Billingshurst Cave Dive 13th June 2005
An 18 litre tank,
230 bars of pressure,
100 metres of underwater tunnel
and 52 minutes of diving.
Most important, however, was the 140 metres of bloody line I had to reel out behind me and scoop back up in increasingly chaotic armfuls. Not sure it was a hot idea to use a reel in such an open cave, with no tie-off points.
The two reels clipped together - and their endless noodling lines - made up the dive. The rest of it was just scraps:
* Four divers sitting on an underwater rock ledge, fins dangling, like boys on a riverbank. Below them a green sandy beach. A broad blue smear behind them shows the cave mouth.
* Guide reel #1 hanging ten metres below me; its arcing white line loops under the corner of a massive slab of rock. Have to go deeper to unhitch it before pulling it in.
* Cardinal fish, big-eyed and red, huddling in the hollows and bumps of the cave ceiling.
* Casting my head around in the dark, looking for buddies, seeing greyed out yellow fins, a torch beam behind me, a pure white camera flash.
* Diver silhouettes swallowed up by the crisp blue of the open water.
* On the wall dive outside the cave, looking up at the surface; it seems 5 metres away, but my depth gauge says 26m. This is dangerously good visibility.
* A tuna torpedoing away beyond the limits of vision.
230 bars of pressure,
100 metres of underwater tunnel
and 52 minutes of diving.
Most important, however, was the 140 metres of bloody line I had to reel out behind me and scoop back up in increasingly chaotic armfuls. Not sure it was a hot idea to use a reel in such an open cave, with no tie-off points.
The two reels clipped together - and their endless noodling lines - made up the dive. The rest of it was just scraps:
* Four divers sitting on an underwater rock ledge, fins dangling, like boys on a riverbank. Below them a green sandy beach. A broad blue smear behind them shows the cave mouth.
* Guide reel #1 hanging ten metres below me; its arcing white line loops under the corner of a massive slab of rock. Have to go deeper to unhitch it before pulling it in.
* Cardinal fish, big-eyed and red, huddling in the hollows and bumps of the cave ceiling.
* Casting my head around in the dark, looking for buddies, seeing greyed out yellow fins, a torch beam behind me, a pure white camera flash.
* Diver silhouettes swallowed up by the crisp blue of the open water.
* On the wall dive outside the cave, looking up at the surface; it seems 5 metres away, but my depth gauge says 26m. This is dangerously good visibility.
* A tuna torpedoing away beyond the limits of vision.
posted by El Rev at
4:35 pm
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