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Goul du Pont & Goul de Tannerie (Feb 2003)

Latest update: March 18, 2004

By Michael Waldbrenner

Originally the plan was to continue exploring the Gourneyras cave and surveying the first km of cave there. So part of the team, e.g. Ian Pinkstone from the UK, went there Wednesday night. The first SMS I got was "raining heavily", so I was not to happy.

Around the next morning we heard that the cable car had been built and that people would soon do a checkout dive.

Brus, Wido and Ian did a dive down to 45 m to check if the bad visibility was only in the entrance pool, but it was getting even worse deeper down.

Altough one could easily dive in a small cave with a visibilty of 5 m, the big tunnel of this cave in the department of Herault in southern France are just to big to be explored in such bad visibilty.

I taked to Reinhard, who was already on the way to pick me up and we decided to follow the advice of our team members not to dive at the Gourneyras.

Since everyone was already in France we decided to do some training dives at the Goul de Tannerie and Goul du Pont. So we unloaded most of the scooters and the habitat at my office and left with the single rebreather frames with a deeper mix.

The Goul du Pont is located in Bourg St Andéol, a nice city near Montelimar in France. We arrived at 3 in the morning and stayed in the Hotel Moderne in the center of the city.

The rooms were very nice and we had a secured parking lot. After having had breakfast we went directly to the cave entrance. I should write "cave-entrances" since it is not only the Goul du Pont, but also the Goul de Tannerie.

We talked to the mayor about permission to dive and we had a go. Hervé, Jiles and Gertjan did the first dive in Goul du Pont to check out the conditions. Jiles and Gertjan directly after did a second dive as a setup, followed by Reinhard and Michael for a deeper setup.

During that time almost everyone arrived and also dived at the Goul de Tannerie. Below you find the dive roster. Christian and Wido kept track about diving and safety issues:

 

Friday (Surface manager: Christian)
Team	Cave	Task	In	Out	IWT
Brus/Wido/Ian	Gourneyras	Info	15:00	15:50	50 mins
Herve/Jiles/Gertjan	Goul du Pont	Setup	14:00	14:25	25 mins
Jiles/Gertjan	Goul du Pont	Setup	14:55	15:30	35 mins
Brus/Ralph	Goul de Tannerie	Fun	15:15	16:15	30 mins
Silvia/Victor/Andy	Goul de Tannerie	Fun	15:45	16:45	60 mins
Reinhard/Michael	Goul du Pont	Setup & Info	16:15	16:45	30 mins
Wido/Ian	Goul de Tannerie	Fun	16:35	17:35	60 mins
Brus/Herve/Victor	Goul du Pont	Setup & Info	17:30	18:15	45 mins
Saturday (Surface manager: Wido/Christian)
Team	Cave	Task	In	Out	IWT
Reinhard/Michael	Goul de Pont	Explore	11:04	16:10	306 mins
Brus/Herve	Goul de Pont	Explore	11:22	14:44	202 mins
Ian/Ralph	Goul de Pont	Support	12:22	12:40	18 mins
Ian/Ralph	Goul de Pont	Support	13:18	13:38	20 min
Jiles/Gertjan	Goul de Pont	Support	14:25	14:29	4 mins
Jiles/Gertjan	Goul de Pont	Support	14:36	14:59	23 mins
Jiles/Gertjan	Goul de Pont	Support	15:20	15:38	18 mins
Ian/Ralph	Goul de Tannerie	Fun			90 mins
Ian (on RB80)/Brus	Goul de Pont	Fun			10 mins
Silvia/Ian	Goul de Pont	Fun			25 mins
Andy/Victor	Goul de Pont	Fun			50 mins
Silvia/Viktor	Goul de Tannerie	Fun
Jiles/Wido	Goul de Tannerie	Fun			90 mins

On Friday evening we had dinner at the hotel and went to bed early. On Saturday Brus and Hervé did a dive to around 87 m to check out a side tunnel and Reinhard and myself went to 124 m to find a scooterable tunnel there.

Later at night we had dinner together with the mayor of Bourg St Andeol. We would like to thank him and the owner of the hotel very much for their hospitality. We sat down at the bar and were invited to more than one round of drinks.

So this weekend a lot of people could dive together on different levels to improve skills, knowledge and to have fun.

On Sunday morning we all packed and went home.