Projects > Gourneyras 2004 (July)
Overview
Latest update: June 5, 2008
Carrying the habitat is together with the double frames transport, the most energy demanding task.
During the first weekend of July 2004, a dozen people from the EKPP came down for another Gourneyras exploration attempt. What follows is the account from the three people who took up the job of surface manager.
Friday: Gertjan's account
At the morning briefing on Friday, the surface manager was 'elected'. Since I have done it several times before, I volunteered to do it this time again. When you know what to do, it can be an easy job. All depends on the occasion.
Due to the late arrival of the whole team, we had just one day to build the cable-car, lower all the gear, set up and place all the gear and as a bonus, get Silvia and Viktor in the water in order for them to make a RB dive of 60 min. bottom time.
Because we're always seeking for things to improve, Jiles came up with a different "barrel": a 240 liter garbage container. Because of the bigger volume the loading and unloading of the container would be much easier and since it could contain more gear each ride up or down, it saved a lot of time.
Everything went smooth during the day, and at 16h20 Silvia and Victor descended for their dive. In the meantime other teams placed the scooters, stages and the habitat for Michael and Reinhard while checking on Silvia and Victor during deco at the same time!!
This week-end was the first time that we were using Jiles' container. So we also had the older smaller blue one and could transport even more!
Also the placing of the habitat went easier than before due to a good idea of Ward who volunteered for this job; he suggested clipping the 4 sets of weights, which Michael and Reinhard use during their ascent from the habitat, to the corners at the bottom of the habitat. This way when some air is put into the habitat, it wouldn't roll over, but just ascend against the ceiling. As someone said later, "we could handle it like a balloon."
Around 20h00 everybody gathered around the barbecue for dinner and during the debriefing, Michael and Reinhard told us of their plan for the dive next day and the support team were assigned. At around 22h30 everybody went to bed.
While being with a 'small' group this time, everything went very efficiently and smoothly. Thanks to everyone involved.
Sat. am shift: Ward's account
Today is Saturday the 10th of July, push-dive day at the Gourneyras.
Everybody is awake early. Briefing was held the night before; we are all having a relaxed breakfast.
Viktor is helping Michael with his gearing up for the push dive.
The team arrives at the pool at 07:45. Reinhard and Michael immediately start dressing and are suited up at 08.07. Viktor and Sylvia are assisting them with the breathers, ready at 08:15.
08:24 Start of the push-dive. Ralph and Brus are already in the pool to make underwater pictures of Reinhard and Michael's departure, and are accompanying them until 45 meters where they collect all the gear that has been brought in by the support divers yesterday.
Three hours from now the first support team has to check if they are back. After this check every next half hour another check until they arrive at the 45 meter point. After arrival the support divers have to do a check every hour or as much as needed.
11:30 check 1 by Gertjan & Jiles, not back. #12.00 check 2 by Gertjan & Jiles; they surface loaded with scooters, reels and stages at 12:16 to report that Reinhard and Michael are back safely at the 45 meter point. #13.00 check 3 by Gertjan & Jiles.
Silvia makes some hot tea, which is transported in the food canister to M&R. We also put a note into the canister, which asked if they needed anything else, and their expected time to enter the habitat. At 13:11 Gertjan & Jiles surface to report that they are at 30 meters, Michael asked for tea, which Jiles & Gertjan could immediately give him, even McDonald's drive-thru is not that fast! Time to enter the habitat not known yet.
After this I handed over the surface manager duty to Hervé.
Sat. pm shift: Hervé's account
Vincent Prié is showing us an impressive magnification of the beast that he is looking for. A mollusk is actually more like the size of a few grain of salt!
At 14:00, after a nice long training run in the cirque de Navacelle, the little paradise where the Gourneyras is situated and after a short bath in the river (brrrrr!), I took over from Ward as surface manager. This was my first surface manager experience at Gourneyras. It made sense since that weekend I was not diving at all. Gourneyras being a logistically challenging place, most team members who drive sometimes over 1000 km to help out carrying gear want to dive this exceptional cave. Since I have had the privilege to dive there so many times, it was only appropriate to let others have as much in-water time as possible.
As soon as I started my shift, Vincent Prié came down with a container that he wanted us to fill with sand. Vincent is a local French guy that I met through our gear recovery expeditions in the river Vis. His purpose today was to find mollusks for his thesis work. A few minutes after Vincent came down I got the information that Michael and Reinhard were at 15 meters of depth already. Time was short. So I asked Ralph and Chaled to first check on our push divers and then fill the sand container. They did both jobs very successfully. At 14:35 they surfaced with the container full of sand and water.
At 15:00 I sent two teams down to help Michael and Reinhard out of their rebreathers and in the habitat. Brus and Marcel took care of Michael. Ralph and Chaled took care of Reinhard. At 15:13 Brus and Marcel surfaced with Michael's double rebreather. At 15:20 Ralph and Chaled came up with Reinhard's. The timing was perfect. Great job from both teams. Having a senior diver take a relatively newer guy to do the job with them so that they can learn is a really great way to further the team know-how.
This is Ralph, our official photographer. But this time he could not escape being caught himself.
But all this was secondary stuff. We had to run a third task concurrently with the habitat and the mollusks: the food. A lot of planning goes into this one. Our push divers compose a menu a few days ahead, get all the ingredients and ask very nicely during the briefing the day prior to the push dive for a chef cook to volunteer. This time it was Silvia who took up the job. She heads a hotel in Austria so that is part of her line of work - Micha and Reinhard would get a professional level meal this time! So about 15 minutes before the habitat entry I asked Silvia if she could start the cooking. The menu was: an Asian rice snack as entrée, followed by a grilled lamb côtelette, then Penne with tomato-mozzarella sauce and finally water melon as desert.
At 15:30 Ralph and Chaled went down for more sand collection. Since the first collection was so efficient, Vincent came back with another container twice as big as the first one. The job was done in 20 minutes. By that time the entrée of Micha and Reinhard's meal was ready. They had had plenty of time to get settled in the habitat, so now was a great time to send down their meal. It was 15:45 and they had had breakfast at 6:30! Fortunately they take a few gels and fruit juice bags in their drysuit pockets.
While the food was brought to Micha and Reinhard, Viktor and I disassembled the double rebreather setups and placed all parts in dedicated bags that could be taken away. When we were done, the two double frames were ready to be carried up and hooked to the cable car. Those frames and the habitat are the two most painful items to transport.
From left to right: Marcel, Jiles, Brus and Paolo. They are manning the road end of the cable-car.
We often focus on what goes on in the water, but at Gourneyras most of the work happens out of the water. While checking regularly on Micha and Reinhard, cooking for them and collecting sand, we were also bringing up a lot of gear: quite a few hundreds of kilos had to go back up on the dirt road, 70 meters higher than the water level. On the road for the whole day we had Christian, Nick, and Paolo. Christian and Nick were joined by various team members to pick up the gear from the cable and place it on the road. Paolo did us the favor to use his brand new 4WD vehicle to pull up the cable car. Down by the water, everybody took turns to fill the gear container repeatedly with all the stuff that was not needed anymore.
At 16:00, the grilled lamb côtelette was à point so it was brought to Micha and Reinhard without further ado. Shortly after that, since there was no need for two teams in the water, Marcel and Brus had an hour break so that they could contemplate our Chef preparing the next course: Penne with tomato-mozzarella sauce, which was ready to be brought down at around 16:30.
At 17:00 we needed two teams in the water again because Micha and Reinhard would come out of the habitat very soon. So I asked Ward to dive with Brus and Gertjan and Jiles to take over from Ralph and Chaled. All went seamlessly, one of the virtues of our DIR system. Since everybody uses the same gear configuration it was no problem to swap teams.
When we saw the pool on Friday morning it was fairly milky. But by Saturday, after a few hundreds of bubbles were released by divers, its true colour was revealed.
At 17:10 Gertjan and Jiles brought the desert down: watermelon finely cut and prepared by Silvia. That was just in time since Micha and Reinhard started to move out of the habitat at 17:17. The two support teams were there to assist each diver as usual and at 17:30, after a nice and slow ascent, we saw our two push divers surface happily. They chatted with us all about their dive for about 45 minutes while they relaxed by floating in the water. That gave time for bubbles to make their way out of their tissues in an orderly manner. Towards the end of that time Jiles, Gertjan, Brus and Ward brought up the habitat.
At 19:00, thanks to impeccable teamwork, all the equipment was up on the road, the cable car rig was removed and the pool surroundings were cleaned from any trace of our weekend activity there. In a grand total of 36 hours, and without rush, our small team made it possible for one rebreather team to explore the cave to its end, another rebreather team to do a one hour bottom time dive and another one to take underwater pictures and to (last but not least!) collect several kilos of sand inside the cave for a French University research project.
I am very proud to be part of such a team and wish to congratulate everybody for their outstanding work and spirits.