Labna-Ha, yay!

Another beautiful (though mosquito infested) day at Labna-Ha, diving Sistema Caracol. Both Pep and Sergio were on hand to welcome our group of eight cave divers with open arms and T-shirts to buy. The mosquitoes have been bad at most places, it is apparently their last big-bang before winter hits so they want to get all the human blood they can, while they can. Labna-ha is not better or worse than other sites. But boy, they are bad! I came prepared this year with two bottles of 100% DEET, a head net, and a bed canopy net. The latter I haven't had to use yet, thankfully.

This being my fourth visit to Labna-Ha, I wore for the first time a Labna-Ha T-shirt which I bought on my third visit. Pep was quick to say "Oh! You have the old design. You need to get the new one now!!"

On to the cave dives.

First dive my team consisting of myself, Sandra, Sandra and Dave, went with Connie up the main line. We went up exactly 60 minutes before the dive was turned on 3rds. I'd been this way twice before, so it was nice but not noteworthy.

Second dive we were allowed (*gasp*) to take teams in by ourselves! No guides! This I thought was unheard-of. So was taking cameras inside the cave, but one of our team had a camera on the first dive and Pep only gave some extra cautions in its use. I guess that Labna-Ha is relaxing their very strict rules on cave divers. Or maybe it was because all of us had dove there before at one time or another.

Sandra and I went by ourselves, one of only two pairs to go back into the cave. Two people just did the cavern dive, and two others didn't dive at all. Our plan was to find the side passage at the 3rd jump to the right, and follow it until we either hit the main line or 3rds or until the time seemed to be getting late. I'd been up this passageway too, last year with Sergio and Michael M. So it was also nothing new. But being in a team of only the two of us (and no guide!) made it seem much more intimate. We had a little trouble (6 minutes' worth) finding the side passage but once on it the way was easy going. Sandra was lead diver. I found the tiny cenote that Sergio pointed out last year, at about the 30 minute mark. At 46 minutes Sandra called the dive on time, since she didn't want the dive to run longer than a total of an hour and a half.

Our total time that dive was 87 minutes, and very enjoyable. I discovered we were the last out of the cave system... by a long shot. I tried not to think that the other divers were not giving us evil looks because they were being eaten alive by the skeeters. At least no one said anything about it, so I feel no guilt. It was an excellent day of cave diving!

Thanks again to Sergio and Pep for being excellent hosts, and making this beautiful cave system available to us.

Ponderosa and Gran(d) Cenote

Hello again, I'm back in Aventuras Akumal staying in Villas de Rosa on another of Connie LoRe's cave diving weeks. This is a larger group (9 divers total, split into two teams) and competence level on both teams appear to be pretty good.

Our first dive this morning was at Ponderosa (as cave divers call it, or "Garden of Eden" as it is marked on the signs) which is a relatively large cenote and a rather plain cave. There are virtually no formations along today's route, but our destination which is called "The Chapel" made up for that, and more! The Chapel is an air dome formed from a breakdown. The water is about 20 feet deep, and the dome itself is a mere 3-4 feet above the waterline. The roof is totally coated with stalactites! Thousands and thousands of them. And they are still growing. It was an awesome experience to lie on my back in the water and float around, watching a whole carpet of stalactites drifting past my field of view. Connie said that the cave diver legend is that if you catch a drop of water in your mouth as it drips off the end of a stalactite, you'll be blessed with long life. I was able to get drops to fall, but only by blowing on them to agitate them. That may have been cheating, I dunno.

Our dive time at Ponderosa was 86 minutes, almost exactly 43 minutes in and 43 minutes out. With a 20 minute break inside the air dome. Dive was called on end of plan, and thirds. One of the most memorable aspects of this dive was the water temperature! The salt water layer, which starts at -38 feet, was measured at a scorching 84 F ! That may be the warmest water I've ever experienced in a cave. There was not a well defined halocline in this cave. I don't know if it was because of all the divers agitating it, or if the freshwater flow is just stronger in this cave.


The afternoon dive was at Gran (or Grand) Cenote. Here the two teams went mostly the same plan: Gran Cenote, past Ho Tul Cenote and then around Cuzan Ha Loop. Both teams were supposed to go up the line in the middle of the Loop, but since we were the first team in the water and the last out, I didn't see Connie's group. Our team also did a jump up the La Boca line (which the other team didn't plan to do), to go until 3rds were called. We made it maybe 500 feet along the line before 3rds, which is respectable considering the distance and tight passageways. We did the Cuzan Ha loop clockwise this time, which was maybe only the 2nd time I'd gone that direction. I have to say that going counter-clockwise is more dramatic.

Tomorrow is Labna Ha day. More later!

More Beautiful Passage

Well... not much time to write today so I'll summarize by saying the week in Cozumel diving Aerolito was a lot of fun! With 3 aluminum 80's filled with nitrox, you can really go pretty far in there. So far I have exhausted only a few of the many lines. And the further you go back beyond Wonderland the more amazingly beautiful it is. These two pictures will give you an idea of some of the rooms found there.

Both pictures are (C) 2009 Brad Reynolds and published here with permission.




Both of these pictures show me without the stage bottle. This is because we staged them before the entrance to Wonderland, roughly halfway into the cave where these pictures were taken. The large orange object in my left hand is my Ikelite Substrobe 400 set up with one of Brad's slave sensors. I used it to do profile/shadow lighting on formations for Brad's photography. When Brad was taking pictures with me in frame, I had to remember to turn off the strobe, then turn it on again afterwards.

What Not To Do on a 2 Hour Cave Dive

This may be a long blog, so I'll get to the punchline first. What not to do? Don't go diving without adequate thermal protection! In cave diving the problem is compounded because you cannot simply leave the water when you first notice you are too cold. You have to stay cold and finish your dive... COLD.

I'm in Cozumel again, lovely beautiful Cozumel. Aaahh. Nice place, but humid and hot in the summer. I'm unabashedly indulging in air conditioning every chance I get. While here, I've already made arrangements for my winter trip to stay in the usual departmento (a mere $450 per month) and bought round trip plane tickets. American Airlines was having a sale up until July 7th, and I got my tickets for the unbelievable low price of $319 including taxes. And that's for a 2-1/2 month stay. Normally the tickets are closer to $550.

Yesterday Brad and I did two dives in Aerolito de Paraiso with stage tanks. We did both dives down Sulfur Falls and then in both directions at the "T" in Wonderland. Pretty much the same kind of plan Glenn and I did last winter. Brad has a knack for finding these nifty side passages with tons of speleothems, so I saw many more beautifully decorated parts of Aerolito than ever before.

Our first dive used standard air in our back gas and 36% nitrox in the stage bottle. Maximum depth was 71 feet with most of the profile in Wonderland at around 55 feet. Water temperature seemed to hover mostly around 82-83 F, with most of our time spent in the salt water layer. Brad had two Ikelite 400's on his camera (the really big really powerful strobes) and I had a 3rd one with a remote sensor on a 3 foot pole. He would find a wall of stalactites or some other feature he wanted to photograph, I would watch his cave light to see where he wanted me to aim the strobe. I would then hold the strobe at about a 60 degree angle to his lens port and wait for him to focus and shoot 2 or 3 shots. Then move on. This is how most of the dive went. Total dive time: 116 minutes.

The second dive we had 36% nitrox in both stage bottle and the back gas. I decided the water seemed warm enough, why not ditch the extra 3 mil suit and dive only with one 3 mil. As soon as I jumped in the water I realised it might have been a bad decision and it was. At around the turn-around point I thought I was getting tired, and on the way back I could tell my energy levels were flagging. By the time I got to the safety stop in colder water above the halocline I was visibly shivering. Fortunately we had no deco obligation any time during the dive (great stuff, nitrox) so I only suffered through an 8 minute safety stop and then got out. Total dive time: 122 minutes, maximum depth: 78 feet.

We were back into town by about 7:15pm, a very long day. I was totally exhausted that evening. I even took today off diving. But tomorrow and Sunday (my last two dive days of the trip) I expect to be back at it, full strength. And with a full 6 mil of thermal protection!

What the Future Holds

Been a while since I've posted, but not because I haven't been diving. During May I took a planned-at-the-last-minute trip to St. Croix for a week and had some fantastic shore dives at Cane Bay and the Frederiksted pier.

In July, I will be going first to south Florida to visit Kathleen and Gianni, our wonderful friends in Ft Lauterdale. We'll tour around some of the Florida Keys and maybe do some diving there as well as hang out at their beautiful villa in Plantation.

On July 6th I hop on a plane from Florida to Cozumel for a 6-day cave diving trip with Brad Reynolds. I've mentioned Brad before in this blog, I think, as a fellow underwater photographer with whom I've dove with several times in Aerolito de Paraiso. This will be my first time ever in Cozumel during the sweltering hot summer months. Though I'm not looking forward to the heat, I'm thinking ahead to exploring more of Aerolito.

Cave Diving seems to be a constant drain on my budget. True, diving with Brad in Cozumel costs next to nothing compared to most forms of diving, especially cave diving. But I keep upgrading my gear and to get the good stuff you gotta pay the bucks.

For this trip, I now have a *new* dive computer, the just released Suunto HelO2. With great thank-yous to my favourite east Caribbean Dive Shop Dive Experience of St. Croix, I now have this new top-of-the-line technical diving computer. Its main features include:

• Wireless tank pressure transmitter (one less hose to carry!)
  
• Deco and No-deco dive tables built in
  
• Up to 8 gas mixes, trimix or nitrox
  
• Ability to switch gas mix during the dive
  

It's overkill for most of the diving I will be doing, but next time I go on one of Connie LoRe's trips (more on that later) I'll be ready for the stage dives she leads.
I hope we get to visit Blue Abyss again.

After owning a Suunto Cobra dive computer for eight years and a Vyper for ten, I found the HelO2 to be somewhat confusing. It wasn't intuitive at all in how the menus are organized, at least not if you're expecting it to be like a Cobra. It took several consults with the instruction manual before I had gas mixes, time/date, PO2 setting, and even my personal dive profile adjustment set how I wanted it.

One nice feature on the HelO2 is the new settings for the personal profile adjustment. The Cobra and Vyper have P0, P1 and P2 settings, with P0 being the least conservative. However even on P0, the Suunto computers tend to be among the most conservative in the dive industry. That's good if you want to play it safe all the time, but not so good if you've got excellent air consumption and your computer won't give you the bottom time to match.

The HelO2 adds two new settings: P-1 and P-2. They are, as you'd guess, less conservative settings. The manual describes them as for "Ideal conditions, excellent physical fitness, highly experienced with a lot of dives in the near past." This, I like very much. To give you an idea on the difference: at a 60 foot profile you get 50 minutes on a P0 setting. P-1 gives you 54 minutes, and P-2 gives you 58 minutes. That's not a whole helluva lot but it is extra time to spend underwater. I'll take it.

Map of Aerolito

The map above is a very old one of Aerolito de Paraiso dating back to 1989. To my knowledge not much exploration of Aerolito has been done since then although it is believed that there is more cave passage to be found.

I've marked the journey Glenn and I took last Saturday on this map as a thin red line, with some annotations related to my blog post (text in a darker red). In order to see the line and all detail, click on the image for a full-size copy.

Cave maps are drawn using many different styles. As with most maps, this is a fair representation of the passages one will find in Aerolito. But passage size, depth and character cannot be adequately depicted in this 2-D medium. This is why progressive penetration is the safest technique to use when exploring a cave without a local guide. Or even with a guide.

Copyright note: This map was emailed to me from a friend. I am not aware of any copyright on the map itself nor any conditions for its distribution. If you are the copyright holder and object to its being posted here, notify me and I will promptly remove it.

Eagle Rays and Moray Eels

Another glorious day on the waters of Cozumel! We were invited to spend a day with Blondie and Donna, and their son Renee. Donna is one of the manager/owners of Aqua Safari, Blondie often works as a boat captain usually for fishing charters. They own three boats of which the Belinda is one (the dive boat I most often dive from when on Cozumel). Today we went out on their largest boat "Gypsy" which is a comfortable shallow-draft boat outfit for both scuba and fishing charters. The plan was to do a one-tank dive at either Eagle Ray or Barracuda (deep diving sites, but still within recreational limits) to look for eagle rays cruising the reef.

To make a long story short: we saw 11 in total, or possibly 2 groups of five which may have been the same five twice, and one solo eagle ray. I'd been having some minor problems with the video housing but today I was able to get it working flawlessly the whole dive.




Also on this dive, Renee spotted a full-grown Green Moray Eel. I am posting this video of it specifically for Walt, because he once commented on one of my pictures "this is why I don't swim in the ocean." I'll agree that Morays look like one of the nasty monsters of the deep that you really don't want to tangle with, but so far I haven't been bitten by one. (I do know someone who has... in the neck... but she is still alive!)