240m dive in Sra Keow: Trip report

EBT

Mike,

I dont honestly know what you find dishonest here. The facts are simple and in this case, you have created a second account when your first is banned. Guess what? this one is now as well... its a predictable course of action isnt it?

Your main accounts 'read only' mode expires on sunday night as you know (I'll personally reverse it). Maybe when that one is live you can choose to obey the site rules, which are in place for the benefit of all.

These allegations of "lying" are frankly childish.

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decoweenie

Member "not_to_post" sidebar is showing a count of 2 posts, and I can't find the other post. Has it been deleted like he claimed ?

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EBT

Phi,

No, it hasnt. What happened is that he registered his "not_to_post" account a while back. He then got a temporary read only mode on "DrMike" for well known reasons. We left the other account (despite knowing about it), since it wasnt actively posting.

Not_to_post then posted (ie mike, the guy who is on read only mode for breaking site rules). So, suprisingly, we enforced the TOS and removed the post to an admin area for discussion. Our conclusion was that since mike is reaching the end of his temp read only on sunday, that he would then be able to post whatever his little fingers desired. His actions, have now ensured that remove the sock puppet account since a. its against TOS and b. He's supposed to be on read only mode for previous actions.

Mike knows full well the rules, as does everyone else. If anyone feels they cant follow them, maybe they should go diving and ignore forums?

So. the situation now;

DrMike. Account unlocks on sunday
Not_to_post. Account is permanently banned.

I honestly dont know what outcome anyone else expects??

__________________
Eagles May Soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines!

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Real diving t-shirts for real divers

SINUS

Yes phi, it was deleted within 2-minutes after "not_to_post" (?) put it up..

I did read his post and was posted in polite manner..

I managed to capture it in HTML file and Zipped..

I could put it up for you if you and the rests of the members are interested.


Cheers

Wei Lan

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"Silence Is Always Beautiful"

decoweenie

Zak, thanks for the clarifications.

Honestly, I don't know the answer to your question either... but I do want to give a chance for the truth to come out as peacefully as possible.

God knows we have enough of "stretching of reality" lately...

__________________
"...after a while you get bored offering advice to a bull that like to keep butting the fence with its head rather than walking through the open gate..."

- Rebreather World PM

diverklondike

Here is the Trip Report from Ben as was posted on "another" board.. Sorry for the cross but I felt it would be worth bringing over. I have not read it in detail yet....
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Below is the post....

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for those of you who are interested, here's my report

note:This dive required a lot of logistics and effort from a large group of people. Before the dive an agreement was made that the deepest depth reached, by whomever, would be team’s result as such. The goal was not to reach a record depth, but to find the origin or bottom of the cave.


Sra Keow cave system is different than the other Thai caves; it has no stalactite/stalagmite formations below 40 meters, but signs of water erosion.
If you hover motionless near the entrance, you would notice a very gentle flow, streaming out of the cave…Talking to geologist, woke our curiosity; “oh, these caves can go well beyond a depth of 300metres of depth. An 80m white rock wall towers on the edges of a small pond in the middle of the jungle. The pond itself isn’t larger than an average backyard and is the favorite drinking spot for passing elephants. The local Thais know it’s the entrance of a large cave system, connecting with another pond at great depth.

Mauricio and Eefje are struggling to read the wetnote Cedric send up. My heart is pounding in my throat… if Cedric used any of his bail out gas I’ll have to climb out of my 80 kg rig and start blending again.

‘240M BAD VIZ, ROPE ENTANGLED, TELL BEN TO USE THE 186M LINE’

Not sure what to make out of it and a little worried I learn that the bottom gasses are untouched. Cedric will make it to the habitat solely using his Megalodon ccr…quiet an achievement…
An elephant would perform a more elegant giant stride entry and I quickly disappear in the muddy pool. At 12m, the cave starts where the visibility is reduced to 1m.
Rows of deco tanks pass me by as I drop fast. In a glimpse I see Cedric through the silt around 30m. After just 4 minutes I pass the 60 meter mark and a bit later I pick up my last intermediate Trimix that Cedric has left for me. The visibility now gets better, the angle steeper and the finning is less heavy to keep up with the diagonal descent.
The visibility now increases and I still try go grasp the dimensions of the cave. The stalactites have disappeared and running water has performed a genuine piece of art in the limestone. Even with my Green force HID light, the far wall remains a black hole.

The descent is now almost vertical and the sound of my heavy breathing is slowly being replaced by the pounding of my heart in my ears. The magical 150m tie off….

I tried to reach this tie off three days earlier, but failed to do so because of a slow descent and the labor of staging tanks at 108m. Cedric had warned me that the big pinnacle at 150m was the last decent tie-off and the rest was nothing more than small rock flakes with the end of the line at 186m. We had been brainstorming for the last three days how to put a main drop line from 150m without losing an expensive reel, but putting a weight on it regardless. Finally we decided that Cedric would tie off a weighted spool at the 150m mark, ignore the old line and descend with the spool to his maximum depth, leave it locked with bungee and a cyalume in case I managed to get deeper.

The 150m tie off is smaller than I imagine and I find the spool, a weighted line going down and about 20m of neatly knotted line, all fixed to the mainline. Not looking good, so I follow the old line that follows the ceiling for a few meters before plumbing along the opposite wall into the deep. I follow it to 186 meter where it stops in a basic tie of with a simple loose knot…. Not too much, but it’s all I have. I take my OMS reel, tie off on the old line and look up to whoever is watching that it will hold for just a few minutes.
I unlock the reel, drain my BCD and start dropping and darkness closes in. The walls have disappeared now and the only visual reference is a slowly spinning reel in front of my eyes and my bright yellow F1 depth gauge. My Suunto Vytec has gone to sleep since 150m… What the hell am I doing here?
Around 190m High Pressure Nervous Syndrome kicks in. 85% of Helium and a fast descend make my hands shake and I feel tremors along my spine.
I’m not carrying a pressure gauge out of risk for implosion; the manifold valve on my twin tank is closed and as soon as breathing becomes difficult, I would open the manifold valve, and start my ascend.
210m , the shaking in my hands has become worse and I doubt that I will be able to open the manifold valve on my back. I decide to open it now, breathe my 3rd bail-out tank empty and then ascend. The noise is overwhelming when both tanks equalize.
Suddenly I get hit by something … one of the walls wall has sneaked up on me and I bounce off. Finning to regain my balance, a few seconds later I bounce of a wall coming from the left hand side. Is the cave this narrow or is my orientation completely gone?
I can only see one ochre colored wall with clear signs of water erosion and the rest is black. I look up and I see a large cloud of dust following me.
My gauge reads 230m and 24 minutes runtime. All seems to be going well
The next minute everything goes very fast. I hit a muddy slope and nearly tip over. A few finkicks get me off the slope and another straight drop follows.
The feeling of falling into a giant duvet blanket shoots through my head… The bottom is composed out of fine yellow silt and very gently I sink in it up to my knees, getting me to a full stop…. My gauge reads 240m. I look around, the bottom appears flat, maybe a slight inclination… but I fail to see another drop. I can see three walls closing the space, but the far end remains black. The silt starts to come up to my chest and instinct tells me it’s time to go back. I look at my expensive OMS reel that has been my faithful buddy for years. With hands shaking like this, there’s no way I can reel it back in. I lock it up, start inflating my BCD and slowly I come free out of the mud leaving a trail similar to that of an junior space shuttle.

‘Slow ascend, slow breathing, slow ascend, slow breathing’ I keep telling myself….
The minutes look like hours while being hypnotized by the numbers on my gauge and line gliding though my hands on the way upwards. My first stop is at 186m, exactly at my tie off. I look at it and still can’t believe I trusted such a little piece of string with a dodgy knot. I recover the spool Cedric has left as a souvenir at 150m.
A bleep , a clear blue screen and my Vytec computer jumps back to life. I reach the first series of stage tanks at 108 meters. They have been here for 3 days and are covered in a slimy brown layer of dust… The mouthpiece has a few shrimps on it and after a quick swipe I put the delicacy in my mouth… The rest of the ascent goes smooth until I hit the T-junction at 80m. I first see the red arrow, and then I look at the yellow one. Because of my bright HID, the red colors are still dancing on my cornea making the yellow appear red. Confusing…
I arrive at 66 and see no tanks. My heart stops…. Did I take the wrong turn at the T-junction? I’m sure I followed the yellow arrow and not the red one… The red arrow leads too another pool without deco gas or habitat…
I ascend another meter. The visibility is about 1 meter here.. at 64 meter I bump with my head into the deco tanks. The silt from the last three days has covered the tanks completely, making a perfect cave camouflage. I’m back on the happy track, I clean the second stage clear from half a pound of mud and shrimps and start breathing my decogas.

I switch from my 14/70 mix to my 21/50 mix… within 30 seconds my head starts spinning. The passage in the cave is pretty narrow here and while struggling with my tanks, I’ve reduced the viz to less than 10cm. The vertigo gets worse and I’m convinced that I suffering inner ear decompression sickness due to the nitrogen load hitting my inner ear…. …. If this gets worse I risk drowning in my own vomit.
Not today… I switch back to my 14/70 and miraculously the dizziness oozes off… now what? I can’t keep breathing this mix since it’ll jeopardize my schedule, get me bent and it will soon be depleted anyways…
I opt for a cocktail and start alternating regs every 5 breaths… this seems to do the job, after 10 minutes I manage to breathe the 21/50 with more or less stabilized vertigo .

I follow my 250m plan out of conservatism and simply because I don’t carry a plan for 240m. The surface crew assumes the deepest expected plan for 270m. I was shallower and earlier, so I don’t expect Mauricio, my deep support diver until 50m.

This puts me a bit into trouble as there is no one to take my stages off me and I’m forced to clip them on. 5 tanks on my back, two stages sidemounted left, two stages sidemounted right. 2 stages clipped on a d-ring on my twins right, while pushing the stage I’m breathing along the line… it’s all a bit over the top and I urgently need to organize my gasses and make inventory.


At 50m my savior shows up, whacks me a slate in my hands with lots of questions and I am 6 tanks lighter. In the haste we lose a tank which I will later find back stuck against the ceiling
The freshwater shrimps apparently have put Belgian diver on the menu for this evening and find little gaps between gloves and hood to pick flesh.
I reach 39m and see the next decostation with 3 tanks.
A few hours later, the 21 meter stop appears and I’m again in overload; pushing 4 tanks ahead of me while dragging 9 tanks on every d-ring on my harness… I hope Laurent shows up quickly.

Laurent needs two runs to get all the tanks to the surface and after 5 hours I finally reach my 12 meter stop. Shrimps everywhere. The shrimp cook on duty points out that the divers’ lips are the best and in my effort to wipe them away I lose my dive plan…. I’m all sorted now. My back-up plan is unreadable since I punched holes through the laminate and it has become flooded. I’m cold, dizzy, hungry and I can’t see a thing. On the surface, kids started playing in the pond and every time one jumps in I get a cloud of silt on top of me.

I finally finish my last stop, time to get into the habitat. I struggle out of my gear and surface next to a smiling Cedric who has been in here for the last three hours. I wedge myself on my primitive seat while Cedric hand feeds me hot soup brought by the surface support.
I feel like shit. I have difficulty talking, my knees hurt, my head is spinning and my stomach is in a knot….

“Bottom at 240 huh?” I ask cedric….
He looks at me with big eyes and says ‘you saw the bottom?’

I’m confused…
Cedric sees the confusion on my face and explains;
“ No bottom; I tied the spool on the 150m rock, started descending and suddenly the entire line inclusive rock, came falling past me. I caught the main line before it disappeared, ascended, made a new tie off and wrapped all the loose line into a knot.
Iwent to 186, but spent longer than my allowed bottom time, that’s why I took the 240m plan’

I can’t believe it… if he would have lost the main line, that would have been a certain death for him, no way to find the exit passage again. In order not to get me entangled he spent longer than his allowed bottom time collecting loose line. He stays almost half an hour longer in the habitat to make up for it…We finish our soup and squeeze potato puree out of plastic bags while breathing 80% from surface supplied hoses…which taste of polyvinyl… nice one… shrimps have also gathered on our submerged laps in the habitat, taking a serious interest in the pee-valves on my O’Three dry-suit… in the meanwhile, the cyalume lights started dripping their luminous fluid into the habitat pool, giving a phosphorus plankton-like show. They obviously didn’t like the pressure and even being liquid filled, the tiny air bubble inside caused them to burst. In no time, most of our pouches and gear are glowing in the dark. Aren’t these things toxic?

I read magazines, finish the mashed potatoes and 3 hours later it is finally my turn. Luba, our dive doc shows up to escort me out of the habitat on a full face mask. As soon as we ascend my knees start to hurt. I wait for a few minutes until the pain fades, but as soon as I ascend another meter, the pain comes back. In the end it takes me about 15 minutes to get to the surface and I float another half an hour around to let the pain go away before returning to gravity… the divesite is a mess , tanks everywhere, hoses left and right, suits , fins, food containers etc… Then a lightning and two seconds later it is pouring down. I must have upset the gods of the cave… This is supposed to be dry season.
I arrive back in Phuket at 1 am with a truck full of mud-covered dive gear, convinced that I will never dive in such a horrible cave again…or will I?
I used z-planner and open circuit for this dive with 60% safety factor. I believe the introduction of nitrogen in the shallower area’s <70m was still too aggressive could have been reduced, keeping the N2-He balance constant, whilst only increasing the PPO2

best regards,
Ben

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Dive Safe...

Mark

Dave Sutton

I don't think there is much doubt as to what happened here. Probably best to re-think the public statements and to give credit where credit is due (plenty of credit to go around).

As far as "Team Claims": Three men made up the team that went to the moon each time... but only two *claim* to have walked there. Here we have *one* diver at 240 and *two* making the claim. That's where the issue is.


Well done to both Ben and Cedric.... just set the record straight on the reports and press on. Everyone will think well of anyone who takes the time to clear up any misunderstanding, and at the end of the day, nobody will care. It's an impressive dive no matter what. I would have been happy to have carried the tanks....


Dave (not tossing stones at either astronauts or deep cave divers...)

benreymenants007

Thanks for your thoughts Dave,
But no team- no dive

cheers, Ben

Dave Sutton

Perfectly understood.
Test pilots all understand that it takes a *team* to make an airplane, but only *one test pilot* gets to claim "the first flight"....

PM if you like. And welcome aboard the site here.

Dave

Mdemon

Now THAT'S a dive report.