Projects > Doux de Coly 03

Support

Latest update: March 18, 2004

By Viktor Horvath, Silvia Rieser and Michael Waldbrenner

Viktor's account

Before writing about our dive in the deep part of the Doux de Coly, I have to send many thanks to the complete team for the amazing week.

It was a perfect experience for me and I learned a lot of things and it was a pleasure to stay with all the guys from the EKPP on that project.

Now I want to give a description of our support dive, which took place on the day before the push dive.

There were several teams for deep support, the Dutch guys, Tom and Deniz and some others. One of the teams were Silvia, Alex and myself.

In the evening before our dive, we discussed the tasks for the support team at the briefing

Our task was to transport two of the scooters (we decided to take the red and green aluminium Gavin scooters) to our point of return, which was after a planned bottom time of 40 minutes at a depth of 60 meters, or when the second trimix stage (we had two trimix stages 80 cu ft with trimix 17/55) is half down plus 20 bars.

Our team was the first one in the water, like it was planned at the briefing the day before.

After we had finished preparing our equipment, we started the dive on time at 10 o'clock. Due to the fact that there was really bad vis in the cave pool, we had to dive along a cave line to find the entrance of the cave.

You can imagine that with all the equipment (each of us had 4 x 80 cu ft stages, scooters, etc.) in nearly zero vis, it works only if you are on the DIR side of diving. But as soon as we reached the tunnel, the vis became much better. We did our 300 meter ride to the shaft on Trimix 50/25. At the shaft we placed our oxygen-stages at 6 meter on a rope with mountaineering clamps.

Then we went on to the 21 meter area. There we changed from trimix 50/25 to trimix 17/55 and headed forwards to 45 meter. There Silvia and myself picked up the two scooters from Micha and Reinhard.

Alex was towing the backup scooter for our team during the whole dive.

Then we started our bottom time in the deep part. After reaching 20 minutes of bottom time, we placed the scooter on the main line and called the dive. On the way back we enjoyed the cave tunnel which has huge dimensions, like a highway tunnel.

After finishing our deco in the shaft, we did our final ride out of the cave.

We surfaced after 145 minutes. Everything worked perfect and we had a very cool dive and a lot of fun. It was one of the best dives I've ever done.

Thanks to all EKPP members for a great week of cave diving in France.

Silvia's account

Since February, I have been a team member of the EKPP.

A dream became true when I heard that I could join the Doux de Coly project in August 2003. During the week there was a lot of different work to do.

Transporting the 20 kg weights for the habitat to the shaft, installing the habitat, do the setup for the push dive and so on, but there is one task I want describe in detail: Helping Micha and Reinhard out of the habitat.

The task took place on the day of the push-dive.

Tom Karch was my buddy on our first dive. We scootered at 14:00 and 15:00 o'clock to the shaft to check if Reinhard and Micha were back.

At that point they were already for 8 hours in the water and we had a good chance to see them first, but they where not there.

Alex and Victor, the next team, had the luck and "found" them at the bottom of the shaft.

The most exciting moment of the day was when Brus, our surface manager, said that I could dive with Tom, Wido and Ralph and get them out of the habitat at midnight.

We started our dive at 23:45 o'clock. When we were at the habitat, we had to bring the heating tubes to the top of the shaft. There were already two double rebreather rigs plus two Gavin scooters and two stages with trimix 50/25 placed for Reinhard and Micha.

After a few minutes of waiting, Reinhard came out first. Tom and Ralph swam with him to the top of the shaft.

Wido and myself were waiting until Micha came out of the habitat. One support diver in each team unclipped his long hose so that if anything happened, we could help him right away.

At the top of the shaft, we had to help him back into the double-rebreather-rig and provide him light until he was ready to go.

To help him into the double rebreather rig was not that easy as it sounds, because the double rebreather rig is very heavy and bulky. But with our help, Micha did a good job and it worked out fast. When we had both guys in their double rebreather rigs, we started our way out of the cave. Ralph took some pictures on the way out and after a very slow ascent in the pool, we surfaced without any problems.

Last, but not least, I have to say that I enjoyed all dives and had a lot of fun during the week. Many thanks to the whole EKPP team for a great time in Coly.

Micha's account

Since I finished my dive with Reinhard 2 days earlier in the Doux de Coly, I thought I should go diving again. So I waited for any task to come my way. I told Reinhard that I wanted to dive with other team members, just for the fun of it.

During a briefing Hervé said that he was going to survey in the deep part together with Nick and also the Dutch "A-team" wanted to do a longer dive in the deep section in about the same time slot. So they would need some support and I was up for it.

Ralph jumped in to join me. So, we waited until they had left and our scheduled support time was around one o'clock, where both teams should be in the shaft.

Ralph and myself took of around 13:15 o'clock and scootered to the shaft.

We dropped down to check Nick and Hervé at 18 meter first. Both gave us the OK and so I dug in my pockets for some "Capri-Sonne", a juice-drink. I inserted the straw for them and handed them over.

Since they did the deco on the rebreathers, they had to go off the loop for drinking so we had the long hose unclipped and ready. As usual during support, we were breathing trimix 21/35 of 80 cu ft aluminium stages. They sucked two of the drinks empty and after another OK we headed for the Dutch guys. We went up to the top of the shaft and searched the area for any "lost" stuff, since the project would soon be over. We found a tank from Brus which was floating on the ceiling and we clipped it to the mainline.

Then we deposited two more soft drinks at the oxygen stages of Nick and Hervé and dropped to the Dutch to tell them, that they could grab it. (Well, Nick and Hervé were faster).

We decided to go down again and so in minute 32 of the dive we dropped back to 39 meter to work on a steel cable which stuck under a big rock.

Ralph wiggled and worked hard on the rock while I was grabbing the cable and we managed to get it out after 10 minutes.

So we formed a loop out of it and I connected the steel cable to my crotch-strap D-ring. We went up again and asked Nick and Hervé if we should take some stuff from them.

Ralph took most of the gear since the steel cable would be a pain to bring out anyway...

So I just took some additional stages and another scooter since Ralph was heavily loaded. After an hour, we headed for the door and handed the gear over to the guys on the pool platform.

For me it was great to help the dudes and we had a lot of fun working under water. A good buddy, a great team, the right procedures and mindset and the right tools and gases are the keys to success, even, or maybe I should say especially for an effective support team.