Day 3
Day 3
The day was to be at cenote X-tabay which was featured in the BBC Planet Earth series - and was accessed down a road which grounded our hire car.
Dive 1 was led by Al, we made it to the wizard’s den which is about 100 meters into the cave. The halocline was very evident on this dive and viz deteriorated when we swam through it.
We turned the dive and had all the usual failures, lights, valves and out of gas.
Dive 2. Fraser led in and we got in a lot further than before. We lost lights and valves as usual then when we were down to one backup light each Chris initiated the lost diver drill. This went OK - Al did by far the best search but we all remembered the proceedures and were happy with the result. The dive ended, as usual, with multiple valve failures and an air sharing exit.
Dive 3 - Chris then had us do an air sharing blind touch contact dive, in the cavern zone to practise what we would do later on for real. It went OK. Al’s ears started playing up when we surfaced so while we waited I had to do a 15 meter out of air blind swim for donated gas - I was very pleased to reach Fraser and get gas from him!
Dive 4, I ran the reel in and we made it a long way in to the cave. I reached a marker in the cave which was pointing towards a different exit. As this would give misleading information in a blind/silt out situation I dropped a cookie on the exit side of the marker and signalled the team that the markers changed direction. Al dropped a cookie as well but, at that point Fraser thumbed the dive on gas.
We picked up the cookies and exited. We had multiple valve failures enroute and lost all lights. The team then regrouped on the line and exited in touch contact. It took twice as long as swimming in, but only twice as long is not that bad actually - and we had gas to spare on exit.
Very pleased with how the day went - knackered.
