Into The Deepest And Darkest

by Joseph Emmanuel

  Nuno Gomes decompressing in Boesmasgat after another Trimix dive

  Prepared by Liz Gomes

  Into uncharted waters

  Nuno ventures deeper than ever before

  In August of 1996, three years after my first visit to Boesmansgat, after about a year of build up dives and a lot of effort on Nuno’s part to secure enough sponsorship for the trip, we set off for Boesmansgat again. This would be my third trip to Boesmans. I’d missed one the previous year due to study commitments. This time Nuno had set as his goal, to reach the deepest point of the cave and in the process hopefully break Sheck Exley’s then world record depth around 263 metres. Interestingly enough, Exley’s record was set on my birthday, the 28th of March in 1989. That meant that it had stood for seven years.

  When Exley had come to Boesmansgat in 1993, he had only a very short time there and during that week or so he could only really make one attempt at the bottom. He did an incredible dive to over 250 metres. Nonetheless, Nuno believed that the cave went deeper. Subsequent to the Exley expedition, Nuno and the team conducted a number of exploratory dives using a hand-held sonar device to scan the bottom looking for at least 300 metres. Nuno’s faith was justified when we found a point about 30 metres away from where Exley had made his historic first dive. It was, for me, a sort of nod being given to Nuno from the universe or God. After almost ten years of exploring Boesmansgat I felt Nuno deserved to be the person to reach the bottom first (a copy of Nuno’s certificate from the Guinness Book of Records is on the next page).

  As usual, we spent the first day at Mount Carmel setting up the area around the cave mouth, ferrying all our gear down the 100 metres trek from the top of the hole, walking a dozen or so 50 liter storage banks of helium and oxygen down to a flat area above the cave entrance from where we would run our surface supplied oxygen to the 6 meter mark and later in the week mix the required gases for Nuno’s dive.

  Sheck Exley at Boesmans in 1993,Courtesy of Nuno Gomes

  As a team we were by now well used to the process of unloading and ferrying kit into the hole. However on this occasion it was to be filmed by the husband and wife team of Peter and Stefania Lamberti, who had come along to use their years of professional film making to record the event and make a sort of documentary film about it. So there we were, all hot and bothered, walking around in not inconsiderable heat trying to, as the saying goes, “act naturally”. I have to say that personally I just ignored the camera and set my mind on getting my own gear, and anything else I could find that needed to go, down to the water. Most of the rest of the team did the same, although some one, who shall remain nameless, swore quietly that if anyone asked him to “do that again” he’d get a large peace of his mind in very choice 'french'. Anyway, we managed not to step on anyone’s toes too much and by the end of the day everything was set up and we could start diving the next day.

  The team that supported Nuno Gomes (seated in the centre of front row) during his record dive in 1996. From left back row - Theo van Eeden, Craig Newham, Craig Kahn, Liz Gomes, Lionel Brink and Joseph Emmanuel. Paramedic Sean French took the picture.

  The thing that comes to mind when I recall that trip is the incredible sense of teamwork and commitment that came from everyone. Without really vocalising it, Nuno managed to bring myself, Craig Khan, Craig Newham, Liz Gomes, Lionel Brink, Theo van Eeden and Sean French together as a team of people willing to do their parts to accomplish a really remarkable dive. For this to succeed would require almost two weeks of intense physical and mental effort on everyone’s part. Everyone had a vital role to play. There was no room for any backup divers, or equipment to fail, everyone and everything had to work perfectly.

  Craig Kahn and myself with Nuno just prior to his setting off on his 1996 record dive.

  The dive would take Nuno twelve hours to complete. He would spend the entire day underwater. If he broke any of his scheduled decompression stops he could be paralysed or worse. Nuno began his dive around 7 am. As with all deep diving at Boesmansgat, as soon as Nuno went below 50 metres the bubbles from his exhaust stopped, trapped beneath the roof of the cave. We would only know if Nuno had survived his incredible trip to the bottom of Boesmansgat when our first support diver met him and sent word to the second support diver who would finally bring the news back to the surface. Even now when-ever I see the video that the Lamberti’s made of the trip I can see the extreme level of stress that Liz Gomes was under as Nuno descended into the crack, and then having to wait what I’m sure was the longest forty minutes we’ve ever lived through, before Lionel Brink surfaced with a broad smile waving Nuno’s slate. He had gone to check on Craig Kahn who had been the first diver to meet Nuno at 100 metres.

  As I mentioned before, because of the lay-out of the cave, once a diver goes below about 50 metres you don’t see any more tell-tale bubbles on the surface. Until we heard from Lionel we did not know if Nuno was alive or dead. Even once we saw bubbles again we had no way of knowing whose bubbles they were. Ultimately, after a very long day for everyone, he surfaced with no ill effects other than extreme exhaustion. He’d reached an incredible 282.6 metres.

  During that long dive I did support dives that went from 70 metres to three metres and from eight minutes to 94 minutes. Most of these dives were to check on Nuno and deliver various forms of liquid food and drink to sustain him over the dive. It’s ironic on dives of this duration that even though we are surrounded by water for so long, we are breathing very dry gases, so we actually run the risk of getting dehydrated. To combat this we must periodically drink electrolyte drinks like Energade or Gatorade etc. The rest of my diving that day was spent ferrying stage bottles from Nuno or other support divers as we rotated through a schedule of support dives. I think this trip, more than any of our previous ones, was a test of faith and trust from each member of the team, no one more than Nuno’s then wife, Liz. On these expeditions Liz was a real example of strength, dedication and often the words of wisdom in a dispute.

  It was on this trip that I did arguably one of the most interesting dives I’ve ever done, but also one of the potentially most dangerous. The day after Nuno’s epic dive, I volunteered to do a dive to retrieve the stage bottles off the line. When asked how many I’d pick up I recall answering “as many as I can”, somewhat tongue in cheek. So off I went through the crack, all I had asked was “where is the deepest one?” to which some one answered 75 metres. Based on that reply, I mentally set my maximum target depth at 75 metres. I should stress this was an air dive, so carried the risk of a very high level of narcosis. This was true in spite of my relatively high level of adaptation due to the number of 50 and 60 metres dives that week. Still, I felt confident.

  At about 50 metres I slowed my descent right down and concentrated on breathing properly to avoid building up carbon dioxide in my system. My depth gauge read 60 metres, then 70. I sailed passed the stages I’d be picking up on the way back up then 75 metres. Stop. Very good, I thought. I’m here and I stopped exactly where I planned. Looking down I saw one single cylinder at 80 metres, the last of the whole line. I thought no, that’s passed my planned depth. Good self-control you might say, but in retrospect not very clear thinking, since another person had to dive down later to get just one more stage. I can’t actually remember if anyone did or if we just pulled it up with the line. Anyway, there I am at 75 metres, facing a stage bottle. I acted in the only safe way I knew how. I very methodically undid the dog-clip from the line and clipped it onto my harness, double checking it before I released the clip.

  One down, seven, as it turned out, to go. With each tank coming up shallower and shallower, my thinking got clearer, but I kept the method the same. Unclip from the line, clip on the harness then check before release. Everything went fine, until 12 metres, just below the crack. I stopped, looked up at the crack and then down at the array of cylinders hanging off me. I thought to myself how can I get through with all these cylinders? As I said at the start of this episode, this was a solo dive. If I
got stuck, my surface marshal would only think I was in trouble after quite some time. I could have clipped them off and ferried them through one at a time, but I elected to try and go through with them all at once. What I did was rearrange the way they were clipped to my harness. Then, pushing two cylinders in front of me I gingerly made my way up into the crack. I could hear the dangling tanks bang against the walls as I went up to six metres. I had a short stop to do here so I checked again and although very tight, I could see or feel that all the cylinders where free. As I moved up again I heard my back mounts scrape and then I was through. I breathed a lot easier then I can tell you. The picture below shows me surrounded by most of the stages I brought up. Quite a dive, if, in retrospect, a little foolhardy.

  The author with 7 of the 8 stages I fetched on a very busy solo dive to 75 metres.

  In Martyn Farr’s seminal book about the history of cave diving, “The Darkness Beckons” (Farr,1991) Nuno describes his encounter with the bottom of Boesmansgat as follows;

  “Suddenly and unexpectedly the bottom came into sight, with only two of my torches still working (the two SabreLite beams lit up the bottom clearly; the other two torch bodies had been squashed by the pressure and the terminals were not making contact) my view of the bottom and moment of glory was short and sweet. I saw a lunar type landscape of grey silt with the odd small rock sticking out, and there was some slack rope on the flat bottom. There were holes in the grey silt where the weights had gone in, as well as a small ledge which I had to get past to reach the deepest spot about five metres away horizontally. There was only one way, I had to swim whilst taking up the slack on the rope. Since I was negatively buoyant and had no time to inflate the wings (buoyancy aids) I landed on all fours. My worse nightmare came true: a silt-out at the bottom of a very deep cave with a slack guideline while on all fours and under the influence of nitrogen narcosis and helium tremors. My first priority was to stand up without losing balance or becoming tangled in or losing the line; the quads and two side - mounts did not help. I tried to swim up but failed and became dizzy. I relaxed and inflated the wings; it took 30kg of lift to ascend fifteen metres and get out of the mud and silt."

  Clearly we were very lucky that Nuno is the skilled and experienced diver he is. That jubilant day could so easily have turned into a tragedy for us. Also I think the one thing that has been common in all the pioneers of cave diving is the fact that they are very, very slow to panic and have calm, methodical personalities. They are people who can find themselves in life threatening situations, in places most people would not go if you paid them, and still find a safe way out. As I write this in July 2007, no one has (to my knowledge) yet dived deeper in a cave than Nuno did in 1996. That means his record has stood for almost eleven years. I do think it is a matter of time before someone does go deeper than Nuno. It’s just a question of finding a cave deep enough and of course the necessary backing for such a complex dive. Indeed, since Nuno’s 1996 dive to 282.6 metres, only four men (depending on who you ask) are credited with dives below 250 metres. They are John Bennett (254m-2001 & 308m-2001), Gilberto M de Olivera (274m-2002), Nuno himself, (271m-2004) and Dave Shaw (270m-2004). Of these only Dave Shaw’s dive was in a cave. In fact it was in Boesmansgat. The others were all in sinkholes or in the open ocean. Not that this makes the dives any less remarkable.

  Nuno Gomes decompressing in his quad set during his 12 hour-long dive to 282m in Boesmansgat

  I know from personal experience that any dive in this extremely deep range is fraught with unknowns and every dive is really an experiment in which the divers are risking their own lives to prove yet again just how incredibly adaptable the human physiology can be. It will of course take many hundreds, if not thousands of dives in the 200 meter-plus zone before we can say we have some inkling of understanding of the whole physiological process these exceptional people have gone through.

  I left Boesmansgat in 1996 feeling naturally buoyant that Nuno had achieved his goal and finally reached the deepest point of Boesmansgat. I’d seen enough of this incredible place to know that in spite of Nuno’s epic dive there were vast areas of the cave that no human had ever seen. The prospect of being able to truly explore a place that no one else has ever been is one of the reasons I’m inclined towards cave diving. As if to underline what a privilege it is to dive in Boesmansgat, I had to wait a full five years for my next visit to Mount Carmel.

  Verna takes women into a new space

  Up till 2001 all my diving at Boesmansgat had been with Nuno. I guess we all drew a certain comfort from his experience and incredibly focused approach to diving there. This time it would to be different. This time I was going as a member of Verna van Schaik’s team. Our goal was to break the women’s world record, which I believe then stood at 167 metres. We started with serious build-up dives in 2001. We had largely a new team for Verna. Although Craig Newham, Craig Kahn, Theo Van Eeden and myself were also part of Nuno’s team. Gareth Lowndes, Derrick Hughes, John de Wet and Peter Zakaria were new.

  The people on Verna’s teams are in a way similar to those on Nuno’s in that they all had unique characters and brought some special energy to the expedition. One thing that the majority of Verna’s team shared is that we almost all came from IT jobs. As such I think we brought the IT characteristic attention to detail and need for exact planning that makes good expedition members.

  At the time of the record, Derek Hughes was CEO of a software company. Not surprisingly he’s a very goal orientated person, with a very keen sense of how he likes things done, and doing things correctly. When he first came to the team he did not have any cave diving experience, but I have to say I was pretty impressed with the way he made a point of learning as much as he could during the training dives we did. John De Wet, coming from a project management career and many years as a diving instructor, had a lot to offer the team. Although I hadn’t met John before, in addition to our diving, I found that we had a common interest (almost an addiction) to cycling, so we always had lots to talk about. We could always count on him to call a spade a spade. We knew if he thought something was not a safe or good idea he would say so (as would all of us). I think his methodical approach to dive planning was a perfect complement to the team’s determination to achieve Verna’s goal. For this trip Peter Zakaria was the youngest and least experienced diver. I have to say that this was not an obstacle to his playing an important part in Verna’s dive when the time came. Peter impressed us all with his quiet determined and thoughtful approach to cave diving.

  Getting this team ready for Boesmansgat was something of a challenge in itself. The new guys came with a mix of experience that ranged from many hundreds of dives and Instructor level qualifications to just over 100 dives and Two Star (Advanced Diver) qualifications. Of course we had to be certain that all the members of the team had not only the correct certification to be able to go to Boesmansgat, but, more importantly, enough actual cave diving experience. Over the next few months we would literally be training the team as we went along. In effect their cave diver training, which culminated at Badgat would also be our build up dives for the record attempt. It took us a good few months of regular diving in local open water dive sites before we thought they were ready for Badgat. All the while we taught them cave diving techniques like live reel handling or torch signalling. Finally we felt they were ready for the maze of tunnels that is Badgat. We put together a weekend trip to introduce them to the tunnels. While not a complex trip at all, this early trip still needed us to do simple things like book a camp site, organise food and transport and make sure we had enough spare cylinders to allow us to place a few full tanks in the cave at strategic points in the tunnels.

  If I remember correctly we spent the Saturday of the weekend in buddy pairs that consisted of one trainee and one instructor. Then, on Sunday, once we were happy that everyone was comfortable in the caves, we put them into new buddy pairs with the instructors along as observers. All the dives were done on the first level of the
tunnel system. While not deep at 16-20 metres, this level has ample challenges for the new cave diver. It’s ideal for training in that it has all the elements of the caves they were likely to encounter deeper in the system and of course in Boesmansgat when we finally got there. It has a narrow entrance located at the top of a rubble slope off the main hole.

  Once you get through the entrance you’re in a long horizontal passage which forks into a left and right tunnel pretty soon after you drop through the entrance. Within a few metres you are out of site of the entrance and have to rely on your guideline to find your way out. The right tunnel leads directly to a shaft that drops down to more than 100 metres. The left one is parallel to the right for much of its length, but never reaches the shaft; it comes to a dead end. We always watched the guys very carefully on these early dives for any signs of panic or undue nervousness. I can recall that John was not that happy with the dives until he got a proper cave torch. Then we couldn’t keep him out the caves. Lucky for us none of the team had any major issues with proper cave diving as such. By the end of that first weekend we were confident that the team had all the basics of cave diving techniques and a fair amount of practical experience in a number of varied situations.