for this? 2) Do any of you practice these skills outside of your initial training?
Right now the plan is to do these at PSSP Monday thru Thursdays to avoid the weekends when most go cavediving. The idea is to progress and do air sharing exits, direct contact touch exits , etc.. I belive that being experienced and comfortable in these skills should be key for any cavediver. Any input or opinion would be appreciated, thanks and take care.

The Gallery at Devil's Eye, and the front part of Little River are reasonabley silt free. I practice no vis exits all the time.

[xsikorsky]

Last weekend we took our friend who is taking Intro soon, to the ballroom in Ginnie and he did a no mask eyes closed lost line and line exit drill. We kept our lights on him to know his eyes were closed..

[Tegg]

Sometimes it's not practice...

[Herbie]

Sometimes it's not practice...

Thats what I am trying to prepare for.

[Sludge]

Anyone ever do that with a scooter? When my primary light went out at p1,000' at JB I stopped and went to backup. But for a moment I considered okaying the line and riding the flow out from 1,000' without turning on my backup light, just to see what it was like.

Maybe I'll try it this summer.

[Caver95]

Be careful when choosing a spot do do these drills in the Peanut tunnle is great for this.
Watch out for delicate areas such as orange grove or places that have a nice clay bottom where scars are seen for a long time afterwards.

[Cleavitt]

The Peanut tunnel at Peacock is used for line drills all the time during classes. Most of it is silt free and it's also quite shallow. The section between the breakdown room and cavern should work well. Just have your buddy stop you once you find your way out of the hard floor sections.

[mfascuba]

Hand off your mask to your buddy - that way you can't cheat. The classes I took that had lights out drills were mostly done like that - keeps things very focused.

Mark

[DA Aquamaster]

I don't agree with that.

You most likely won't lose a mask in a lights out event. If you lose a mask it is something else (worst case this is a panicked gas share resulting in both mask loss and a potential silt out). If you have light, you can still see without a mask - not well but sort of. And you only need to function that way long enough to put on a spare mask and or until a team mate retrieves yours for you. In a true silt out or lights out situation I tend to close my eyes anyway as it improves focus on what I am doing.

So in effect, not having a mask is not all that common in the real world and does not serve much purpose except task loading/harrassing the diver.

The cheating consideration is a new one for me. Personally, I saw no upside to even being tempted to cheat in any of my cave classes as it was important for me to know I could hack it without having to "cheat". I was not there just to get a C-card.

When training PSD's it was a potential problem for reasons I won't get into, but we used a piece foil wrapped over the student's mask - very effective and removes the potential to cheat. But to be honest, for a diver practicing lights out exits, cheating should again not even be a consideration. In fact, I'd argue that maintaining the ability to easily cheat is valuable as if you succumb to that temptation, the lesson self learned is that you are clearly skills deficient, and an alternate but equally important lesson is that you clearly lack the self discipline to be cave diving safely.