Projects > Gourneyras 2003 (July)
Survey Dive
Latest update: September 8, 2007
Brus is getting into his harness with the help of Robert. It is 8 o'clock in the morning, the temperature is rising...
The goal for this dive was clear. Hervé and I want to reach the last point of our survey from the dive in June and continue the survey to the shaft which drops to 110 m at 1050 m in the cave.
We prepared our rebreathers on the special-tables in the pool. The support divers brought our oxygen, trimix 35/35 and trimix 17/60 to the different deco depths. Also they placed the four Gavin scooters and a heating tube from Hervé at 45 m. Thank you for the good job guys.
Next morning we woke up at 6 am and Hervé got a big warm pasta breakfast. Since I have problems with warm stuff in the morning, I ate some cold waffles with high carbohydrate level. Last time I had no breakfast and got cold during the dive, this should not happen again.
When I arrived at the pool area, I was surprised by a present. A perfect sized white cloth with my name stitched on it covered my rig. Give your mom a big thank you from me, Hervé.
When Reinhard and Micha descended, we started kitting up. Ward helped me, when I got ready. It was his first time at a project, but he did a really good job. Around 8:30 am we started our dive. The vis in the pool was around 3-4 m, but after the first meter the vis opened up to 15 - 20 m. I like these moments, when we enter the cave, the daylight was gone and the darkness was only broken by the beam from the HIDs, special in these huge cave.
This is Brus and Hervé going in. Ralph has been patiently waiting at the mouth of the cave to take this nice picture and many others. Good job Ralph!
We dived to 21 m with trimix 50/25 and changed there to the trimix 17/60. Everything went fine and we arrived at 45 m, where the Gavins were waiting for us. When we were ready, we hit the trigger from the scooter and arrived after 13 minutes at the end of our first survey-dive. The vis was very good during this fly and we could enjoy the enormous dimensions of the tunnel.
When we started with the survey at 650 m, Hervé got focused on the main survey technique and I surveyed the tunnel-dimensions at every survey point from Hervé. After some meters we got to the restriction in the cave. Not a real restriction for a diver, you could drive through with a van, but for the Gourneyras it was a very very small tunnel profile. Behind this restriction the cave opened up again.
Everything went very smooth and after 49 minutes we found a scooter-tail on the right tunnel wall on the ground. I saw Hervé, who shook his head. I guessed that we thought the same thing…
Then we got to a big hall and in the middle of this hall the shaft to 110 m started. It was not a round shaft like in many other caves, more a big cleft. A truck could easily fall in it, without hitting the walls.
Hervé in the last meter of his decompression. He tested his new heating tube in preparation for Doux de Coly. He also tested a new short roll of duct tape (on his left forearm) to see if it could be used to patch a minor leak underwater. The answer was: yes.
We had a long look from 80 m in the shaft and around in the big hall. Then we made the last survey point, shook hand as a mutual congratulation and turned around. Nobody had to call the dive, we both knew, that our job was finished. I was very happy on the way back, because everything went perfect and we did our job.
Very soon after arriving at the deep deco stops the first support-team showed up and took our Gavins away. We where frequently visited by the support divers during the deco. It was not really necessary, but it helps a lot to have something else than the watch to look at. On our last stop at 6 m we ate some Sports gel from Hervé and had to put our mouthpieces out of the mouth. A bigger amount of bubbles got to the surface. This was not normal for rebreather divers and within the next minute we had two support-diver, Jiles and Robert around us, who checked us. This is the way it should be. After 220 minutes we surfaced and stayed in the pool for another 30 minutes.
A beautiful dive in my favorite cave with an excellent buddy in a perfect team!