Journey Underground - TDI Mine 1 - Day 2

Dive 1:

This started with us dropping down to 8m and going to the block house in Vobster. I then preceded to lay a line course out, making sure I did my primary and secondary tie offs. As I didn’t have a teammate this meant that I also had to find each belay and drop arrows as well.

The key to this drill was always to just take things nice and slow making sure that I kept the line under tension. After running the line out, the first skill was to flow the line with an out of air diver. Michael simulated being out of air, and took my long hose (due to changes in training because of COVID, rather than breath from the regulator Michael just held it) and we swam back to the start, with me keeping in contact with the line and Michael making contact with me.

Finally, it was time to follow the line back blind folded. This was to simulate a total loss of visibility, having to follow the line maintaining touch contact. 

During the drill I found out why it was important to make sure my belays were secure and that keeping line under tension was important. While following the line back I manged to pull one of my belays off, this meant there was a bit of slack line in the water and this was a lot harder to follow.

In the end I made it back to my starting point, with this done it was time to pull the reel and wind it back in. This was again made more time consuming as without a teammate I had to pull all my cookies up and undo all my belays as well.

With this all tided up it was time to call the dive and surface.

Dive 2

Dive two involved more line work, I ran a longer course this time with more belaying dropping more arrows and more ups and downs.

With this done it was time for a lost line drill. I was given a blind fold mask and Michel took me off the line. Once I was given the signal, I deployed my backup spool and started my search for the line.

The first step was to just get the double ender of the spool and find a good place to secure the end of it, made much harder for not being able to see. Once I had this in place, I started my search, this was done by waving my arm in front of me and trying to keep low to the ground (as I knew my line was all relatively low down).

After what felt like an age (but was only 2-3 minutes) I felt my line and took hold of it, once this was done I tried to wind my spool in but struggled so clipped it off with more line off than was ideal (looking at the video after I can see there was quite a lot of line, so I will be investing a safety reel in steed to make this easier) I then put an arrow on the line in the direction I was going to go. With that in place I set off down the line…for all of 1 meter as I found one of my line arrows, pointing in the opposite direction.

This meant that I then had to turn around, and deal with my original arrow that was pointing in the wrong direction. Then began the fun of trying to remove the security wrapped arrow, after a few attempts I was unable to undo the front of the arrow, but I was able to remove the back end. With the back end free I flipped it over, so it was pointing the correct direction and set off again.

With the line found this was a repeat of the lost visibility skill from the first dive, following the line in touch contact. With me successfully finding the start of the line the only thing left to do was to wind the reel back in. This time Michael helped by pulling my arrows and pulling some of the belay as well, this made life a lot easier and everything was quicker.

This meant then end to day 2, so I got my cylinders filled and headed off to my next Airbnb in Wales ready for my first overhead dive the next day.