How often should you cave dive?

[SUB ZERO]

As someone who does not live near caves, I will be driving a good 14 hours to the site or taking a plane if Covid situation allows. It makes me wonder, before I spent major bucks on getting cave certified, how often does one need to be cave diving to keep their overhead skills sharp? I am sure that there are plenty of cave divers who are as geographically disadvantaged as me so how much cave diving do you end up doing and do you think it justifies your investment into cave training? Thanks.

[bent]

... and do you think it justifies your investment into cave training?

How do you justify spending money on any hobby? It's either worth it to you or it's not.

I don't know what you mean by overhead skills.

[sam]

Monthly at least


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[twaldo]

at the risk of stirring more silt with this response.... as often as you can... though you can still practice skills in any divable water... I started training while living in N FLorida and then ended up having to move... have not been as far away as you but I at least made it back once a year... and this year have been lucky enough to get back 3 times so far this year.

[FW]

When I lived in northern Virginia, I used to practice in a local quarry. I stuck silt stakes in the mud bottom, then stung a line to make a big closed loop, pattern. I kept swimming the circuit every weekend until I could make the circuit without stirring up any silt.

[tbone1004]

As someone who does not live near caves, I will be driving a good 14 hours to the site or taking a plane if Covid situation allows. It makes me wonder, before I spent major bucks on getting cave certified, how often does one need to be cave diving to keep their overhead skills sharp? I am sure that there are plenty of cave divers who are as geographically disadvantaged as me so how much cave diving do you end up doing and do you think it justifies your investment into cave training? Thanks.

it depends. How often are you doing similar level/type dives on a regular basis? How solid is your base training going in? If you are trained say at GUE Tech 1 and are doing those types of dives, then translating that into a cave is pretty straight forward and your need to cave dive frequently is arguably less than someone who is a pure recreational diver and whos only experience into this style of diving is cave diving. If you don't have the support structure at home to encourage good dive practices then you need to do it more often. I have friends who come down once a year for a week and there is no issue with that. One of them was one of the first group of GUE instructors who has since retired, the other is an active UTD instructor and they are practicing that type of diving almost every week. Give them a day or so of shake down dives and they're fine for 2-3hr OC cave dives.
If you want to get on the project teams and start doing some big boy dives, then you have to be doing it monthly just to stay active in those groups.

The skills specific to cave diving are pretty minimal. Most of them are line related which you can practice in a quarry or lake with little issue and even then, most of the caves have the lines run out to the door anyway. The rest of the skills are just good diving habits that you can maintain in any environment.

[MitchHarrington]

I live 14-16 hours away depending on if I go to Marianna or High Springs. I go every 6-8 weeks.

[OFG-1]

Cave Dive???? Are you crazy, that crap is dangerous.

[Dominic]

Cave training was worth every penny, even if I never dove another cave in my life. What I got out of it were skills that would help me in any diving situation. Good buoyancy and trim, situational awareness, stress management, good dive planning, not to mention amazing views.

I don't live anywhere near recreational cave diving sites, but I try to go about twice a year. I would do it. Just my 2 cents.

[DogDiver]

Before I got smart and moved to Branford 16 years ago, we found at White Star Quarry in north Ohio a big concrete tunnel about 300 feet long. We would train line, lights out and air sharing skills there.


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