Basic Sidemount Class – Day 3
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. As the result, I was very eager to sidemount this cenote.
The upstream area is a large circuit, with jumps to nearby cenotes. The first 10 minutes is restricted and begs one to tackle the cave with precision. Elissa compares diving it to a rat in a maze, but I enjoy this type of delicate and deliberate diving. After the restricted beginning section, the cave opens up. Each room is distinct and offers a variety of things to look at – from formations to breakdowns to halocline.
Soon after we arrived, two other teams appeared at Minotauro. For such a small system, it was going to get very crowded. Our first dive was planned for main line penetration and I was number two.
Getting into the water proved to be a non issue. With backmount, the path into the water was precarious. You perched yourself on a rock’s pointed edge while holding onto a very unstable branch. With sidemount, all surfaces became available, and there’s no need to teeter about. We easily placed the stage bottles in the basin, away from the entrance, and then geared up. Because of the lack of surface floatation with the Razor harness, each of us commandeered a rock as we ran through our match.
As we descended, I struck my primary – only to see it not strike. I was very gentle with my lighthead but every year in Mexico the MR11′s bulb breaks. This trip was no exception. After I climbed out, borrowed a screwdriver from Bil Philips and then took Steve’s primary light, we were back in business. If I had struck the light before descending, I would have saved the team some time.
With S-Drills completed, we headed into the cave. The challenge for Minotauro was to not touch anything in the system. I had high hopes for my first sidemount dive in Minotauro, but it was not meant to be. I was too negative. To counteract this, I added more air in my drysuit. Given the <10' depths and the tight quarters, air ultimately migrated to my feet and I had a solid fight for next 10 minutes. Once through the restrictions, I corrected the bubble in the drysuit and let out a sigh of relief.
We proceeded into the cave and encountered the circuit closed. The tie into the mainline was different than we were used to so the team paused and conferred on direction. The other team had tied into their own cookie, between the stalagmite and furthest into the cave arrow.
A few more minutes and our team leader turned the dive. We exited the cave without issue. As I am less negative and have less air in my drysuit, the exit through the restrictions felt somewhat magical. Not even the slightest contact with the cave. I felt like I could just think of where I wanted to go and I would be there.
Before getting out of the water, Steve had additional skills for us. We were to handle failures of our equipment underwater. Each of us took turns dealing with a broken bungee and failed tank connections/bolt snaps. The simplicity of the Razor harness made these repairs quite easy.
After lunch, I would be number one. Steve had seen my discomfort through the restriction and suggested that I drop a couple of pounds and perform a weight check. With my weighting sorted out, we got underway.
This time around, the first 10 minutes was very entertaining. The ease I felt on the exit was duplicated on the entrance. I couldn’t stop smiling underwater as I compared this trip to my backmount entrances.
Per our dive plan, I closed the circuit and then jumped to a nearby cenote. En route, we passed a restriction that required each of us to tilt 45 degrees to fit. One downside of sidemount was the wider profile. Narrower restrictions required tilting up to 90 degrees to slip through. Even though these maneuvers were not difficult to execute, I am far from pretty and still worry about the cave.
We then reached the “Sandwich Press,” which really lived up to its name. In backmount, it would have been work to get through. But in sidemount, I was surprised how much space was available. As I swam through, I started making future plans to take my backmounted friends here.
On the opposite side, we turned the dive. As soon as the team faced our exit, Steve signaled lights out. What laid ahead was a no viz exit through the Sandwich Press and the 45 degree restriction. The one thing I really liked about Steve’s courses was the repetition of skills and repetition in different environments. By the time I was going through this final restriction, I was very comfortable in a no viz situation with sidemount.
As soon as I popped out the restriction, Steve has us turn on our primaries. Just as I assumed we were done with drills, Steve told me I was OOG. I turned to #2 and signaled OOG.
#2 donated his primary to me. But as soon as he reached for the extra hose, it was trapped. Since I have an air source, there’s no rush. We took our time to fix the trapped hose and were soon underway.
At the jump, I signaled that we should leave my spool in place and exit. Just as thoughts of Steve picking up my spool crossed my mind, the drill ended and I had to clean up after myself. We finished the dive without any additional issues and surfaced.
During the debrief, we discussed my jump and spool usage. I tied into the other line as follows:
A different method was offered, and Steve firmly stepped in and provided his input. Usually Steve allowed for a healthy discussion between the team members, but on this occasion, Steve planted his foot down.
Regarding the OOG, Steve noticed that my teammate’s set-up was incorrect out of the water. In the water, this led to a trapped hose. Once it was confirmed trapped, Steve just waited for the right opportunity to strike. Our S-Drills failed to catch this issue since we don’t fully deploy the long hose, so this is something to be very mindful of.
We concluded the course with Steve providing an individual critique and recommendations to dive the rig as much as possible.
While the sidemount rig proved deceptively easy to dive, there was a good amount of new skills to learn and master. While I am far from perfect, I appreciated Steve’s method of doing skills in multiple environments and situations – building the foundation and confidence for future dives. Overall, the course was a great introduction to the sidemount diving and I really can’t wait for more.
Read More:
Basic Sidemount Class – Day 2
Basic Sidemount Class – Day 1
[...] April 17, 2009 – First cold water sidemount dives. We saw this fella near the tire by Hole in the Wall. Never seen them in the cove. The closest has been in the sand channel in 30′ a couple years ago. __________________ Don Scuba Diving blog 1. Horizontal Trim 101 – Levers 2. Horizontal Trim 101 – Uses of Levers 3. April 17, 2009 – First cold water sidemount dives [...]