Projects > Doux de Coly 04 (June)
Overview
Latest update: June 27, 2004
This was the purpose of this weekend: making a presentation to the locals about the cave Doux de Coly and providing answers that they have long waited for.
We made just a short visit to the Doux de Coly in June. The purpose was to make an official presentation of our findings to both the landowner and the local authorities. So we made it a long week-end and used the opportunity to check the cave a little, add to the survey and make a few training and fun dives.
The participants were:
- Alex Braun from Austria.
- Hervé Deschamps from France.
- Götz Bräutigam, Janhinrich Hoffmann, Michael Waldbrenner, Ralph Wilhelm, Reinhard Buchaly, Sandro Madeo, Thomas Schädler from Germany.
- Alessandro Fenu, Andrea Marassich and Paolo R Passalacqua from Italy.
- Gertjan Verhoef, Ward Quaghebeur from the Netherlands.
Most of us arrived on thursday afternoon, June 10th. Some guys came from over 1000 kilometres away, so we took it easy to get started. We settled at la Grande Prade, offloaded some gear at the chalets, sat a while on the terraces, and chatted about various things. Hervé went to say hi to the landowners and to get the key to open the gate to the water edge.
The platform with the scooter used by the two rebreather teams and the support teams.
Around 15:00, Sandro and Hervé decided that it was time to get going if they wanted to be on time for diner. Just like in the WKPP, being on time for diner is a driving factor for many decisions :-) Sandro and Hervé had planned to do a rebreather survey dive on friday, with a 150 minute bottom time for an average depth of 55 meters. So they used the thursday afternoon to prepare and transport in the cave what they needed for the next day: a 40 meter rope to hang the deco gear, 4 oxygen bottles (2 for Open circuit bailout), 4 bottles for trimix with 50% oxygen (again, 2 for open circuit bailout), 2 bottles for trimix with 35% oxygen, 4 bottles with 18/65 trimix, a heating tube, 6 magnum scooters and reels with knotted line. Later Götz and Thomas with help from Alex prepared for the same kind of rebreather dive: 120 minutes of bottom time. After all was done, we all met for a nice BBQ and a few beers at the chalets.
After the 08:00 friday morning team briefing chaired by Reinhard, Sandro and Hervé started preparing their rebreather, drove to the dive site, suited up and started their dive at 11:00. Götz and Thomas followed suit at 12:00. Gertjan showed the cave to Ward - it was Ward's first time. Then as the two rebreather teams were doing their decompression, support teams checked on them every one to two hour. Hoffi, Michael and Reinhard also did some support while they were doing some filming. Finally, Gertjan and Ward made a last trip to the shaft to lift up the two deco ropes in preparation for the video planned for saturday. The day was concluded by a nice cassoulet at la Grande Prade.
Going through some map data with the mayor and the spring landowner. This is what is most important to them.
Saturday was the open circuit day. The first in the water were Hoffi, Michael and Reinhard. They went first in the cave to get the clearest video that could be captured after a day of intense activity. Then Alex, Gertjan and Ralph went in for a triple stage dive that enabled them to have a good 80 minutes of bottom time and to reach 1600 meters - 1 mile of penetration. Alessandro and Ward did two dives, one to setup the long open circuit team and one to have a leisure ride in the deep part. Paolo and Mara did the same. For more details, see the dive reports.
Everyone had to be out of the water at 18:00. The presentation that we had planned over six months ago was scheduled for 19:00. With so much diving it was easy to forget that this was the purpose of this weekend!
We all had a very nice meal at la Grande Prade with diving video in the background, followed by a 2 hour presentation (was it really that long? I did not notice!). Our special guests were the landowner of the spring, the mayor of la Cassagne and the previous mayor with their spouses. They had been asking for the information we provided for a long time, so they were extremely pleased with the delivery. It is very important for us EKPP to give something back to the local authorities that make it possible for us to dive these caves. It makes future access much easier to get for us and for the diving community in general.
In the midst of the presentation of our research in Coly.
After a long evening everybody was glad to get some sleep as some were going to start driving at 04:00 in the morning! A long way to get back home, but well worth it since this was a successful outing on all counts.