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What are the odds?
What are the odds of two cave divers losing all three of their lights on the same day. Gotta’ be something like a billion to one, right? But that is exactly what happened. On the first dive of the day, Vickie’s primary light started to flicker, and neither of her backup lights worked properly. That caused us to have to climb out of a 30 foot hole, lugging out our double steel tanks.
That was fluky enough, but just a minute ago, my primary light started acting like a 70s disco strobe; literally blinking on and off twice a second. I was second diver in a team of four. I signaled Vickie in the lea, she saw my psychedelic canister light and my upturned thumb, “time to head out.” She returned the thumb signal and we turned around.
Little did I know that within a couple of minutes, both my (very expensive) backup lights would fail to strike. That can’t be good. This wasn’t a training exercise, it was real. Now it’s time to apply what we’ve learned to get ourselves out of this cave safely!
Finishing Up Cave Training (hopefully)
I completed my cavern and intro-to-cave course in November of 2006. Frankly, I found intro perhaps the most difficult instruction I had ever undertaken; it was tougher than boot camp; learning to pilot an air plane; skydiving or bungee diving. It was both physically demanding and required intense mental focus. I had originally wanted to go all the way through full cave at the same time but that turned out to be impractical. So, here I am, a few months later suiting up to go back into the Florida caves with Rick from Genesis Diving Institute, hopefully to complete my cave diving instruction. I had traveled from my home in Before getting suited up, we sat at a picnic table and reviewed procedures, gas matching and the dive plan. This was significantly different from the preparation regime for the cavern or intro courses. We were planning to make jumps between cave lines, something not done in the intro course. We were going to make a circuit at Ginnie Springs, or at least as much of a circuit as one-third of our air would allow. We did some review line work around the trees and practiced tying off a jump reel before actually getting wet. That went well and I felt reasonably confident about the coming dive. Rick from Loaded with gear, we hiked the relatively short distance to the water. Sadly, the double 120s were still as heavy as the last time I’d had them strapped to my back. I was sort of hoping they might have somehow magically gotten lighter. Of course, this is akin to taking a sniff of milk, discovering it is sour and putting it back it the refrigerator hoping it turns fresh tomorrow. Still, hope springs eternal. We slipped into the water, and made our pre-dive checks, matched gas and did a bubble check. On the way to the “ear” (the drop down to the cave itself) we performed out of air drills. This is one of the most significant differences between cave diving and open water diving; when going into a cave, we practice the most critical emergency skills each and every time. I’ve come to believe that should be standard for all open water dives, something I’ll be discussing with my regular dive buddies. As we all know, in a crisis, it is the poorly learned survival skills that desert us first. (During training in a different course the next week, a real life incident proved how critical this training is, but that’s another story.) Because of the nature of this course, I am not going to write about each dive. Rather, I will touch on some of the more interesting dives (and there were a couple that were very interesting) and deal with more of the philosophy of the course. The first day of diving
“I’m packing a lot more gas.” –Rick I had been tasked with leading the first dive. On the way into the cave I immediately remembered that I’d forgotten just how impressive that flow coming out of the ear can be. I was literally fighting my way down, while trying to find a suitable first tie off in the open water zone. To further complicate the operation, there was what looked like a dozen lines already tied off pretty much all over the opening. This was in stark contrast to training in November when there might have been one or two reels marking the path to open water. This looked like a traffic jam of assorted reels and lines, all seemingly trying to snag us. My first tie off point was a bit high, so I moved it down at Rick’s urging. I made a second tie off and then continued into the cave zone intent on making the final tie on the line attached to the sign. One problem, the gold line was no longer attached to the sign. Someone has moved the gold line (to mess with a student no doubt). First lesson of the day, never assume the cave will be the same as the last time you were in it. I looked for the gold line. Vickie looked for the gold line. I could hear (or at least feel) Rick chuckling somewhere in the reaches of my mind. We looked some more. I had been looking low and began looking up. Eventually it was located; It had been moved several feet up the wall, close to the ceiling. The final tie-off in place, I leave my reel and steer us into the cave. In point of fact, the dive went exactly as planned; the jumps were smooth with Vickie and me taking turns, essentially leapfrogging. We hit thirds on the first dive before we completed the circuit, even though we had completed all the jumps. At this level of training it is Rick’s policy to plan for the dive and allow students to make the dive. The first half of the dive is straight forward, drills happen on the way out. From a learning process, this makes a lot of sense. Students have some idea when they are going to get hit with a practice emergency but they also have a reasonable chance to practice skills during the initial phase of each dive. It is also clear that “we ain’t in intro anymore, Toto” The fact is, apprentice and full cave classes differ dramatically from the cavern and intro courses. During the initial training, the emphasis was clearly on skills. I remember Rick tossing a lot at me during those intro dives, which spawned my habit of swearing at him through my regulator. Ah, the good old days. That made intro a very physical course. Apprentice and especially full cave are far more about the mental aspects. Essentially, Rick expected us to have our skills down pat; so now it is time to put them to practical use. During the more advanced courses, the emphasis is on decision-making and utilizing the skills we had learned in the more rudimentary courses. Believe it or not, that was a hard leap to make. We now had to defend our decisions in the infamous debriefing sessions. “It was a rocky start”
I had done my best to practice skills while away from training but clearly I had lost some of my edge. I felt that the second dive of the day had gone better. I was still inconsistent, but I certainly felt I was improving. On the way back to the hotel that night, we got a call from a friend who must have asked Rick how things went, “it was a rocky start,” was Rick’s reply. I’m pretty sure he said that within my earshot to give me a little goose…you know…something to work with. That type of thing can be motivating or demoralizing. In this case, it was motivating. Thanks in part to some clever tips from Oh my God, they killed Ricky (again)!
During the apprentice portion of the course, on one dive, Rick moved away from us. He had been bringing up the rear, moved around us and then sort of disappeared. More than once during recent dives he had sort of drifted away and one (or more often both) of us would signal him to “keep him on the right track.” This time I thought he had moved ahead of us, planning some horrendous drill no doubt. I was swimming along, waiting for him to pounce at any moment but that never happened; I thought I saw his light up ahead but that turned out to be a reflection. When we got to the primary reel, we discovered no Rick. We looked around and began a (much too late) search. A moment later, we saw a light coming from the depths of the cave. A second after that, we could see it was Rick; OK signals all around and we headed for a short deco stop and then to the surface. Once out of the water, Rick said, “I’d let you debrief me, but I’m dead again.” It was a play on his now famous line, “I’d debrief you but I’m dead.” “Oh my God, they killed Ricky again,” I said, “those B***ards!” The jokes led to a discussion about the dive. Vickie and I had viewed Rick as an instructor first and a member of the dive team second. Lesson learned: everyone on the team is a team member all the time. Period. We won’t be killing Ricky anymore. Making Decisions Early on in the training, Rick made it clear that he expected us to make our own decisions on the dives. The hand holding portion of our training was over. He needed to assess how each of us handled things and, more importantly, how we would handle things without training wheels later on.
All in all, most dives went well. On one dive, Rick decided we would take a route requiring us to run a line deep into the cave, away from the gold line. It would be a tricky dive because we would be in an area more prone to silting and we would be handling our own line. I was leading and we made a normal descent and headed into the cave. At one point, we explored a small room with a keyhole type opening at the far end. After a few minutes delicately working into the room, I decided the opening was too small to enter. We slowly backed out, with Rick and Vickie tending to the line, and then we moved on. I mention this because it was an important lesson for me. In point of fact, I could have made it through that relatively small keyhole, but I also decided that, wearing back mounted doubles, it would have been difficult. At that moment, I believed going into that hole, even though I could see a much larger room on the other side, was beyond my comfort level. It wasn’t part of the plan, hence my decision to back out. We continued the dive, turning at thirds. On the way out, Rick became “tangled and panicked.” He signaled to Vickie, now in the lead, and we began the procedures to free him. Of course, during this emergency, I experienced an “OOA situation” that required Vickie and I to share air all the way out. In the debriefing we talked about the decisions we had made. In the cave, I had wanted to cut the reel line to free Rick more quickly. (Remember, it was our reel, not a gold line, so a cut would have been relatively simple; snip, free Rick, and then a re-tie.) I had failed to adequately communicate that so we went through a more strenuous procedure of untangling Rick. Both procedures would have been effective, of course. During each safety or deco stop, Rick indicated a valve drill. During one debrief, I mentioned to Rick that I had come up with a new “hand signal” for valve drills. It involved a well known, universal gesture, in this case given with both hands. During subsequent dives, Rick would indicate a valve drill using this new signal. The Best Laid Plans
Perhaps the most eventful dive of the week was a traverse from Peacock’s Orange Sink to Challenge Sink. Challenge Sink is about 1800 feet into the cave. It is a natural opening and our plan was to attempt the traverse on our first thirds. If we made it, we would then head back after reevaluating thirds. If we made it to more than the halfway point, on the reevaluated third, we could then continue back to Our team consisted of Vickie, Rick, Bryan joining us, and of course, Rick and here’s what actually happened. We made it to Challenge, barely, on our first thirds. Both Vickie and I hit the sink just as we would have had to turn the dive. we headed up, did a safety stop and surfaced. Unfortunately, as we were heading to the surface, Vickie’s primary light began to dim and die. Her backup lights both suffered failures. The first backup was dim and essentially useless; her second backup failed to strike at all, as I recall. At the surface we evaluated our situation: We were at thirds, which normally would have allowed us to re-evaluate our air and head back. If we made it to the halfway point, we would have reverted to our original plan and been able to continue back to Orange Sink. But Vickie’s lights were clearly a problem. The decision wasn’t much of a decision at all; we could not head back into the cave with light failure, we would have to climb out. There was a famous serial magazine story in the 1930s in which the hero, a sort of Indiana Jones character falls into a pit full of snakes at then end of one issue. He breaks both arms and both legs. Before the next installment is written, the publisher and writer get into a disagreement about money. The writer refuses to submit another installment of the serial until the dispute is resolved.
The publisher was a pretty stubborn guy, so he fires the writer, figuring he owns the rights to the story and character. He plans to just hire another writer to finish the serial. A dozen other writers try to come up with a plausible ending, but none of them can figure how to get the hero out of the pit, what with the broken arms and legs.
In the meantime, the magazine’s subscribers are clamoring for the ending. The advertisers are threatening to pull their ads and the publisher is getting desperate.
The publisher has no choice but to go back to the original writer, give him a big raise, and beg him to finish the story. The writer busts the publisher’s chops for a while but eventually agrees. They sign a new deal, the publisher hands over a big check and the writer gets to work on the ending.
About a week later an envelope arrives at the publisher’s office. It is the much anticipated ending. A secretary brings the envelope to the publisher, editors and staff membersf gather around as the publisher opens the envelope and reads the first line of the manuscript.
It begins, “Once out of the pit…”
Once Out of the Sink… This was the sort of exercise that instructors apparently love. Rick told us, once we were out of this 30 foot hole in the ground, that we could have also just gone and gotten more lights. After all, our vehicles were nearby. Of course, that might not have been as much of a learning experience. In fact, it was a great learning moment. I have some experience climbing and hold a basic climbing certification. But the dive and subsequent climb out of the pit did illustrate that there are multiple ways to solve a problem. What Are the Odds?
That evening, we were headed to This is a relatively dark cave with water that appeared somewhat tannic to me. The dive itself was going well with Vickie leading, me in the second position, then Rick and We headed into the cave and the dive was going very well. The jumps had gone smoothly, gear was functioning well and it was a fine time was had by all….until… Until my primary light began to blink on and off like some psychotic strobe light from a psycho 70s movie. I immediately signaled Vickie, we turned the dive and started out. I had made the last jump and pulled my reel. My light continued to strobe but it was still throwing light so it was usable, although extremely annoying. At this point, it was clearly appropriate to turn the dive but this was merely inconvenient, nothing more. The situation got a bit more complicated a few minutes later when both my back up lights failed to strike. I was now the second diver of the day to experience three light failures. Vickie and I worked as a team to exit the cave, maintaining touch contact the entire time. We decided to leave the remaining jumps and the primary real, considering the light failure situation. When we got back to the beginning of the gold line, there was a slightly odd moment; night had fallen and when I looked up, I still saw black. Intellectually I knew the reason I wasn’t seeing light, but emotionally, I would have rather seen the glow of the surface. We exited the cave, changed out of our gear and headed to find a restaurant for our final debrief. A couple of hours later, Rick bestowed full cave certifications upon us. EPILOGUE My primary light, made by a major cave equipment manufacturer is about 5 months old. I maintain it religiously, including charging it each night and sometimes between dives. I had charged it the night before and it showed a full charge in the morning, according to the indicator light on the charger. The light itself had never given me any problem and never failed to strike. The backup lights are 10w HIDs manufactured by a major technical dive company. One was a Christmas present, the other I purchased in January because I wanted matching backup lights. They cost about $360 each. I consider these lights high tech equipment. I carefully check them daily, striking them and then letting them burn for about 5 minutes before extinguishing them. I do this about a half hour before a dive so they bulbs have time to cool before going into the water. For batteries, per the manufacturer’s recommendations, I use Eveready Alkaline Lithium batteries. So, how do three expensive, high tech lights fail on a single dive? Good question, and one of the reasons I have waited to publish this report is I wanted the answers. There is a lesson here for all of us. Each light failed for a different reason. The 24w HID primary light itself did not actually fail, the charger did. Unfortunately, there was no way to deduce that. The charger acted exactly as it should; indicating a full charge via a green light in the morning after a full night of ‘charging.’ Unfortunately, the charger was not charging. In fact, it may not have been charging for days. The light itself is good for hours of use on a single charge so it is not clear when the charger failed. The only way to know that the charger was not working properly would have been to check it with a voltage meter. Of course, when traveling, there is the need to evaluate whether to bring a piece of gear. I don’t have a voltage meter for this light, but I did consider purchasing one. I didn’t because this gear is so new and I was trying to save space in travel cases. Obviously, I am reevaluating that decision. I am curious as to how many cave divers check their lights with a meter to ensure they are properly charging? Immediately upon returning home I was on the phone with the manufacturer about the light failing. They asked that I send the light and charger for evaluation. They have since returned the light along with a new charger. I still have confidence in the light itself but I wish there was some sort of failsafe check on the charger to ensure it is working properly. I also put in a call to the company where I bought the backup lights. What I discovered was a bit of a concern. According to the manufacturer’s representative, these lights have not been recommended as back up lights for an overhead environment. Apparently open water divers are the target consumer for these complicated, high tech, expensive lights. Of course, nowhere in the literature for these lights is this mentioned. But wait, there’s more… The rep asked if I had checked the lights prior to the dive and I told him of course. He asked how often and I said at least once a dive day but sometimes more often. Then he said, “well that’s the problem.” “How so,” I asked? “Those lights take a lot of power to strike, so you can have a nearly full battery but not quite enough power to turn the light on. You can only strike them maybe four of five times before they won’t turn on.” That little tidbit of information would have been useful. Of course, had I known that, I would not have purchased the lights in the first place. I had checked the batteries when I got home, prior to calling the company, and sure enough, they were fine, showing a full charge. It turned out, one of those lights simply did not work, and we never did find out the reason. The second light didn’t strike because the batteries were at 90-percent power. In my opinion, this is a fatal design flaw. To their credit, the company involved exchanged the one broken light for three lights they do recommend as cave backups. The other light, the once that still works, has been semi-retired to open water dives only. JT
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