Projects > Source de Vis 2007 (September)

Surface Manager

Latest update: October 6, 2007

By Anne-Marie van Ginneken

The sun was shining and the day promised to become warm and beautiful at Cirque de Navacelles when we walked to the cave on that early Saturday morning. After a quick 'second breakfast' together with the group that had slept in the cave, Reinhard and Markus briefed us about their plans for that day. The expected dive-time would be between 3 and 4 hours with a total in-water-time of 7 to 8 hours.

The rebreather sets were taken to the water which looked crystal clear and Markus, assisted by Hoffi and Torsten, was the first to gear up in the small pool area. After solving a minor lighting problem, Markus was able to make room for Reinhard to get into his rebreather. Being four of us in the water, the pool was absolutely crowded. A little past 10 o'clock in the morning both push divers descended through the crack to pick up stages and scooters, to check the rebreathers and initiate their dive.

Since the first meet& greet was about 3 hours away, the support team had enough time to have another breakfast, walk back to the camp to get extra stages and the photo equipment, and enjoy the sun. Unfortunately, the two surpise musicians that showed up unexpectedly and gave away a private performance for us the day before, did not show up for an encore- but instead, we were treated by a gorgeous view on the river.

A little behind schedule, Hoffi and Torsten made their first dive to see if the push divers were back already. Five minutes later, they came up with no sight of Reinhard and Markus whatsoever. The next check was planned 45 minutes later but again there was no sign of our push divers.

From now on, every 15 minutes there would be a team going down since we expected them soon afterwards. At the third check, the team met the push divers at 36 meters and took over the deep stages and scooters to bring them to the surface. Torsten brought a little note from Markus saying 'everything ok' and 'line added', which brought a big smile to all our faces.

Next, the push divers were provided with some drinks and more stages were taken to the surface. For the people in the cave, their next job started i.e. hauling gear to the dry part of the cave, dismantling the scooters and stages and getting everything out of the cave. Since there were only five of us, we decided to bring the scooters back to the base camp and leave the rest of the equipment for later.

JP and Jutta took the next turn in bringing up the last tanks -except for the oxygen- and have a photo shoot of the push divers at their last stops. After seven hours, Markus and Reinhard surfaced with a huge smile on their faces.

Markus came out first, receiving well deserved congratulations on his first and successful push dive. Reinhard stayed in the water a little longer to help Jutta and JP dismantling the rebreather sets. Taking them apart in the water makes it a lot easier for the support team to get the sets out of the water. After that job was done, Reinhard also left the cave to relax and to eat some cookies. :-)

Besides adding extra line to this cave, we took the opportunity to set another record during this project. While getting all equipment out, Markus' backplate fell back into the cave unpurposely. Since it would take a few minutes to bring a stage to the water, JP rescued the backplate with a impressive free-dive. So, who knows? It might even have been the first free-dive-trial in Source de Vis. ;-)

Constrained by time and resources, we decided to bring back to the base camp everything except the tanks. Around nine in the evening we finished off this successful day in a restaurant, where the two push divers answered all our questions about their dive.

Personally, I would like to thank all team members for an successful project with a very relaxed atmosphere and lots of fun. And of course, another big thanks to our push divers for making this an even better project by adding extra line in Source de Vis.

Anne-Marie