SETUP 1: maxdepth=28f, time=158min, penetration=8000ft
(3 scooters, 6 stages) (nick+beto) (scooter times = 50)
Sept
22-27 2003 (EJPP 2003)
SETUP 1: maxdepth=28f, time=158min, penetration=8000ft
(3 scooters, 6 stages) (nick+beto) (scooter times = 50)
The objective of this dive was to place 4 stage bottles at 8000 ft upstream. We started the dive at main entrance and scootered along the main line for 6200ft until we reached the X-line. Half way to the X-line, Nick's scooter had a relay problem and failed. Fortunately we had a backup scooter for the setup dive, so we dropped his faulty scooter at approx 4000ft and continued the dive. (Without the backup scooter, we would have had to abort the dive.) We motored 900 ft on the X line until we saw the jump to the Diaz line. At that point we had reached 1600psi on our stages, so we dropped the stage and the scooters at about 50min.. Nick and I did a quick calculation-- the Diaz line jump was at 7.1K from the main entrance so we were moving at ~ 150ft per minutes including handling of the faulty scooter. We were travelling pretty fast to be using dry suits, 3 stages and have a bit of flow against us.
After dropping the stages, we went to (breathe) our doubles as we wanted to push the stages a bit more. We swam the stages to 8000ft and dropped them just before the jump to the Blue Abyss, and called the dive after reaching 2500psi on the doubles. We had planned to breathe the doubles to 2250psi, but due to the scooter problem we decided on holding more gas in reserve, so we called it at 2500psi. This was probably the most dangerous dive since we were going to use gas from our doubles. However, the intermediate exit at Dinner Hole (at 4700ft) gave us an added measure of safety. Even with 2500psi in the doubles plus half a stage we had enough to swim out from 8000ft. On the way home we picked up the faulty scooter and it started working. The failure was most likely a faulty relay that got too hot. We surfaced with about 2000psi on the doubles, the minimum for this kind of dive. We would not use the doubles on subsequent dives.
The dropped stages had mixes of 50% and 32%. The 50%mixes would be safety bottles at the Blue Abyss intersection, sitting at approximately 9K, and the 32% mixes would be pushed farther on the next dive.
On our way out we had plenty of time to enjoy the beauty of the cave. We saw several formations that reminded me of previous adventures shared in this cave: little dog, jaws, the big fang, the curtain room and many others. It felt great to be back, diving this amazing cave.
Towards the end of our dive my scooter slowed down a little bit. It was probably due to a bad charge as we had one charger that didn't clear completely-- it was most likely a bad connection on the charger. Also, we had run the scooters at almost max speed, and they typically only last 100min at that speed. Over the next days we made certain that the chargers were good, and we set the scooters at a slower speed so they would run longer. This was a solid first dive to test equipment and warm up for the next dives.
SETUP 2: maxdepth=41f, time=199min, penetration=11000ft
(4 scooters, 6 stages) (nick+beto) (scooter times = 20+45+15)
The objective of the second dive was to relocate two set-up stage bottles past the King Pong restriction, and to determine whether the long body scooters would pass through the restriction. We started our dive with 3 stages and 2 L scooters. We reached our stage drop area (at the beginning of the Diaz line) after 47min. By this dive, the drop/switch procedure was getting very smooth.
We continued our dive along the Diaz line until we reached our 2 set-up stage bottles. We picked them up and continued (with 4 stages each) for another 5 to 10 min until we reached the Blue Abyss line. At that point we dropped the (2) 50% stage bottles, and one of the scooters. We motored on with the second scooter through a very scenic section of cave. The depth increased slightly, maybe to about 40ft, until we reached the King Pong restriction. Nick and I had gone past the restriction on our previous trip, but we only had doubles. Today we were carrying 2 stages apiece, plus the scooters.
In order to pass with more gear, we dropped the stages we were breathing and switched to our doubles. We then headed through the restriction holding the 2 set-up stage bottles in front of us. We found that keeping the stages directly in front of us gave us room to maneuver. Surprisingly, it was not that difficult to squeeze through-- we went straight and then turned slightly to the left into the smallest section. We placed the set-up stages in a relatively open area, and went back for the scooters. The scooters also passed the restriction without much trouble; we just kept them in front of us as we went through.
After clearing the restriction we scootered (breathing our doubles) for another 5min until we reached the end of the Diaz Line. We dropped our scooters, and connected a spool to the end of the line. We swam through a small corridor and angled up for about 20ft until we found the Aunt Jamaima line.
Just about 10 ft to the right of where we connected to the Aunt Jamaima line was an incredible gallery of stalagtites. We looked at each other and smiled thinking 'tomorrow we'll get to Princessa', then turned our dive and headed back for the main entrance. The way back was fairly simple-- we passed back through King Pong with the scooters, picked up our stages and the second scooters, and enjoyed the ride back.
After we surfaced and finished organizing our equipment, Don Pedro's wife invited us to join the snorkel tour group for lunch at their house. We dined on barbecued chicken, rice, beans and guacamole. We thought, what a way to spend the day as we savored a Mayan meal and discussed our dive! We could easily do this for a few more days ;-).
PUSH DIVE: maxdepth=40f, time=336min, penetration=15500ft
(4 scooters, 4+4 stages)(nick+beto)(scooter tirmes = 20+45+15)
We were finally ready for our push dive.We met for breakfast at the little bakery in Akumal, where we devoured our huevos rancheros and reviewed our dive plan. We arrived at the entrance to Nohoch at 9:00am. (It's so much easier to get to Nohoch these days; it only takes a 10min car drive to Don Pedro's house from the main highway. This used to be a 45min walk along a rough path through the jungle.)
We started the dive with 2 scooters and 2 stages, enough equipment to get us past King Pong, where we would replace our stages with two fresh ones. We ran the first scooter for 20min. Then, we switched to the other scooter for 45min. We dropped our first stage at the usual 7.1K area and switched back to the first scooter at the Blue Abyss intersection. From there we scootered another 5 min to King Pong. We dropped the second stage, and went through the restriction on doubles with one scooter in front.
Once past King Pong, we picked up our two fresh stage bottles and continued scootering to the Aunt Jamaima line. It was a great feeling to have two full stages and another 15min of scooter time at this juncture. We followed the Aunt Jamaima line and almost immediately arrived at the T intersection for I-hope, where we observed a 5x5" slate which indicated the exit points. We continued into an area called the Dark Side of the Moon, (named for the fact that it is really far from the entrance and not many people have seen it before). This area was relatively small so we had to move at slow speed. We passed through a small restriction which required us to push our stage tanks and scooters in front of us. From there we continued another 5 minutes until we dropped the scooters. We were approximately 11.5K inside the cave at this time.
After dropping the scooters we continued the dive (breathing our stages) until we reached a T intersection. We swam left on the T to an upper/?overhead? area covered with an incredible display of brown decorations. After few hundred feet we noticed a jump to the left which we didn't take. Just past the jump, we swam into another incredible room where brown, milky-colored stalactites and stalagmites converged to create an 8 - 10ft tall jawlike formation. We continued along the line for a few more minutes, passing another left jump which we didn't take (a long loop around) and finally arrived at large room where there was yet another jump to the left. By this time we were at 1600psi on the stages, so we dropped them in that room.
In the process of preparing our stages for the drop, our bubbles (hitting the ceiling) created some serious percolation problems. The room immediately transformed itself in a white milky tub. We backed off several feet to get out of the cloud, and dropped our stages. We were at least 13k inside the cave.
We continued along the main line until we arrived at another T with arrows pointing to the right for exit. We placed our line marker, and as we studied the intersection we noticed a little survey pencil with a small inner tube attached to it-- clearly a survey instrument. Evidently somebody had wanted to leave in a hurry, and had forgotten it. (Dan Lins mentioned to me that they had lost an inner tube on one of their dives, maybe this one was the one?) From there we turned right and swam through a small restriction with a lot of dark material typical of a nearby open area. We squeezed through and noted another jump to the left, and continued along the main line until we started heading up and over a calcite dome which was definitly a cenote. We surfaced after 139min into a dome-like structure with light coming in on the side. Nick and I chatted for a few minutes, checked our air and decided not to get out of (and explore) the cenote. We headed back towards the jump we had just passed, and resumed looking for the end of the line.
We took the jump and started swimming through a 10'x10' downstream tunnel. There was some ominous looking clay on the bottom (the kind you don't want to disturb), so we shifted into serious cave diving mode ;-). There was also a kind of blurred effect in the tunnel, but it was not a halocline as we tested the water. We swam for another 500ft and saw a jump to the right. Nick did a quick check and determined that it lead back to Princessa. We continued on through the main tunnel which became progressively smaller and smaller.
We arrived at a shaft structure heading upward; Nick looked at it briefly before giving the 'no go'signal. Meanwhile I looked down and discovered a blind T which we'd almost missed, so I signaled him to come down and see it. We followed this T for another 300-400 feet until the passage got very small and we reached a cell like formation at the end of the tunnel. We were at the end of the line. We sized the formation, but the few seconds that it took to stop, check air and signal each other, was enough to create close to zero-vis due to percolation. The restriction was too small for me to comfortably pass, so Nick went through to see the other side while I stayed on the silty size. He returned a minute later and gave me a push signal to start our exit. We were close to 1600psi and 15.5K inside the came. It was time to head home....
We retraced our kicks, and enjoyed the colorful rooms and nice decorations on the way to our first scooter. Back on the scooters, we started moving at good speed flying over the Dark Side of the Moon to our jump. We removed the spool and sped back to the Diaz Line, then on to the beginning of the King Pong restriction. At this point we had two empty stages and two 1/3 full, plus our scooters to get past the restriction. Nick decided to do it all in one shot, however I didn't like the idea so I passed my stages through first and then went back for my scooter. (That's one disadvantage of being 'big' for a cave diver.) Once we passed the restriction we reorganized the 3 stages by putting the empty one inside, the old stage second, and the 1/3 full bottle behind.
At 4hr into the dive Nick's light went off. He had a Pro14 with an 18w head which is supposed to last 6hr, but he probably did not have the best battery. He moved into the lead position and we continued the dive using my primary and his backup light.
As we scootered out, something interesting was happening to me. I was experiencing alot of pain in one of my feet as result of my fins. I had noticed this on the previous dives; I had slight discomfort in my right foot after 3 hr. (This project was my first time diving dry in a cave and I had a new suit [TLS35], and newly adjusted fins.) The pain was getting progressively stronger but I didn't want to stop to fix it. We were pushing the trigger hard, knowing that we had one light down and my primary was at best going to last 6hr. I tried to relieve the pain by directing the air in the suit towards my foot. I spent at least 15min trying to move air into the boot while scootering at full speed. Later on I moved the fin strap off of my foot, but then I was worried that the fin was going to fly off. The result of my efforts was that I was slowing down, and Nick and I were starting to get separated because of the fact that he really could not sense how far back I was with his little light.
Nevertheless, we managed to reach the end of the Diaz line and our first stage bottle. If we picked up this extra bottle, we were going to have 4 stages, so instead we decided to drop our empty bottle and pick up the one that had 1600psi. We could feasibly have carried 4 bottles, but we were worried about the impact to the cave. Three used stages bottles are manageable, but the fourth always rides too high behind, and often hits and damages the cave. We didn't want to mangle the cave. We decided to return for it the following day.
As we motored along the X-line and later the main line, the pain in my foot was getting really bad. Eventually I had to signal Nick to stop. I removed both of my scooters, most of my stages and took my fin off. What a relief!!!-- I decided to fix the fin strap. Then I replaced everything on and we resumed our dive. It only took a couple of minutes to fix the strap and I should have done it earlier. It probably slowed us down, and it created a distraction from scootering and team awareness. One lesson I learned from Nohoch: "Fix your stuff once and for all, and then dive".
At 5hr into the dive and approximately 3000ft from main entrance, my primary light died :-(. I was glad I had fixed the fin situation, as scootering with excruciating foot pain and a backup light didn't sound like fun to me. Again, a reminder to fix problems before more complications develop. .... I know there is a story about barky ;-).
We concluded the dive on our back-up lights, and were thankful that we were so familiar with the cave that exiting in low light conditions did not cause any more complications.
*I think that the limiting factor for these dives is burn time of the
lights. 5hr is the max we have with the current equipment, so 2hr in should
be the limit to cope with any failures and/or delays during the exit. We
discussed the possibility of putting two 13.5 battery packs inside a Pro14
for future projects. That way we would have 10hr of burn time. We could
also have used the 13.5/10w head configuration, but the 10w does not compare
to the 18w, which is far nicer and safer for communication.
CLEAN UP 1: maxdepth=29f, time=123min, penetration=7100ft
(4 scooters, 6 stages)(nick+alex+beto)( scooter times=50)
Dive number 4 was a clean-up dive. Big dives (like our Push dive) include a series of set-up and clean-up dives so that divers don't have to carry more than 3 or 4 stages on any given dive. For the clean-up phase, we asked Alex to join us since he had never been to that area of Nohoch, and we needed his help removing tanks from the cave. (Alex is going to be part of the Jan project in The Pit so it was a good opportunity for the two of us to dive together, and for Alex to practice towing scooter and multiples stages.)
We started the dive with 2 stages and 4 scooters. Alex's job was to tow the backup scooter and bring back the two bottles we had left at the Diaz-line. I was the lead diver, followed by Alex and Nick. Alex practiced a scooter switch in front of The Heaven's Gate formation while we watched. We continued the dive from there and enjoyed many of the signature formations in Nohoch. I was happy to show Alex some of my favorites including the little doggy, Jaws, etc. I know this cave well by now :-).
When we had scootered for 30min we were at the Grand Canyon area with mild flow against us. I noticed Alex getting slightly out of formation but didn't really mind, as Nick and I do that occasionally depending on the size of the cave and other factors. I also observed his bubbles and was surprised that he was breathing so hard. I thought to myself 'well if he had been breathing like that from the beginning his stage should be pretty low'. So I signalled him and he responded with a distress signal. (Oops!) I went into overdrive (kicking while scootering) until I caught up with him, and realized his scooter was stuck at maximum speed. We were able to lock it to try pulling the trigger ball back but that didn't help. At that moment Nick came up from behind and grabbed the errant scooter (after disconnecting it from Alex's D-ring) while simultaneously dropping his own scooter. We were still moving, and Nick went into the lead position. I retrieved Nick's scooter, which had floated up towards the ceiling; then I towed Nick's while Alex went to his back-up scooter.
We then had to decide whether or not to call the dive. We agreed to just go to the Diaz line and pick-up the stages, and Alex and I would carry them out.This was my first experience with a jammed (in 'on' position) scooter, and I soon learned that the protocol is to keep moving while calling your dive. As we approached the X-line we showed Alex our marked jump and continued along the line. When we were at 500ft on the X line and nearing the Diaz line, Nick began signalling to us. It looked to me like "2 drop and 1 pick-up" or something like that. (It was not that easy to see what he was trying to say.) I thought that Alex would pick up one and I would pick up the other one, and we would call the dive. So I started to pick up my empty bottle from the previous day. Since Nick could not stop his scooter he kept making medium sized loops while we worked to procure the bottles.
Every time Nick got close to me he tried to give me hand signals. After a couple more passes I finally understood what he wanted us to do. I was to drop the full stage, and pick up the empty bottle. By leaving the full stage we would only need to bring one stage on the following dive. Ok ... great idea!. We dropped/picked-up/etc and headed home.
On the way back Nick's scooter started slowing down as we approached the Disney Land area. Alex and he went into a two engine position where (2) divers grab on to each other to balance the strength of the scooters. Meanwhile I took Alex's back-up scooter to reduce his load and give him more speed.
All in all it was a very interesting and educational clean up dive.
I ended up towing the backup scooter and carrying the two empty stage bottles.
That Alex tricked me into doing all the work! ;-)
CLEAN UP 2: maxdepth=207f, time=207min, penetration=11000ft
(4 scooters, 2 stage)(nick+beto)(scooter time = 20+40 )
Our last dive was the final clean up dive. There were still 2 full bottles with 50% O2 at the junction to the Blue Abyss, and 2 full stage bottles at the Diaz line. We had filled the safety bottles with 50% in case we had an opportunity to do a deeper dive into the Blue Abyss. Our doubles were filled with 15/55 (courtesy of Kendall and Walker, who had recently visited Akumal for some diving).
We wanted to investigate the deep section of the Blue Abyss because previous exploration dives in that section were done on air past 200ft. Explorers could have easily missed some leads due to narcosis-- so a clear-headed trip to the abyss was a worthwhile cause. The abyss is an open, round structure, probably 200ft across, and it bottoms out at about 150-160ft, after which there there is a break-down area which dips down to 240ft (according to the map). We wanted to go down into the breakdown area to search for leads.
We started our dive with 1 stage and 2 scooters and followed our normal routine: scooter switch at 20min, dropped the stage at 7.1K and picked up a new one containing 32%. We arrived at the jump to the Blue Abyss while breathing the second stage, and dropped our scooters. We picked up the 50% bottles and started along the Blue Abyss line. We passed a small stalactite gallery and then reached the restriction which blocks the abyss. Nick went first and was able to pass through with his two stages held in place in front of him. I tried the same style but got a bit stuck (because of the second stage bottle-- and my size!). So I removed one of the stages, clipped it to the line, and pushed it ahead of me and down through the restriction. Once past the restriction, we swam for another minute and arrived at the Abyss :-).
The line runs through the middle of the huge sink hole, and we followed it to about 70ft where we dropped our 50% stage bottle. We continued along the line to about 120ft and dropped our 32% stage bottle. We had 2700psi in the doubles. We agreed to use 300psi (on the way in) to explore the deep section.
We descended to about 180ft and moved down into the breakdown area. We reached the end of the breakdown at 200ft and could see the line going down another 40ft to a small stalagmite. We looked around for a couple of minutes and confirmed that we were surrounded by solid rock-- unfortunately no leads. (Well at least we're sure now.)
We called our dive with 8min of bottom time so it would be a no-deco (30ft/min ascent) dive. We circled the perimeter of the abyss all the way up to 120ft where we switched to our stages. At that moment I suddenly realized I was underweighted for salt water. (The abyss is filled with saltwater from 60ft down.) I was barely able to stay down at 120ft :-0. I delflated my suit and my wings as much as possible, completed the 3min gas switch and moved up to the 70ft stop. Well I should have said I crawled to the stop. I could not manage to stay down so I went to the wall of the abyss and used my hands to anchor myself. At about 70ft I saw an undercut in the wall and headed straight for it. I was finally in control of my buoancy (thanks to the ceiling). I signalled Nick to pass me my 50% bottle and I made my gas switch while under the ledge. I completed a 3min gas switch, looked at Nick, and we decided to move up out of the salt water to about 40ft. I crawled up to 40ft and was able to regain control of my buoancy. This ascent definately elevated my heart rate!
We exited along the Blue Abyss line, picked up the scooters and continued breathing 50% until we reached the X-line and our next stage bottle. We picked up the stage and clipped it behind us. We stayed on the 50% bottle since we still had plenty of gas.
As we motored out I thought about how weird it was to dive the Blue Abyss as a 'clean-up' dive. Most divers at Nohoch don't even get close to this area. Just a few years back (before access by scooters) the Blue Abyss was considered a very long dive from the main entrance.
As we exited the cave we experienced a great feeling of satisfaction for having planned and executed a little project at Nohoch. We enjoyed 5 days of incredible diving in the wonderful cave, and were lucky not to have had too many failures (based on the number of dives and the amount of equipment required). The cave was on our side this time :-). We flew through the corridor admiring the formations and dreaming about our next adventures :-).
We had done what we set out to do. We wanted to get to Princessa and
reach the end of at least one of the lines. We determined that it was feasible
to do a long scooter expedition from the Main Entrance of NoHoch, and we
investigated the Blue Abyss for deep leads. All in all it was a great and
successful week of diving :-)