Going deeper underground

Location: Mexico

Date: October 6th, 2012

Here I am sitting on my bed, socks on, jumper on,......... shivering. Yup winter is coming ;). And we all know how I do with being cold!

I am chuffed to bits with my new wetsuit. It is semi dry and i actually feel warm now when coming out of the caves or cenotes. Which is on its own a miracle. However the fact that it rains a lot and the temperature has dropped significantly does not make me a happy bunny and out comes the jumper! At night it is around 23/25 degrees ...BRRRRRRRRRR

The last 3 days I have assisted Kim who is Jax' cave course instructor. The big difference being with her and my course is that she is doing it in backmount ( wearing two tanks on your back) where I did it in sidemount ( wearing 1 tank under each armpit). So i had to get used to my equipment again. Yes I use it to guide in the caverns but going into the caves I always take my sidemount tanks. It was awesome to see how cave courses are being taught when not being the student. This is my second assist and I hope to get many more in. Love it and i am learning every single day.

Sidemount rig

Backmount rig

Day 1 Normoxic Trimix course

However moving on from the assisting. It is time to be a student again ( why do i keep doing this to myself). I have decided to go for my Normoxic Trimix course. I know very expensive word for introducing helium into your breathing gas mix, next to having regular oxygen and nitrogin. Now of course there is a whole science and bucket loads of knowledge that goes behind it and today after a 5 hour theory session i have only been introduced to the basics. Basically diving on trimix allows you to go deeper. You can go deep on regular air if you want to but you’ll be narked as... F&^%^(). Narcosis is something that we divers are all too familiar with. Narcosis makes you feel.. well drunk. I have seen divers go into complete panic mode, be euphoric and just start to descend more ( not the best version of narcosis), look at you with dazed eyes and not being able to understand simple signals. Now when going deep this is not something you like to experience so by adding helium to the mix (a gas with no narcotic effect) you limit your narcosis to a certain extent.

 My instructor is Kelvin from New Zealand and has thought many technical courses in truck lagoon ( hello bucket list!) and Frank (my cave instructor, who is also a trimix instructor) is assisting as he wanted to see how Kelvin teaches this course. Which I think is really cool. So I have two instructors watching my every move. Not intimidating at all. Great well here we go!

After the theory session, which did not even leave me brain fried. Yey me! we continued looking at my setup - making changes where needed and analysed our doubles plus deco bottle. And around 4-ish it was time to it the water. Because I am a cave diver we are doing all the deep dives in the caves (yey scary dark black holes at depth.......). The plan of action at carwash cenote today was for me and Kelvin to get to know each other as divers. I find that every diver has a regular face and a divers face ;), it is cool to see how people change underwater and it is very important as divers to understand and trust your buddy. During the course Frank is going to be my buddy and Kelvin is going to play a "ghost" which will allow him plenty of time to mess around with me, as no doubt he will simulate many problems that could actually occur. In the water I practised sending sausages up ( boys) which I might add, is not my forte. bloody reels... need to buy bigger hands ;). We practised bouyoncy with deco tanks attached, taking off tanks and putting them back on and doing gas switches. Cool stuff. I felt comfortable and competent and i know now what to focus on and practise more.

We also did a little exercise how long we could hold our breath. Great exercises when you have 2 boys with you in the water. Yes i failed miserably!!! Or maybe not fail... i just can't hold it that long hahaha.

Protec Tulums mixing station - photo credit protectulum.com

Tomorrow more theory and a deco dive in "the Pit" :)

Ayo XOXO