Have you ever lost the line? And if so how many minutes did it take to find it?

[MORGAN]

I've never lost the line to the extent of having to tie in a safety reel and do a lost line search, but I have lost it momentarily a few times.

Swimming along, glance at where the line ought to be, and it's not there. Stop swimming, think a moment about where I am and where the line should be, and look for it. On each of these occasions the line has reappeared promptly.

[JerseyJersey]

In doing a lost line drill during training, I made my way until I found line. As I was tieing into it I kept feeling it and the feel definately wasnt right. I had bounced around in a circle and came onto my own line. Definately left an inmpression.

[Greenwood_60]

Forrest: We teach lost line all the time, everybody finds it. You are welcome to come sit/swim through a lost line exercise with me anytime.

If a student does a crap job searching, but happens to find it, is that a pass? If a student does a proper methodical search, but was unlucky enough to miss the line, is that a fail? It doesn't seem to me that actually finding the line is of any benefit in training. I want to see an instructor prepare a student for a lost line search, then once the mask is off/blacked out, pull the line

[Jaydubya]

My instructor told me he made a guy come back to HS multiple times because he was unable to find the lost line even though all the other skills were good. He told me that for Intro you do not have to actually find the line but for that for full cave you do. The instructor was teaching with NACD at that time. I don't know if it was an NACD requirement or the instructor's personal requirement.

[huxley]

If you search and did not find the line you died, if you did a bad job looking for it and made a mess but found it at least you would have survived. We did lost line for apprentice in the cavern area of P3, blacked out mask, turning around and lost navigation totally. Anyhow I searched couple things happened and I keept searching, finally found a line, tied to it and was happy, Once at the line I noticed that this was not our primary line, while we were in the cave another team laid a second primary which was on the floor, ours was on the ceiling, I now know why. Anyhow my instructor let me pass since it would have brought me out of the cave. Now it was my buddies turn, took him a while but he managed to find the same line that I found. How good are the chances?
The main passage is fairly big at this point, a little bigger room and a line that takes a turn and I, sure it be be pure luck to find it. Having the line tied to the ceiling was a lesson for me, for some reason you expect it to be low when you sweep for it.

[Jim Wyatt]

I wrote an article about this subject for Underwater Speleology magazine last year. Take a look at: http://www.cavecountrydiving.com/div...er-speleo.html

[LCF]

My Cave 1 instructor told us that, if you remain calm and methodical (and assuming the line is THERE), you will always find the line. Whether you will find it with enough gas to get out or not is another question . . . I think it took me 12 minutes, but I found it.

Another thing he emphasized and emphasized was referencing the cave. There was a quadruple fatality in Mexico a few years back, not due to losing the line or zero viz, but if I remember correctly, due to turning the wrong way at an intersection. I have dived the cave they came in on, and what they got onto, and it was a good cautionary tale on paying attention to things OTHER than the line. Character of passage, size, depth, bottom material, size and type of line -- and in Florida, of course, you sometimes have flow to help as well.

The absolute scariest story I've read was about someone who was in a cave when somebody else decided to change the line routing, and took out the line he had come in on. This was in one of those big, wide passages with lots of decorations. Luckily, the diver knew the cave well enough to have a good idea where another line was, and he found it and got out. It's one thing to lose the line in a short siltout, and another thing altogether when hundreds of feet of it are just simply gone.

[Squirrel Girl]

I'm not sure what Forrest was entirely getting at. It seems to me he told me (us?) that Sheck and someone else formulated the idea of how to do the search with a safety reel, and that he, FW, actually was the first to attempt, and succeeded at that technique, encircling the lost line.

I agree that it may not be as easy to do in a real life situation as in a drill.

I am always looking for a buddy to practice drills. I did a lost line drill in the big area in front of the Peanut Tunnel and my buddies gave up on me and had me open my eyes and give up. I didn't feel it as my leg/fin touched the line and kept trying away.


Sandy, you know all about groping. I'll grope you (or anyone else) who is blocking MY exit from a cave with THEIR big butt!!!!

[RN]

My instructor told me he made a guy come back to HS multiple times because he was unable to find the lost line even though all the other skills were good. He told me that for Intro you do not have to actually find the line but for that for full cave you do. The instructor was teaching with NACD at that time. I don't know if it was an NACD requirement or the instructor's personal requirement.

It is not an NACD requirement.

[T. Bix]

I wrote an article about this subject for Underwater Speleology magazine last year. Take a look at: http://www.cavecountrydiving.com/div...er-speleo.html

Thank You Jim! What other insight do you have to offer to help prepare an Intro diver arriving for upcoming training real, real soon?

See ya in a couple weeks!