CCR/Full Cave - Training Report - Gregg Stanton - LONG

brockbr

CCR/Full Cave - Training Report


2,100' back at the Stoplight at Jackson Blue

Since the community is small, and we rely on each other to share our experiences about instructors and dive training, I've put this together to report on my experience with Gregg Stanton from Wakulla Diving for my CCR/Full Cave training.

I was referred to Gregg by my current instructor Parker - Parker doesn’t instruct CCR/Full Cave. Gregg came highly recommended from many people, and had a good reputation for being a solid teacher. Once we got the schedule worked out, everything was set to go on a Saturday, but he asked me to arrive the day before so we could go through my gear to make sure it’s suitable for cave.

The Kit/Rig/Gear
On meeting Gregg, I found him to be very easy to work with. The things he didn’t like about my rig were discussed, and options were offered. Ultimately, he wasn’t requiring a certain configuration; we discussed the issues I’d face given certain elements of my setup, and how we could move this here, or that there, in order to minimize problems in a cave environment.

Redundancy and ease-of-use were paramount in the configuration. Because of this, over time, I eventually made several major changes. 1) I ditched the 2L Argon to reduce my total width.

2) We rerouted the O2 gage over my shoulder in order to remove a snag hazard.

3) We reoriented the O2 1st stage to allow the HP line a better path.

4) Added full support for offboard gas. This has been done using a QD, a Y, and an isolator. This allows my drysuit to be inflated from the RBS, and more importantly, allows the RBS to serve as a dil replacement with the RBS tied directly into the manifold. Shutting down the dil and opening the isolator has the effect of pumping the RBS into the manifold. This includes the BOV! Makes it trivial to bail out to RBS without removing the DSV. Of course, the RBS also had a second stage and LP inflator hose too.

5) Streamlined, streamlined.

6) Reworked my RBS. I am now configured with the AL80 using a side mount, and swam double 80’s, one on each side, in this configuration.

Most of the changes were made over a few days, and not all at once. This allowed me to become accustomed to the changes as we went.

The Course
As I came to learn, Gregg follows the IANTD standards for CCR/Full Cave. This course combines planning, skills and proficiency into a single package. Gregg takes his courses very seriously, and it was immediately obvious that this wasn’t a “do the skill once and be done” kind of course. Gregg wants the student to understand the reason for the skill or drill, how to do it, and even more importantly, how to do it well. If you are just looking for a c-card and expect that by paying the tuition you’ll get one, Gregg is NOT your guy. He requires proficiency for each skill, and it must be demonstrated over many dives.

The Dives
May 10th - Jackson Blue
We started out at Jackson Blue in Marianna. I would be diving with Paul from the UK. He would only be diving the weekend since he was doing his Intro course. He would return the next weekend to finish.

Here we did the land drills, which focused on deploying the primary, and many other line drills, such as following the line, lost line, and others.

Once we finished on land, we moved into the basin. These dives included a long line course Gregg set up. Paul and I were required to follow the line with eyes closed, with the lead assisting the buddy through all changes in line tie-offs and direction. Each played lead as we made circuits.

From here, we moved into the cavern area.

After I ran the primary in, we worked on skills and drills.

May 11th – Jackson Blue
We returned the next day to do more cavern and intro work. As we dove, we’d have our O2 unknowingly shut off by Gregg, as well as other skills and drills. Some included a 300’ (100m) swim on the line on bailout in both directions to measure our gas usage etc. We also practiced bailout and cylinder swapping when half used, all while continuing to exit.

Although my buoyancy and trim were solid, my power frog kick was weak. My regular frog kick to control position, rotation etc was good, but extending it out for speed sucked. This became an area of focus for me throughout the course.

May 12th – Lecture, Classwork, Presentations, More Gear
To this point, we’d logged 5 dives at Jackson Blue, and we needed to do some of the academics. Paul had gone, so Gregg and I spent the day going through a large number of presentations and slides. We also worked through more gear changes.

May 13th – Little River
What an incredible dive. With Paul gone, I was under 100% of Gregg’s scrutiny, but it worked out very well. We planned a long dive at the site, and had a list of objectives to accomplish on the dive. We worked on circuits, jumps, line work, and some extra surprises that got thrown in. The funniest part came when Gregg snuck over the top of me (easy to do on a CCR) and ripped my mask off while we were 700’ back. I calmly stopped, reached in my drysuit pocket for my defogged backup, and put it on and cleared it. Gregg’s response was a hardy laugh – He hadn’t noticed that I carried one until this point.

The dive itself was fantastic, and after deco’ing out, we’d been down for 3:20 (200 minutes). My main screw-up was while trying settle to the sand floor to fix a jump reel. It wasn’t sand – It was clay. I knew I’d messed up the second my knee squished into it. I was rightfully scolded for it after the dive From that point on, I learned not to settle onto anything.

May 14th – Promise, GoBetween and Unknown
For the next set of dives, we drove 15 minutes to GoBetween. This is located in Wakulla county. Through an arrangement with the land owner, we accessed the sink.

On this day, I was paired with a new buddy who was working on his Intro course. He was open circuit, so I had an opportunity to plan through this type of pairing. While starting out in the basin, we did bailout cylinder swapping and a few other skills. We then dropped down into Promise.

As we swam in, the visibility was about 50ft. The line goes in near the ceiling and follows it to a tie off, then drops steeply to 130ft. Gregg and I dropped as planned, but my buddy stayed about 25’ above us. We then went back up the line and tied off Gregg’s primary for a trip along the wall. Below us, a 190’ floor.

As I followed the wall and tried to find other tie off points, I noticed that it was too fragile. About 200’ along the wall, we turned around. My buddy was behind me at this point. For some inexplicable reason, he decided he wanted to be in front of me (which he should have stayed in position when we turned – instead of getting behind me). When he swam to get in front, he went over the top of me and then, without warning (and I couldn’t see him) he slammed me in the head with his AL80 bailout. He hit me so hard I saw stars and Gregg HEARD it. At this point, I thumbed the dive. Although it was a complete accident, I didn’t want to continue the dive with this buddy.

I later learned Gregg’s interpretation of how people thumb a dive – Single thumb casually raised? “We’re done, we need to go”. A CCR diver cussing through his DSV with an HID pointed at this alternating middle finger and thumb means “We’re outta here and hold me back when I get to the surface” I had a knot on my head for a few days after that.

My buddy, upon reaching the surface, thought is wise to sit out the rest of the dives. I didn’t argue.

From here, we went on and had 2 more dives along this system of sinks – All featured skills and drills, and all were thankfully devoid of AL80’s crashing into skulls.

May 15th – Devil’s System, Ginnie Springs
Leading up to this day was stressful. I knew I’d have my hands full, and I knew that Gregg wasn’t about to make this easy. As a matter of fact, by this time, I had been asking if we could just go cave diving so I could enjoy it. Uh – That wasn’t to be.

For anyone who doesn’t know Devil’s system, it’s actually pretty warm at 72F. Not thinking too much about this, I still suited up in my full undergarments and drysuit. Another factor was the flow.

The planned called for a 180 minute dive, and we’d be placing 7 reels and 1 stage cylinder. The second dive would be retrieval of the stage cylinder and reels.

On my way in, I couldn’t stay out of the current, and was working my ass off. I was also over breathing the scrubber. I am a runner with a laboratory measured vo2 max of 61. I hadn’t considered that my state of fitness would actually allow me to burn more O2 and generate more CO2 then my scrubber could remove. I learned this on entry

After fighting through the crack, the gallery, the lips, and into the junction room, I was sweating so badly that my face inside my mask was soaked and sweat was stinging my eyes. I seriously wondered what on earth I’d gotten myself into. It was at this point I realized that continuing the dive obligated me to doing dive #2, since dive #1 would be dropping all this gear in the cave and we couldn’t leave it behind.

I rested and got my heart rate and breathing under control, and we continued on. We swam the gold line to the first jump and dropped one of the 80 stages, then went back to the junction room. We did a jump out of the junction room and went up the mud room to the dog leg. Total penetration was a little over 1300’, at which point we came in over hill 400.

Coming over the hill, I killed him once when he tricked me with his light – I looked back to see his hand over the light head – We I turned back around, he killed his light and pulled of into a little nook. I didn’t make it back to him for 5 minutes. Bad buddy on my part.

On exit, Gregg wanted to do a full lost line drill in the gallery. As my light was turned out and eyes closed, he spun me into the middle of the room and then turned his light out.

I can honestly tell you that finding that line was a sweet success – But it was a full 20 MINUTES until I found it. I can easily see that exercise being even more stressful on open circuit given the limited time. For me – It was more slapstick then anything. Slam a rock – Move around. Bump your head – Learn to keep your hand out. Drop 10 feet into a hole and go “Doh!” to yourself. I had 3 more hours of possible runtime on my CCR, and Gregg wasn’t about to stop the exercise until I found it.

We exited within 2 minutes of the exact planned time I’d come up with. Gregg though I id well on the planning, but in truth, I simply got lucky. We made our 1/2 way turn point with 30 seconds of predicted – Again, nothing but luck.

Once we exited, I stripped out of my gear and removed my undergarments – Now fully soaked.

Dive #2 – The real fun begins. I enter the same way, but this time, not thermals on – Just shorts and a t-shirt under my drysuit. We drop into the junction room, and follow the gold line up to dog leg, then retrieve our jump reels. At this point, Gregg asks me to bail out to OC.

From this point on, I must retrieve reels, manage my bailout to only use half at a time and switching between them without stopping, manage my deco and gases via my VR3 etc, etc. He has me do a COMPLETE bailout to include the O2 we dropped at the entrance, and I end up back at the steps on OC – He wanted this to be as real as it gets, with the added challenge of picking up reels while bailed out.

Upon surfacing, I told him I never wanted to do THAT dive again He was gracious to point out that the task loading was higher than normal with the addition of picking up the reels since you wouldn’t obviously do that if you we really bailing out.

May 16th – Classwork and Written Exam
We spent the day doing lectures, classwork, slides, bookwork, and the final written exam. I scored well on the written, but honestly, after spending almost every waking minute with Gregg to this point, traveling everywhere together, and talking non-stop, the written was a non-event. Very easy.

May 17th – Jackson Blue – Proficiency Dive
The dive I’d been asking for was finally here - *Just* a cave dive, with nothing nasty happening to me “except for anything I did to myself” as Gregg put it. This was to see everything together on a long-ish dive and to check off that I could perform all the skills well enough to be called proficient.

BUT – There was the matter of the 15’ deep open-water breath-hold swim, DSV removed, eyes closed, to a buddy facing AWAY, and having to find his stage and reg, and breath from it (ALL eyes closed). This proved to be VERY difficult.

Although I was able to do it, it was as close as I’ve ever come to “get me the F outta here”. Upon reaching him and finding his stage (desperately needing air at this point), the reg had an elastic around the mouthpiece to keep it out of the mud. I fought with this to remove the reg. I almost didn’t make it – I came VERY, VERY close to putting my DSV back in my mouth.

The dive itself was spectacular. I had, to this point, accumulated 14 cave dives, with most being hard-core drills and skills kind of dives. I’d accumulated 17 1/2 hours in caves, with a maximum penetration of 1350’. Today, we were going to the stoplight – Slightly beyond 2,100’ at Jackson Blue. On entry, we dropped easily in, and I was surprised how relaxed I was.

We cruised along against the current, and made it to the stoplight in 72 minutes. I had prepared a white non-directional with my name, “Stoplight”, and 2,100’ on it. I place this on the line next to similar markers. We then took pictures, and made our exit. We’d plan for the figure 8 and exited accordingly.

At about 1500’, the viz dropped to 5’. We’d heard scooters behind us coming in, but didn’t pay much attention to them. Now it was obvious that they had silted the cave pretty well. This wasn’t an issue as we were on the line and continued through the silt for about 700’, with the cloud moving with us.

On exit, we made our way to the balcony, and I knew I’d finished and done an acceptable Job. Gregg shook my hand at the balcony and nodded approval.

I left the 8 day trip exhausted, humbled, and elated – A very strange set of emotions. I knew that what I had accomplished was a difficult thing to do, and was extremely glad to have been afforded the chance to take this training with Gregg.

Total Dives: 15
Total Dive Time: 20.4 hours

If you are considering most any form of CCR training, give Gregg Stanton consideration. He is incredibly smart, gracious and kind, and a fantastic teacher to boot. Just don’t look for him to rubber stamp a c-card, cause it isn’t going to happen

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MrClive

`well done to you on your course, thanks for taking the time to write all what you went through...

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clive

MarcLaukien

Congratulations for completing your full cave class with Gregg, and thanks for the great trip report.

We actually met briefly on May 15th at Ginnie's. John K. and I just came back from our dive (similar route than yours), and you were about to start your second dive. While so far I never had the pleasure to dive with Gregg, I can already tell from the few conversations we had that he is very knowledgeable, and also has great ideas for how to streamline and modify CCRs for cave diving. Whenever I meet him, I have a close look at his dive gear to "steal" some ideas from him

PacketSniffer

I've been down that road you've been on with Gregg a couple of times now (CCR Full Cave and CCR Trimix). Gregg is an excellent teacher and diver. I would highly recommend Gregg for anyone that wants to get the most education out of their tuition. Gregg provides a very fertile environment for learning. I call it...... "Total Immersion 201".

Oh, and congratulations!

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Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checked by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory or defeat.

brockbr

Marc - yes, I remember meeting you and John. It floored me that he had read about my rig on RebreatherWorld. Very small world

Gregg is a great guy, and really had MUCH to teach. He is also someone who is easy to learn from, if you know what I mean. I am a FAR better diver for my experience with him.

b.

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Mike Costanzo

Congratulations and thank you for sharing your experience. I definitely will consider Gregg in the future for my CCR/Cave course.

Good job.

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Mike

jkaterenchuk

Brock

From what I saw you looked well under control and confident. I am glad the training experience turned out so well for you. Having also just completed my CCR Cave course in Dec I know what you mean about just doing a enjoy dive. Now you can. Congrats.

Also when you get a chance send me some pics of the offboard hook-up so I can copy.

John

ScubaDadMiami

Gregg is both a great instructor and dive buddy. He has a great approach. I enjoy my dives with him when I stop in to say hello.

Congratulations on the completion of your course of instruction. You have obviously earned your certification if Gregg signed off on it.

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Howard Packer
IANTD CCR Instructor
Miami Beach, Florida
CCRDiveTraining.com

aknelson

Gregg has a great approach. I enjoy my dives with Gregg when I did my CCR training with him.

Congratulations on the completion of your cave class.

As mentioned by others Gregg is a great Instructor.

Andreas