Hello my friends!

Here is another summary of my WE Cave Diving experiences.

Highlights:
  - Did my Cave Dive number 100 (started counting after Full Cave certification).
  - Went tubing down the river! -- Fist time!

This WE was a rather relax one. I finished late on Friday, so the diving only started on Saturday morning.

Nanci and I took a stage tank and our O2 tank in addition to our doubles. We had a 70 minute bottom time, max. depth of 100 feet as usual. We were breathing NITROX 32% in the 3 tanks that we used for the dive itself and 100% Oxygen in the 4th tank that we used for decompression. We went in Devil's Ear with our 4 tanks, swimming. I found the easiest way ever to get in there. Not only did I hardly need to fin or pull but I sometimes nearly felt sucked in! The basic trick is to stay as close as possible to the floor and drop as vertically as possible. We dropped the Oxygen bottle a bit after the exit towards Devil's Eye, just near the second warning sign. From there we went through the Lips, Key Hole, Cornflakes as usual. We dropped the stage tank before Hill400 and went on back gas from there. We took the second jump left into Double Lines, and followed the line for 3 or 400 hundred feet until we got to the left hand side jump towards the Ice Room.We went through the nice bedding plane, took the 2 Ts to the left and after another 200 feet (I think) we were in the Ice Room, where there is a Plaque for Kevin(?) Book 1965-1995. He died of a shallow water blackout. He was drunk... We messed around a bit and turned as we were right on Nanci's thirds. We were back at the key hole (63 feet) after 71 minutes of bottom time. We started our deco from there, as usual. The cave back there would be a lot prettier if it was not for the damage that people made!

In  the afternoon Nanci, Kelly and I went down the river on tubes from Devil's Ear down. We spent at least an hour in the water and I even swung from a tree with the locals :-). We hitched a ride on the way back. Cool! Then we ate and saw the X-Files movie. No comment.

Sunday we did 2 dives. Both at Ginnie, both with Nanci, my favorite dive buddy!

The first one was a practice scooter dive along the main line-- just back gas stuff plus the usual Oxygen Deco tank. We went down into the Ear, dropped the Oxygen tank in the usual place. Through the lips -- it was fun to watch Nanci going through there! She was used to Jeff Bentley's Mako but on that day she was using her Gavin! It reminded me my first time... only she was better. The run through the Cornflakes was... interesting too... I can't write more, or she'd have to kill me... Anyway, we went up the main line until we had used 700 psi of gas. We got to 1300 feet. On the way back I wanted to practice towing. So Nanci towed me and then I towed Nanci. We did OK for a first time. I just thought that it would be fun to attempt a loop on the side (go upside down and back up) with a diver in tow... in a big room of course! That reminds me that I just saw the video "Zepping through Devil's Eye". I can't believe that people would film what is basically a real shame! Why don't they try to take an underwater bulldozer down the cave? Anyway, as we were back at the key hole after less than 40 minutes of bottom time and we had lots of gas left, we did a few practice runs through the lips and up and down the gallery. I tried to pick up and clip on my Oxygen bottle without stopping the scooter. It worked but it was not pretty. I went through the lips and out with it with no major hassle. But Nanci was tired so we ended the dive there after 60 minutes in the water. After 10 minutes at 20 feet, we were out. Note: I was on 26% Nitrox.

The second dive was my CAVE DIVE#100. Yeah!!!! That was just a simple dive up the main line on back gas to see how far we could go swimming fast. We knew that we would not go as far as if we swam slowly but we wanted to try it. Unfortunately we forgot to cut through the Roller Coaster. We still went further than when we were on scooters (shame), but it was only 1500 feet. So much for swimming too fast. That made 45 minutes of bottom time we did 20 minutes of deco 25% Nitrox) and went home!

As usual I woke up at 5am the next day and drove to work.

I hope you had a great WE too!

Take care.

Herve.