Quote Originally Posted by bent View Post
Long jumps are not an issue as long as you do proper an convervative gas planing. You guys are not looking for the root cause. That's not how you do accident analysis. When a driver hits a tree next to the road while intoxicated and speeding, the solution/lesson is not to cut all down trees close to roadways (even though the tree killed the driver). The solution/lesson is: dont drink and drive and dont speed. You always need look for what started the series of events not what ended it. Making jumps shorter is a bandaid.

Oceancurrent, arent you a pilot? In plane accidents they also look for the root cause, dont they?
you are right in your example bent, the trees are not the root cause, however it still makes sense to cut the trees to reduce risk, not only drunk and fast driving can lead to cars crashing in the trees and to stay in the comparison not all situations a diver runs low on gas close to an unmarked exit or a long jump must relate to some rule breaking. Best example is in fact that student that was left in the cave by her instructor. At least she did not break any rules and could not have planned for this etc. and if in fact these exits would have been marked she would be alive today.

Yes long jumps are not an issue per se and can be managed..
Again one should ask why is a superlong jump as the one from Paso de Lagarto necessary in the first place?
or why is the gap at Ho-Tul so extremely long?
There is not even any plausible reason.. Psao de Lagarto is not particularily more pristine as staying on the main line in that area.. ok staying on the main line takes you to tha super long gap of Ho Tul as I remeber, but again are those to keep divers out of Paso de lagarto or out of Cuzan Nah loop? Makes no sense to me as there is a giant map right at Gran Cenote and it is obvious that the cave goes so if you want to go you search and find eventually..
No gain wahtsoever in comparison to a somehwat "regular" Jump distance or gap distance..
At Paso if you wanted to keep folks out you likely could bring the line pretty close to the main line and still have it somewhat shielded from vision from the mainline, while you would clearly see the mainline when coming from Paso if it was closer..
The latter (main line not visible) was the cause of the fatalities at the "initial" Kalimba accident, if the main line would have been visible at EOL coming from calimba towards Gran Cenote those divers would likely still be alive. The line towards Box Chen and Kalimba has changed as a result of that accident (proper Jumps where isntalled instead of this stupid gap line or whatever it was called) but the distance between Paso and Gran Cenote line was never fixed, which I never understood..

So as to your example Bent, yes the long Jump at EOL in Paso was not the root cause at that "initial" Kalimba accident but if the jump was longer still the divers would be alive and what is the long jump worth to begin with.. Trees in the example would have more reason to be there than there is any reason to have that Jump that long