reposting our intro-to-cave / basic cave class report from 2006
We’re back from another great trip from Mexico. It just keeps getting better and better. Well, except for the multitude of mosquitos this time of year.
Day 1: Cenote Car Wash
Spent the first day getting sorted out, and are we glad we did. 7mm wetsuit with 7mm [...]
One of the most often used, and often disagreed upon, scuba hand signs is numbers. The following hand signals are used by cave divers and other technical divers because it can be implemented with one hand. In addition, these signs work as an alphabet, and does not require addition or counting of subsequent [...]
Before we put the basic levers for trim in use, it’s very important to review the horizontal trim position. For the majority of scuba divers, the horizontal trim position is not natural.
Horizontal Position
Consider the body in the horizontal plane. Now consider where the head needs to be for the body to be in [...]
The horizontal trim video below is part of the UTD Essentials DVD:
Overview
The horizontal position is often called prone, superman, or skydiver position. For a scuba diver, the horizontal trim is the most efficient way to move through the water. In addition, the horizontal trim provides vertical drag, helping divers maintain a constant depth.
However, [...]
Day 3 – OW and Cave
“Practice only makes permanent. Only perfect practice makes perfect skills.”
For the third day, we headed to Minotauro. Through out our trips back to Mexico, Minotauro remained one of my favorites systems. And it was also one of the systems that challenged us during our Full Cave course. [...]
Some pictures taken during our Technical Diver 1 class. For the more details on our class, please see our Tech 1 class report.
Many late nights of studying beforehand with available materials and videos.
Drive-thru Starbucks, do we need to say more?
Elissa stands alone in the Breakwater parking lot on Friday morning.
Our uncooperative reel – the [...]
Elissa and I just completed the UTD Technical Diver 1 class with Andrew Georgitsis.
At the end, the class made local diving more enjoyable for us. Elissa is more excited about MoCal waters than ever before. We both learned a good deal about ourselves and our team. And we picked up new techniques [...]
As the foundation of technical training, GUE’s Fundamentals of Diving or UTD’s Essentials of Technical Diving (formerly Intro-To-Tech) are an important stepping stone for many divers. The skills and techniques taught and tested are quite different than what most divers experience in their recreational dives.
Another class worth noting is the UTD Essentials course. [...]
Day 2 – OW and Cave
“This is a sidemount course, not a cave diving course.”
In the morning, we met at Cuzel and loaded Steve’s truck. I took great pleasure in just loading single AL80s versus manifolded doubles. Not only was transport less straining on the body, but manipulating the single tanks on the [...]
This past February, I took a cave diving sidemount course with Steve Bogaerts.
I’ll profess that it was curiosity rather than necessity that got me to sign up for a sidemount class. While I do like to peek my head into small holes, I have plenty of backmount friendly caves yet to explore. [...]