Projects > Doux de Coly 04 (June)
Video and Support
Latest update: June 27, 2004
This picture is a very good representation of the stress endured by Michael and Reinhard during this project. For a change...
There must be something wrong I thought when packing my car for a weekend-trip to the Doux de Coly. I picked up the phone and called Reinhard: "Hi Reinhard. Is it possible that my car is almost empty even while we go for a cave-dive in France?" He laughed and told me that he had gone over his checklist at least three times and that he had the same feeling. Ok, we planned to be there mainly to try out some things and to talk to the locals about the cave, as we would hold a presentation at la Grande Prade in La Cassagne.
Since I flew in from Stockholm the night I drove up to France, I was completely exhausted and had to sleep in the car for some hours and did not arrive on site until Friday morning. We were scheduled to dive in the afternoon and give support to Goetz and Thomas and also to Hervé and Sandro, the two rebreather teams.
IR Camera inside the housing, ready for the first cave dive.
Hoffi joined us for doing some filming and so we started in the afternoon as a team of 3: Reinhard, Hoffi and myself. We did our dive on open circuit using Trimix 21/35 and without deco gas. The scooters brought us to the shaft in around 8 minutes and the visibility was good. Reinhard had the new infrared camera and Hoffi a normal underwater video camera. I went directly to the first team of Goetz and Thomas and offered them some drinks and checked if they needed anything. Reinhard took 7 stages from them and I took another 3. After showing Hoffi around the shaft and again checking with the decompressing divers, we left for the exit.
As soon as we arrived at the concrete platform our gear was lifted out of the water and we got out of the way for the next support team.
Reinhard prepares the video scooters. All designed and made by himself, including the choice of colours :-).
On Saturday morning during the briefing we agreed on doing a video dive to film the shaft. The ropes had been removed and so we could film the complete shaft without any ropes or equipment in it. To have enough light in the cave Andrea and Reinhard would take a 50W HID light each and I would carry another one. Hoffi would film again, so we started with 4 divers.
After scootering to the shaft we switched on the HID lights and I placed one of them at the bottom of the shaft. The visibility was not perfect but we would give it a try. Reinhard and Mara then dove down the shaft in circles, lighting up the walls and Hoffi was above them filming downwards. We took time to simply enjoy this spectacular shaft and rode out on our scooters again.
It was nice to see the team in action and to show up there with such a small amount of gear. So we had more time to talk to each other and to enjoy ourselves. A pretty cool experience for Reinhard and myself.