Projects > Gourneyras 2003 (June)
Push Dive
Latest update: March 18, 2004
Micha makes it look very easy to deal with all this gear. Brand new red suit, one of the many things to be tested during this dive. Viktor helping him out.
We woke up in the morning around 05:30 and it was now a lot cooler than when we went to bed. Some of Team were already boiling water, others were lowering the last pieces of gear needed at the cave entrance. Our goal was to check the cave in a low water condition and deposit some gear at the end point of the French teams for our next trip. We had the usual pasta for breakfast to fill up the carbohydrates and then we walked down to the site.
I also tested my new DUI drysuit on this dive and also an original Tekna DV100 Motor for one of my Gavins. This time we were both using our NiMh canisters since Reinhard tested them on previous dives. He also had a new Solaris-Backup light in his pocket to test this unit down to 100 m and some small stuff to try out.
I was a bit tense before the dive, no clue why, but as soon as we descended we had very good visibility and enjoyed the dive. We picked up the Trimix-stage at 21m where we deposited our 50/25 which we used for the initial descent. Then we geared up with the Reels, stages, scooters, etc.
Finally we carried 3 80 cu ft aluminum stages and 3 scooters each. Immediately I noticed that this Tekna was a bit slow and so Reinhard had to adjust his speed accordingly. I will send this motor to George for a rewind I thought.
Micha on his way down. He is at 45m and picks up 2 stages, a reel and 2 scooters.
We enjoyed the visibility, which was around 25 m but as we passed the 80 m point the visibility went down to around 15 m. Still, we could see the huge halls and sometimes we could not see the ceiling above us. This cave has by far the nicest tunnel in Europe I thought.
We stopped and deposited the first scooter and the first stage and changed to the deep mix. After exchanging an OK we headed for the 100 m point, passed it and went upwards where the end of the line of the French divers was. We deposited our second 80 m stages there and also left the exploration reel.
On the way back we picked up the left behind scooters and stages and changed to the shallower 80 m mix. After scootering for around 10-15 minutes Reinhard signaled "something is wrong". I stopped and he asked about my number of scooters. Damned, I had lost the long tube with the Tekna motor. Because it was so slow, I had continued with the Magnum and towed the long tube. Only the tow-cord was there and I realized that the knot had opened. So we went back and searched for the scooter. We found it where I had clipped it on and so we scootered out. Too bad we now would not meet Hervé and Brus, who were surveying the first 700 m.
Reinhard in black and Micha in red, in the last meter of a slow ascent from the Habitat at 9m to the surface, at a pace 33cm per minute.
After coming through the "lower window" around 700 m we saw their line-arrow and knew they already were on the way out. We arrived at deco, plugged in the heating and started our decompression.
This time we shortened the 15 m stop and cut the 12 m Stop in half. Instead of 180 minutes on O2 we only did a bit more then 100 minutes. This was at the limit in my opinion, so no way we will make it any shorter in the future. So besides having a substantial bottom time due to the slow scooter, depositing stuff and searching for the lost scooter, we still did our shortest dive in this cave.
I am really looking forward to dive there again in July!