RIDERS ON THE STORM MAY 2008

03.05.2008

Divers: Jonathan White, Jim Warny, Artur Conrad

Jim and me we were diving on trimix and Jonathan just came back from his MOD2 on Kiss in Malin Head. It was a while since the last time he was in the cave so he decided take it easy exploration wise and brought his impressive photographic equipment. Quickly he has learned new rule of thumb in Irish cave diving - Never dive shortly after me!
But as I was diving first ( lucky me!) I enjoyed good 2m visibility enhanced by the beam of my new 7LEDs DragonSub ;-P As I was swimming along the section lined by Jim on the previous weekend I had impression that he must have really enjoyed his nitrogen narcosis but after checking the bearings I had to pay respect to him, line was going SE, exactly where we wanted to go. Nevertheless that section of passage was gradually going up with some deeper canal left on my right hand side. I reached the reel left by Jim and kept going on. Shortly I have been forced to find the way among the boulders, a bit similar situation as we experienced after 400m. When my reel was almost empty i got to tight section on -37m and around 610 into the cave. Suspecting that that was dead end I left the reel in place, returned 25m toward the entrance and started new search with second reel. After some zigzagging among the boulders I came across my own line apparently creating some 'interesting loop' and disappointed I started my return. Dive time 2h. On last deco I enjoyed Jean Michel Jarre on my UW MP3 Player
After short discussion on the surface Jim went down for another 2h ( Dire Straits on deco but same as me he came back without conclusion. Enthusiasm from last week vanished completely.

05.05.2008
Determined not to let The Polldeelin project fall into stagnation phase I felt obliged to dive it as soon as possible. Not being able to refill my tanks in the area I headed to Mayo for some other project but I was back next evening dropping my refilled stages and deco tanks into the river. The dive took place next day in the morning. There's not much good things I can say about my preparedness to that dive when it comes down to equipment. I left one of my o2 clean regs in Mayo so I had to share one reg between three tanks - one with travel EAN32 and two others with O2 for deco. Apart of that all my tanks were pumped to far lower pressure that I asked for...but this is Ireland and I can only blame myself for not checking the pressure on the collection...Finally, after lot of troubles down there I returned to the surface after 140min with 5 tanks drained to 0 B ( both stages used in early part of deco, both o2 deco, suit inflation tank). Last 75 min I spent closing and opening tank valve with every breath since the regulator that had to serve 3 tanks decided to freeflow...I still had 3000l of back gas in my twin but 24/20 is not a great deco mix...Shambles...
The only good thing is that I think I found the way on ( actually it seems we have never lost it) only meter away to the right from the end of the line... However further dive is needed to confirm this.

10.05.2008
I got to the end of the line, the only possible way on seemed to be going SW along left hand side wall on the depth of 40m.However it started turning gradually, I was still fine when it was going W but after it took NW direction I reeled the line back to the point where I spotted some opportunity to jump off toward South. I follow this way for about 15m in bad bad visibility going up along some gentle slope with boulders untill I hit the roof..great..again I left my half full reel in place and turned back.
After that dive I payed more attention to Pooltoophil, Pollonora and Pollatoomary projects.