Day 12 Cave Diver Course Location: Buton Tengah, Muna island. Cave: Goa Meja Dive time:  154 minutes Cumulated Dive time:  1689 minutes Circuit, Traverse and Survival. Last day but not least. After 11 days of hard training, here come the last day. As said before, navigation and survivals are the highlights of a Full Cave Course and indeed are the two last topics we talked about in my course. Today was about some very specific kind of complex dives: traverses and circuits. Let me explain you briefly. A traverse is a dive where you enter a cave system from an entry A and exit in anothe ..read more

Day 11 Cave Diver Course Location: Buton Tengah, Muna island. Cave: Oe Mamba Dive time:  77 minutes Cumulated Dive time: 1535 minutes Deep Diving Day 11 is a special day. Most of the dive we did during this course were shallow and only a few barely touched 20 meters. This is how most caves are around here. But not all. A few of them reach some more impressive depth. We have a few fracture caves going up to 40/50m, quite a few sinkholes in the 60 meters range, and, the mother of all deep caves: Oe Mamba. This cave has been one of the first cave explored around by local divers. We eventuall ..read more

Day 10  Cave Diver Course Location: Buton Tengah, Muna island. Cave: Goa La Ode Panu Dive time:  124 minutes Cumulated Dive time:1458 minutes Gas Recalculation and Lost Diver. Gas Recalculation? What the heck? Why would I need to recalculate my turn It is pretty straightforward, starting the dive I have a set amount of available gas, I use 1/3 to go in 1/3 to go out and 1/3 for who knows what may happen in this cave. This scenario works pretty well in a straight-line cave: going in, turning back and going out. Some caves are designed a little bit different and you have several lines ..read more

Day 9 Cave Diver Course. Location: Buton Tengah, Muna island. Cave: Goa Labungkari Dive time:  156 minutes Cumulated Dive time: 1334 min Next episode in the Navigation show: how to gather information about the cave and survive navigation mistakes (that of course should not happen but guess what, they do !!) Today I’ve been teaching a very specific thing that you do not find in every cave course. I learned it during one of my trips to Mexico: taking notes about the cave. Let me explain you. The more you’re penetrating deep inside a cave, the more you’re going to take navigation decision, t ..read more

Day 8 Cave Diver Course. Location: Buton Tengah, Muna island. Cave: Goa Teluk Lasongko Dive time:  154 minutes Cumulated Dive time: 1178 min Jump! Jumping in a dive seems a non-sense but when it comes to cave diving it refers to the act of jumping from a guideline to another. For several reasons explorers can decide to disconnect two lines instead of creating a T junction. It can be to protect a sensitive part of the cave from general public or to not create confusion on the mainline for entry level cave divers. When a diver wants to venture on that secondary line, he will have to tempora ..read more

Day 7 : Cave Diver Course Location: Buton Tengah, Muna island. Cave: Goa Labungkari Dive time:  125 minutes Cumulated Dive time: 1024 min Day 7 into the cave diver course, navigation and restriction ! After 6 days spent in Wakatobi in nice entry level caves, it was time for me and my student to move to more serious caves. The trip to Muna Island, the land of thousand caves took us half the day but no time has been lost. We used our travelling time to talk about different topics. Once again accident analysis, human factors, non-technical skills, culture of safety etc. The course is now slo ..read more

Day 6 Introductory Cave Diver. Location: Wangi-Wangi Island, Wakatobi. Cave: Goa Kontamale to Teekosapi Dive time:  159 minutes Accumulated Dive time: 899 min Today is all about planning. I am going to give my students a pretty complex plan to follow and see how they can perform a dive and stick a predefined plan. But before that, I wanted to spend some time talking about a hot topic in cave diving: Accident analysis and prevention. Accident analysis has been one of the engines of the establishment of a standardized cave diving training over the past twenty years. The protocols and equipm ..read more

Day 5: Introductory Cave Diver. Location: Wangi-Wangi Island, Wakatobi. Cave: Goa Endapo Dive time:  154 minutes Cumulated Dive time: 740 min Today my students died… Well not actually, but a mistake has been made that could have led to a very serious situation, or even worse one or two fatalities. Believe me or not I am very happy when this happen in my classes, it is a perfect occasion to reflect on mistakes and avoid them in the future. The day started under a cloudy sky with a cup of coffee and some auto evaluation. For the first time, the students actually recorded a decrease in some ..read more

Day 4: Introductory Cave Diver Day 1. Location: Wangi-Wangi Island, Wakatobi. Cave: Goa Tee Ponu Dive time 157 minutes Cumulated Dive time: 586 minutes Day 4 is by experience always a tough one. After the first two days reviewing essentials skills and the third one being an introduction to the real game, the 4th one is mostly always when the steep learning curve hits you hard. Dive planning starts to be more complex, as is communication, required awareness, drills and the multiple issues that appears during the dive. The day start as a usual day, slow and peaceful. Reviewing the auto evaluatio ..read more

Day 3 Cavern Diver Course Location: Wangi-Wangi Island, Wakatobi. Cave: Goa Teekosapi. Dive time:  140 minutes Cumulated Dive time: 429 minutes. Today is a milestone day. A big day. A great day. The student may venture for the first time in the Overhead. They will not see the light anymore. The border between the cavern and the cave, between the light and the darkness, will be crossed. Transitioning to this zone is no joke anymore. The reassuring light from the outside will be no more and this takes an actual toll on our mental. That is why the third day starts with a vast, broad and inte ..read more