Cave Diving Abroad

Andrew Goddard

• Travel
  • Transporting cylinders etc..
• Logistics
  • Filling Tanks etc..
• Safety
  • Recompression, first aid etc...
• Information
  • Where to find, where to publish

Main Differences of Cave Diving vs Conventional Caving

• Cost of equipment
• Competence
• Organisation
• Transportation
• Weather!
• Extra risks due to equipment
• Rescue more difficult or impossible

Benefits Cave Divers Bring To Caving

• Dry sections later accessed by dry cavers
• Linking by flooded zones
• Original observations
• Often new passage found
• Publicity helps caving
• Rescues

Travel

• By car?
  • need all caving gear+diving gear
  • single occupancy or double with trailer
  • weight of cylinders and compressor
  • check the tyres
  • legal items
• By plane?
  • myth that you cannot carry cylinders
  • scheduled=64kg trans-atlantic
  • ship out heavy gear earlier

Accommodation

• Need power and space
• lights - no carbide!
• electric compressor?
• service gear
• Gite often worthwhile
• Somewhere to run compressor

Logistics - Filling Tanks

• Compressors
  • Reliable compressor
  • Spare compressor
  • Many small compressors better than 1 large one
  • Comprehensive tool kit
  • Noise
• Gas mixes more difficult to acquire
• Diving Shops
  • not always available
  • need qualification card
  • lower pressure than UK
  • don't like cave divers tanks
  • travel
• Gas mixes need recognised qualification

Logistics - Diving Lines

• Vary a lot
  • gaps
  • many lines
  • often thin
  • sometimes wire (cutters needed)
• Laying line
  • what type
  • purchase in advance!

Logistics - Lighting

• UK lighting inadequate
• Bright lights expensive
• Home made lights unreliable!
• Charging facilities needed
• Dry cells for back-up
• Hire of lights possible
• If salt water or halocline - no wet parts

Logistics - Equipment

• Tanks much larger
• Backmounting?
• Buoyancy needed
• Spares
• Transportation of gear through sumps
• Sumps different
• More caving between sumps

Safety - Recompression

• British divers have had incidents abroad
• Need insurance - caving and diving
• Location of nearest chamber - diving literature
• Consider portable chamber - £12k
• Driving at altitude - often forgotten about
• Can't fly after diving - many incidents
• Always take extra precautions

Safety - Caving Beyond Sumps

• Accident inevitable sooner or later abroad
• First aid kit through sump first
  • List of contents as per CDG?
  • Use rocket tube to 30 metres
• Consider clothing beyond sumps
• See CDG manual

Information - Researching

• Not as organised as UK
• Greater efforts than normal required
• Good information in BCRA library
• However much information difficult to get
• No substitute for local contacts

Information - Publishing

• CDG newsletter always without fail
• Journal in country of origin
• Publish techniques as well as cave passage
  • American side mount sy! stem
  • Carrying of stage cylinders
  • Lighting
• Amount learnt more than conventional caving

Expeditions - UK

• Why limit expeditions to abroad?
• Difficult projects could be undertaken by siege
  • Main Rising
  • Lancaster Hole
  • Pippikin-Witches
• Now funding other than Sports Council, why limit to just travel grants

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