Bad dive at Ginnie

[TONY CHANEY]

Very good question Tracy.

[AB8CD]

I'm a big proponent of solo diving, if done safely. By "safely" I mean taking extra precautions over what you would do with buddy diving. First, I think a diver in training should limit himself to several levels below his level of training; I think someone with an Apprentice card should only do cavern dives solo. Full cave divers should limit themselves to intro-level dives until they have lots of full-cave dives, then apprentice-level for awhile... I didn't start doing real full-cave dives solo until I had about 400 cave dives.

I also never noticed anything in your posts about buddy bottles. I wouldn't even dive a cavern solo without one. For full-cave solo dives, I breathe a stage only, half in, half out, and never touch my backgas. If I want a longer dive, I breathe two stages one-third each.

Solo's great, as long as you take the extra precautions to make it safe.

Good advice! When I have dove solo I can honestly say that I enjoy the cavern area just as much as the cave. In reality, it is the cave. Explore and enjoy what others swim by and miss! Your personal comfort will increase and your intimate knowledge of that particular part of the cave will become part of your experience. I am making no judgement call here but speaking from personal experience... The push mindset, and some of its consequences, takes away from my enjoyment of the dive.

Thanks for the post!


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[RGU]

Maybe we could shed some light pertaining to the dive. We have a rather young 25 year old male diver. Diver is 6'1" and heavy built. Never smoked. He also has about 200 dives with alot of them around 100 fsw. So he is not new to the depth (average depth was 80'), regs or back gas. He was well hydrated. So what was new on this dive? Lacking the proper training, too many goals, trying new equipment under adverse conditions (zero vis, high flow, distance, etc), prior two weeks of bad situations coupled with being solo. As I stated before, I feel that it could be a combination of simply getting out of breath and CO2 built up and maybe some narcosis. So our diver dives the same dive again but changed a few things and guess what? He had a great dive. He did not use trimix nor did he change out his regs. He just did not do as much tasking, had a buddy and took his time. It is not always CO2 bulid up or narked to the point of needing trimix but sometimes it is a basic OW 101 rule. If you get out of breath, stop all activity and catch your breath. It really can be that simple.

How about slightly contaminated gas? I stopped having "bad days" after purchasing my own compressor. Dive shop air/ gas isn't always clean, and most urban areas have higher levels of CO than say filling out on the water.