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This Pictures are copyright from nick-toussaint.com and the Oliero Cave Survey Project team.
Please if you copy them must give proper credit to the hard effort of the team and notify us here
Please if you copy them must give proper credit to the hard effort of the team and notify us here
After last date flood, project cancellation and RIP tourist cave diver dead in
Elefante Bianco, the situation on the Valstagna caves was sad.
So here is some report from this weekend dives,
As Murphy comes to Italy too, for 2 weeks prior we had great sunny days with
no rain when we are not in Valstagna,
But at least the flow from last flood slow down, however left the water quite
stir up. 15 days after the flood the viz was -6mt.
Which left us with 7 more days before the project, as well some drizzle/snow
Friday was forecast.
And again almost becoming usual we had to deal with the extra stress of
possible new snow/rain forecast for Sunday night, However air temperature
was on the cold side this time, presumably keeping snow from melting and
flushing down, at least we hope.
Saturday was a cold cloudy day but not really a raining day, scout team Tony
and Mirko, found viz had improved but also flow had build up in fact they
figure was not easy to walk the gear to the main entrance and decide to bail
on diving Siori and took the boat all the way to Veci entrance and dove there,
founding 10-15mt viz., and doable flow on stock engine ADV's with 18's and
stages, during that day the flow maintain speed and water viz.
We decide to take the window and dive, as forecast call that until Sunday
night, there will be no rain and because air temp was on the cold side too.
Also we had all night Saturday to see any substantial change on the cave flow.
At 8:00am the first divers start unloading gear, flow was the same or maybe
less, water level was 5cm lower, so
By 9:15 we make the briefing and I call for the team boldness and character
as we were going to face some strong flow conditions, specially cause on the
Siori exit the flow venturi thru the laminatoio area increases flow speed by at
least two or 3 times as the Veci.
10:40am We send the support team to size the conditions and if possible
place 21mt ,75mt, bottles and negative heating pack to station 1 and 2
respectively, while controlling shortcut line and jumping to main line. We were
expecting lines broken from last Flood.
I thought if they are back in 5 minutes show is over, they were not back after
25 minutes, so we thought they are making progress,
And agree to unload Rb’s.
It took them just over an hr what normally takes 15-20 minutes to do.
11:30am safety divers stage all O2 station goods.
12:50pm Almost 24hr after scout team dove with no perceptible conditions
change, unless a bit drops on water level, and without any rain, RB team took
off, thanks to the team our load was reduce to 4 scooter and 4 stages, and
the 20lt frames with the Rb’s.
Still we had strong flow to deal with and the venturi of the first 200mt, we had
fast power engines on 42amp as first option, and then we had a secret
weapon.
We have "proplock" on the ADV’s especially due to the fact that you have
lines all over the Oliero cave, as lines get ripped on floods, but also it gives
you the possibility of changing the propeller type, depending on dive site
conditions.
So in seconds with no tools we install a 5 blade proplock, "CINQUE-PALE”. In
other words we had more torque if needed to fight flow with a heavy load, but
at the price of burning 15-18% more power.
We took turns leading the venturi and made it slow but easy to the main
tunnel, station 1 bottles perfectly placed and intact! (Last project I lost the lid
of a second stage in the setup),
Station 2 bottles and heating packs too in place, after the 36mt travel gas
drop and switch to 60mt bottles and we scooter to the end of survey line, we
found our line was intact, not even one placement pop out, however a lot of
the old lines rubber “snoopys” had gave out and make for some loose old
line, flapping on the "breeze".
Despite the flow we arrive at 40 minutes were it took almost 90 on the last
dive perfect conditions but while placing line and surveying simultaneously.
We tie off new reel with fresh and knotted survey line, I place the exploration
reel on a rock to get CO2 reality check with Fenu, then unscrew the stopper
of the reel and pull out some slack when I was getting my scooter ready to go,
in a second or two the flow was pulling the line out of reel and by the time I
stop it was over my valves!
Fenu got it under control in a second, is nice to have a reliable dive partner.
We drop the 60mt bottles and switch to 75mt bottles at 60 minutes, past 1km
the visibility was decreasing to 6-8mt in the ramo attivo area and flow seem at
points to speed up from odds directions, to make it even more spooky there
were lines hanging from the roof from the walls across the floor !. Again I was
feeling safe we had proplocks to deal with a line entanglement on the
propeller so we didn't have to abort the dive or loose a scooter.
We manage to place 470mt more of survey line when we reach the point were
the cave start rising to the surface, we have a minimum operating depth of 24-
27MTS with 75mt gas on the Rb, the cave continues for about 800mt more at
avg. 20mt , still to survey.
We turn around at about 105minutes, stop to do some survey and were back
decoing at 150minutes when support team found us and gave weather report,
NO rain bit more flow, and we were out of the 8-9°C water by 335minutes.
Which seems short, as when the record dive was done here,
(which include the last 800mt), their Deco schedule include 3hr more deco for
the same bottom time we did,
The funny thing is the first thing Fenu said out of the water was "Tanta deco",
which means we did too much deco !
Seriously besides fitness the warm achieved by the heating systems in combo
with the Rb, play a major role in long exposures and max deco,
We been playing we several experimental SUEX heating setups, that maybe
available in the near future.
Thanks to the team we couldn't have done this dive without :
Surface Manager :
Marco Bar-loco,
everything was very efficient
Scout Team :
Tony and Mirko
Safety Team :
Carmelo Fasci, Tschoppe, Marco23
Support Team :
Simone Iaria, Ike, Monzino
RB Team :
Alessandro Fenu, Nick Toussaint
No accidents, no dcs, no fatalities
Elefante Bianco, the situation on the Valstagna caves was sad.
So here is some report from this weekend dives,
As Murphy comes to Italy too, for 2 weeks prior we had great sunny days with
no rain when we are not in Valstagna,
But at least the flow from last flood slow down, however left the water quite
stir up. 15 days after the flood the viz was -6mt.
Which left us with 7 more days before the project, as well some drizzle/snow
Friday was forecast.
And again almost becoming usual we had to deal with the extra stress of
possible new snow/rain forecast for Sunday night, However air temperature
was on the cold side this time, presumably keeping snow from melting and
flushing down, at least we hope.
Saturday was a cold cloudy day but not really a raining day, scout team Tony
and Mirko, found viz had improved but also flow had build up in fact they
figure was not easy to walk the gear to the main entrance and decide to bail
on diving Siori and took the boat all the way to Veci entrance and dove there,
founding 10-15mt viz., and doable flow on stock engine ADV's with 18's and
stages, during that day the flow maintain speed and water viz.
We decide to take the window and dive, as forecast call that until Sunday
night, there will be no rain and because air temp was on the cold side too.
Also we had all night Saturday to see any substantial change on the cave flow.
At 8:00am the first divers start unloading gear, flow was the same or maybe
less, water level was 5cm lower, so
By 9:15 we make the briefing and I call for the team boldness and character
as we were going to face some strong flow conditions, specially cause on the
Siori exit the flow venturi thru the laminatoio area increases flow speed by at
least two or 3 times as the Veci.
10:40am We send the support team to size the conditions and if possible
place 21mt ,75mt, bottles and negative heating pack to station 1 and 2
respectively, while controlling shortcut line and jumping to main line. We were
expecting lines broken from last Flood.
I thought if they are back in 5 minutes show is over, they were not back after
25 minutes, so we thought they are making progress,
And agree to unload Rb’s.
It took them just over an hr what normally takes 15-20 minutes to do.
11:30am safety divers stage all O2 station goods.
12:50pm Almost 24hr after scout team dove with no perceptible conditions
change, unless a bit drops on water level, and without any rain, RB team took
off, thanks to the team our load was reduce to 4 scooter and 4 stages, and
the 20lt frames with the Rb’s.
Still we had strong flow to deal with and the venturi of the first 200mt, we had
fast power engines on 42amp as first option, and then we had a secret
weapon.
We have "proplock" on the ADV’s especially due to the fact that you have
lines all over the Oliero cave, as lines get ripped on floods, but also it gives
you the possibility of changing the propeller type, depending on dive site
conditions.
So in seconds with no tools we install a 5 blade proplock, "CINQUE-PALE”. In
other words we had more torque if needed to fight flow with a heavy load, but
at the price of burning 15-18% more power.
We took turns leading the venturi and made it slow but easy to the main
tunnel, station 1 bottles perfectly placed and intact! (Last project I lost the lid
of a second stage in the setup),
Station 2 bottles and heating packs too in place, after the 36mt travel gas
drop and switch to 60mt bottles and we scooter to the end of survey line, we
found our line was intact, not even one placement pop out, however a lot of
the old lines rubber “snoopys” had gave out and make for some loose old
line, flapping on the "breeze".
Despite the flow we arrive at 40 minutes were it took almost 90 on the last
dive perfect conditions but while placing line and surveying simultaneously.
We tie off new reel with fresh and knotted survey line, I place the exploration
reel on a rock to get CO2 reality check with Fenu, then unscrew the stopper
of the reel and pull out some slack when I was getting my scooter ready to go,
in a second or two the flow was pulling the line out of reel and by the time I
stop it was over my valves!
Fenu got it under control in a second, is nice to have a reliable dive partner.
We drop the 60mt bottles and switch to 75mt bottles at 60 minutes, past 1km
the visibility was decreasing to 6-8mt in the ramo attivo area and flow seem at
points to speed up from odds directions, to make it even more spooky there
were lines hanging from the roof from the walls across the floor !. Again I was
feeling safe we had proplocks to deal with a line entanglement on the
propeller so we didn't have to abort the dive or loose a scooter.
We manage to place 470mt more of survey line when we reach the point were
the cave start rising to the surface, we have a minimum operating depth of 24-
27MTS with 75mt gas on the Rb, the cave continues for about 800mt more at
avg. 20mt , still to survey.
We turn around at about 105minutes, stop to do some survey and were back
decoing at 150minutes when support team found us and gave weather report,
NO rain bit more flow, and we were out of the 8-9°C water by 335minutes.
Which seems short, as when the record dive was done here,
(which include the last 800mt), their Deco schedule include 3hr more deco for
the same bottom time we did,
The funny thing is the first thing Fenu said out of the water was "Tanta deco",
which means we did too much deco !
Seriously besides fitness the warm achieved by the heating systems in combo
with the Rb, play a major role in long exposures and max deco,
We been playing we several experimental SUEX heating setups, that maybe
available in the near future.
Thanks to the team we couldn't have done this dive without :
Surface Manager :
Marco Bar-loco,
everything was very efficient
Scout Team :
Tony and Mirko
Safety Team :
Carmelo Fasci, Tschoppe, Marco23
Support Team :
Simone Iaria, Ike, Monzino
RB Team :
Alessandro Fenu, Nick Toussaint
No accidents, no dcs, no fatalities
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