On this trip there are five of us plus Connie. Thus it is the smallest group I've done on one of Connie's weeks. There's Lori and Ken whom I met last year, and Dusan (pronounced Doo-shAN) and Bill. Everyone except me appears to be in their 50's. Unlike the other groups I've been on, this one seems to be pretty good on air consumption which means longer dives and more complicated plans. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Also staying in the same hotel is Rick Rowett, a cave diver I'd met two years ago on a different trip (not with Connie) who is the general manager at Dolphin Scuba, and a really personable diver. He'd just finished hosting a week of open-water scuba diving for 30 people with his store and was taking a few extra days to cave dive in Akumal. I've just gotten back from catching up with him and two of his friends, talking of cave this-and-that and where to cave dive tomorrow. I think I've sold them on the idea of visiting Nohoch nah Chich (tomorrow is their last day diving) so I wish them an enjoyable dive. Hopefully we'll get some cave diving arranged for next year.
My cave week with Connie just started yesterday, with first cave dives today in Grand Cenote. Our first dive was up Paso de Lagarto. On my last trip there the dive was called due to light failure (not mine). This time we got all the way to the Bosh Chen jump before dive was called on 1/3rds. Yay! I was enthused because it showed our group had much better air time than average. I still had 300 psi penetration gas or so. (In Layman's terms, that means with my double 80 cubic foot tanks I could have gone about 30% longer before having to call the dive myself.)
And best of all.... No primary light failures!! ** (See Footnotes, below)
The second dive, however, was the cat's meow. Connie decides during lunch that because our group seems to be good on air, she will take us beyond Cuzan Nah to a side passage that leads to cenote La Boca. This was apparently the line that Lena wanted to take us to, on my last visit, but she couldn't find the jump point.
This trip was a complex series of jumps involving one primary reel and six jump spools. I did a nearly identical dive with Glenn last year here to the same passageway but only had five spools and a primary. In my log book the dive would be listed like this:
* Grand cenote cavern line, then guideline to main (permanent) line
* Left jump to shortcut towards Ho-Tul
* Jump off shortcut back onto main line, towards Ho-Tul
* Cross Ho-Tul gap with a long jump reel (80+ feet)
* Right jump to close gap to Cuzan Nah loop (circuit)
* Right jump off far end of Cuzan Nah loop to unnamed passage (Really Beautiful Section!)
* Left jump to passage towards La Boca
* Dive called halfway to La Boca on 3rds
The same person keeps calling the dive on 3rds. Hmmm...
The passageway towards La Boca was small, tight, pristine, and very highly decorated. At one point we reached a small room that had all the effects of a halocline layer and when I asked Connie about it she confirmed that is what it was. Now, how you can get a halocline at 20 feet depth in a cave that is fresh water... I don't understand! But sure enough I was in it and saw it. Visiting this new section of Sac Aktun was really exciting for me and really accentuates what Cave Diving is all about. It is a feast for the eyes, a challenge for the mind, and joy for the soul.
Tomorrow we are off to Labna Ha at Cenote Caracol. This was my favourite dive of the trip last month, so we'll see how it goes this time. Can lightning strike the same place twice?
Footnotes
Last month's trip with Connie had something like 14 primary light failures. Read my earlier blog on the subject to see what that was about. That week, though I did not experience a failure myself, really made me think twice about how to prepare. And so I decided to buy one of those new fangled LED lights, but one bright enough to not only serve as a backup, but a primary as well. Thanks to Connie who arranged the purchase, I now have a Dive Rite LED 500 lumen primary, which is supposedly as bright as my 10 Watt HID. In the cave it isn't quite as strong, but that may have more to do with color temperature than actual brightness.
It is small enough that I can mount it right next to my HID primary's battery canister. On my first dive today I carried both lights and tried them out against each other. Later this week I may write up a report. But for now I feel very comfortable carrying TWO primaries in addition to the two backups. Now, if my HID primary were to fail, I could pull out the LED primary and keep going, without having to call the dive. Awesome!
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