The very next weekend after my dive medical I was off to Badgat with Verna and the rest of the new Xtreme-Dream team. I did however elect to follow Dr Cronje's advice and stay out of decompression requirements. I was eager to get back in the caves because in a little over a month we'd be off to Boesmansgat to support Verna in her attempt to become the deepest diving women in the world of scuba. The weekend was a very good one for me as it gave me a measure of confidence and a confirmation that I had not yet forgotten everything I knew about cave diving. Although to be honest I would have been surprised if I had felt any real trepidation before the sort of dives I did that weekend.
For her record attempt Verna chose the following team;
David Shaw : Deep Re-breather Support (150m)
Don Shirley : Deep Re-breather Support (120m)
Derek Hughes : Deep Trimix Support (80m)
Gareth Lowndes : Deep Air Support (50m)
John de Wet : Mid-water Air Support (3-50m)
Joseph Emmanuel : Shallow Air Support (6-20m)
Allana Barber: Shallow Air Support (6-20m)
Ian Gatley : Shallow Air Support (6-20m)
Theo van Eeden : Photographic Support (20-30m)
Kirsten Emmanuel : Surface Marshall
Malcolm Smith : Medical Support from Netcare 911
Claire Smith : Medical Support from Netcare 911
Gordon Hiles : Surface Video
Still, some people might have been very nervous to dive again after what could have been a very close call, or not. As I say I’ll never know for sure whether I had a cerebral bend or just a bad migraine. Anyway, my first dive that weekend was to help Verna take Allana and Ian (the newest members of Verna’s XtremeDream team) on their first dive into the tunnels at Badgat. Alana and Ian were a couple, at times a stormy couple, which made me a bit nervous because emotional distractions on these expeditions could lead to someone making a fatal mistake. Nonetheless, I was impressed by Ian in particular, another IT person, but very much a person who was prepared to learn the skills he needed to become a good cave diver. A very calm demeanour made him very nice to have along. Allana was more excitable, but still, I have to say she put in far more hard work over the expeditions than perhaps her five foot something frame would have suggested.
The simplest dive one can do there is to enter via the right entrance and swim down the highway to the blast-door. But, even though the dive is only around sixteen metres average depth, by the end of the highway we’d be 110 metres into the cave and under about twenty metres of rock, with no way out except back the way we’d come. If either Ian or Allana suddenly discovered an aversion to dark places, we could be in very serious trouble.
So with Verna in the front with her very bright canister type primary torch lighting the way, and me with mine bring up the rear, we set off. Passing the landmarks I knew so well, I wondered if Ian and Allana would remember my advice to them to try and memorise the features of the cave as we went deeper and deeper in. How many junctions did we pass? How many holes in the floor did we swim over? On which side of the highway was the permanent line laid? By asking them to do this I was trying to make them stay aware of their new surrounding and not become mere passengers on the dive. In cave diving, every member of the team needs to be alert to potential dangers, loose lines, silted passage ways, worse yet, lost lines or missing buddies. As things turned out they did fine and barring a little bit of silt at the narrow entrance, everything went well. Both new divers looked fairly comfortable in the water. But the next dive would be more of a test.
For the next dive of the weekend we decided to take Ian and Allana down to the second level of the caves, but via one of the holes in the floor of the highway. At the same time John, Derek and Verna would go via the shaft and try to join up with us on second level. We entered the main shaft as a group and Ian, Allana and I dropped through the floor of the hi-way onto the second level, which is at around twenty metres. As an exercise we had selected Ian to take in a reel that John and Derek had laid on an earlier dive. This he did very well. I had the strange sensation of observing other divers doing what I had done so many times. Keeping well off the silt lined bottom of the tunnel, reeling in the line, making sure that it was kept tight at all times and making sure the line doesn’t slip into line traps. I led Ian and Allana to the drop-off from second level to third level.
This point in the cave system is well and truly in the maze. I pointed out the large wooded pillars that where used to hold up the roof in the days of mining, but now are so soft from being waterlogged for so long that you can literally push your finger into the solid wood. Clearly, not a place to tie a line your very life depends on. I make a point of showing both my friends good solid rocks and even some steel girders that can be used as secure tie-off points. Next we moved on round a corner towards the main shaft and sure enough we saw Verna, John and Derek’s light coming down the passageway. We’d made our connection and a complete loop from the entrance to second level and out again. Getting our reels out was the task for the next day. For now we had reached our one-third rule and it was time to head out of the cave again. All in all I think Ian and Allana did pretty well for new guys.
The next time we were to dive together it would be in Boesmansgat and we’d be busy preparing for Verna’s world record dive to 221 metres.
Verna’s second world record
We arrived at Boesmans in October 2004. I immediately found the team more at ease than the last time. Maybe it was that we had come a long way together or that things had finally fallen into place as regards sponsorships. Or perhaps it was that this time some personal issues had been laid to rest before the actual trip where they could have become team-destroying events. Everyone seemed totally focused on what we could do to make sure we were ready to start mixing gases as soon as Don Shirley (“the Professor”) arrived. Not that the rest of us could not mix the gas, but we were using Don’s booster pump and some other hardware he had developed to run his technical diving business (IANTD South Africa). In the light of his immense experience as both an open-circuit and rebreather diver, I felt Verna was really fortunate to get Don to come along on the trip. Not only would he blend her deep gases for her, but perhaps even more important, he would act as a deep support diver for her.
Our first major operation after arriving and getting all our tons of equipment down the hole, was as usual to put a marked shot-line in place for Verna to use as a guide and to hang the thirteen or so stage cylinders on. Theo had (as he seems to manage to do every trip) outdone himself and put together a 230 metre line with tags and stainless steel rings at the points that Verna had asked for. He’d even got a large black spool that we could deploy it from. The dive went remarkably well. I took up position just below the crack to ensure that the line didn’t pull into a line trap and jam. Derek went down with the running end to the barrels at about forty metres and dropped the weighted end through the ring. From then it was simply a matter of guiding it down and making a few adjustments to its position. The whole dive took about twelve minutes.
A view up through the crack showing the yellow shot line and the old line we put in place for Nuno’s first dive described in chapter 5 above.
The picture above shows Theo van Eeden surrounded by some of the kit, including the shot line and over 100 metres of high pressure filling hose.
The white snake almost got us
Following our success with the yellow shot line, we did not foresee any problems putting the white down-line in place. I again took my position at about fifteen metres just below the crack, with Gareth taking the running end of the line down with him to forty metres, Verna went along to make sure it did not hook up anywhere on the edge of the roof.
As we began our descent, Theo and Ian began letting the line out off a wooden spool with a core of about half a meter. This meant that each turn of the wheel would let out about a meter of line. But here’s the rub; this line turned out to absorb water very readily and soon became very, very nega
tively buoyant. As a result of this, almost as soon as I got through the crack I could see coils and coils of white line sinking down past me and coming to rest on a steep slope at about twenty metres. So there I was, alone at twenty metres now with more than 200 metres of line piling up and no way to warn my friends below me or to ask the surface to stop. If I pulled on the line they would think I wanted more line and feed faster, if I surfaced I would not be able to see what was happening with the line. In all probability, when Gareth felt tension on the line he would give a tug and bring the whole pile down the hole on top of them. I had to think fast. Since everyone else on the dive was by now under the roof, they were basically safe from the rope. Even so, there was a potentially dangerous situation just waiting to be triggered. All 240 metres was coiled up on the ledge like a great white snake ready to strike at unwary divers. I decided to take the running end (the end that was going down the hole) and ascend to about twelve metres to where I knew we had a karabiner attached to the line. I used my BC to carry the already heavy line up to the clip and ran it through.
Now I at least knew I had the line under control. I slowly fed the line through, undoing a number of entanglements along the way. Eventually Verna came up to about twenty metres wondering what was taking so long, and found the remnants of the pile and me feeding the line from shallower. She proceeded to undo the rest and the line was laid. I cannot really describe the relief I felt when that line was finally under control and safely tied off. Thick water logging lines are never really used anymore and we were very lucky no one was injured on this dive. As things turned out the barrel that we attached the white line to slipped up into a very narrow crack, making retrieval of the white line a very dicey proposition. So we tied it off around the main rock so that it was totally submerged. It would probably have remained there for the foreseeable future.
Don Shirley surrounded by oxygen, helium and stage bottles he was busy blending Trimix and Nitrox for Verna and Dave Shaw and himself. Note the large black scooters in the middle of the picture. They never did get to use them this trip.
The blue dolphin in the roof
It was also on this world record trip that I got to see something at Boesmans I’d never seen before, indeed I never expected to see. A blue dolphin! It was on a solo dive to forty six metres under the roof and my deepest dive since the PFO operation. The dive went like clock-work. I tied my reel on at forty metres and swam out thirty metres along the roof by reel, pausing every so often to look at my gauges and back at the drums where Gareth, Ian and Allana had taken up position. As usual I was amazed at the sheer size and clarity of this place. I felt that I was back diving, back in a place where I’ve always been very comfortable. I finally really believed that in due course I’d be back on Trimix at 100 metres. I turned the dive when my Cochran dive computer started to warn me of one minute to go before I’d be required to decompress before surfacing. My Aladdin still had two minutes, but hey, I was being careful. In the end the Cochran gave me three minutes at six metres and three minutes at three metres, whilst at the most my Aladdin gave me 1 minute at two metres. As usual by the time I got to the stop depths the stops had cleared. Nonetheless, as a precaution I also spent some time at the six and three metre stops on oxygen.
Now to the Blue Dolphin of Boesmansgat. Gareth has a way of thinking up things to lighten the moment, to make the deep divers relax to some extent as they make their way slowly to the surface. This time he was going to place an inflatable blue dolphin on the roof, dolphins being one of Verna’s favourite animals. As I looked back from my farthest point I saw Gareth begin to inflate the dolphin and as I drew closer I saw it suddenly fly up a crack in the roof. By the time I got back to them, Gareth and co. were laughing, almost hysterically, their masks almost continually filling and empting with mirth. Oh well, I thought, another surprise for the next group to visit here. The dolphin is wedged so far up that crack I doubt anyone will ever get it out, except maybe with a gaff of sorts. I jokingly indicated to Ian and Allana that Gareth was narc’d, untied my line from the drums and signalled to the other’s that I was going to begin my ascent.
I remember this ascent as one of the more pleasant dives I’ve ever done at Boesmans. I don’t know if it was me just relaxing in the self-knowledge that I could dive again. I had wondered, if only for a while, whether I’d be able to dive deep again. Even now at the time of writing I’m taking things very slowly. Other divers I know have returned to diving after very serious bends much sooner with no apparent permanent effects. My target was to dive again on Nuno and Verna’s teams, to be able to dive 100 metres+. After diving for eleven years, and being a part of the Wits Diving Club for all that time, I really could not think of not diving again. So I just took the time and kept having faith that I would pass all the tests. This was the dive that confirmed for me that I would dive below fifty metres before too long.
The day of the big dive
Finally all the preparations were complete the hole was rigged with shot lines and thirteen stages put in place from 150 metres on up to ten metres. My first duty for the day was to descend through the crack and hover at around fifteen metres with video camera in hand. Never having filmed in Boesmansgat before, this was a new experience for me. The only other time I’d seen a film crew on site during an expedition had been during Nuno’s world record dive here in 1996, but they’d been a professional crew. This time we could not afford a specialist underwater team. So we did a bit of training up by talking to people we knew were into underwater videography and then it was up to us. For our documentary we needed to get as much footage of Verna as we could. Any film-maker will tell you that you shoot hours and hours of footage to get a few minutes of usable scenes. As one of the people taking video footage during the dive, I would have to balance my primary role as support diver with the requirement to get usable footage, particular on the day of the actual dive. I floated there, just below the crack in the semi-darkness with sunlight streaming through the two visible entrances. For now I had a few minutes to myself. I listened to my breathing and the silence in between the breaths. I used the moment of solitude to calm any nerves I might have, focus my mind on the task that lay ahead. Without actually filming I panned the cameras powerful lights around the cavern. Looking through the viewfinder I got the lay of the land to see if I could get any ideas about camera angles or the best way to film Verna when she eventually drifted past me.
After around ten minutes Verna appeared in the crack above me and I pressed the record button. With the four stages slung at her sides and twin fifteen litre cylinders on her back, she took a minute or so to find a nice line through. Then she waved as she sailed passed me on her way to a place in the history of cave diving. To the best of my knowledge, only a handful of other people in the world had ever been where she was headed, and lived to tell of their experience. She was going below 200 metres.
The author doing camera duty as Verna heads down to 221m
I waited for the first two support divers (Dave Shaw and Don Shirley, both on rebreathers) to come past and filmed their descent as well. They were to meet Verna at 150 metres. Don’s Inspiration can go no deeper, only Dave on the Mark-15-5 could drop down to 220 metres if she had a problem. Then I surfaced to sit and wait for my next stint in the water. After about half an hour, the first of the air divers entered the water and soon we received confirmation that Verna had achieved her goal and not only got the depth reading on her depth gauge, but also retrieved the marked tag off the line. The tag had been custom made by Theo van Eeden and signed before the line was put in place by Andries and Debbie Van Zyl .
Verna on her way to break the world record for woman in 2004. Photo Courtesy of Theo van Eeden. Note the stage bottles hanging on the line for use during her decompression.
After about 100 minutes I was queued by our surface marshal (my wife Kirsten this time) to begin my descent. I met Verna at twenty metres, she was well and enjoying her dive. I gave her some fluid to re-hydrate and scooped up my c
amera to get some more footage of our world champion. Verna dutifully held up the 221 metres tag she had retrieved from the bottom of the shot line. I spent the rest of my allotted twenty five minute stint interspersing video filming with checking on Verna. Through the whole time she appeared in control and calmly counting down the minutes to when she could move the three metres to the next stop, then up and up and up until the six metres stop which was almost two hours long.
Verna just after surfacing with the tag off the bottom of the shot line
This time is when the mental toughness of the diver comes in. She knew with certainty that were she to surface now she would almost certainly get bent, maybe worse. Verna, like Nuno on his dive, and all other extreme deep divers knows that once you are committed to dives like this, there is no turning back, no getting out early and no alternative but to see the mission through. It is at this point in any marathon dive like this one that the divers face one last risk. When one breathes such high levels of oxygen, ultimately 100%, there is always the potential for oxygen toxicity to affect the diver.
Into The Deepest And Darkest Page 11