Kolosy 2011 - Krzysztof Starnawski

On 9-11 March, another edition of “Kolosy” took place in Gdynia. One of the guests of this year’s event, was the leading Polish cave diver – Krzysztof Starnawski. His presentation “World Record Holder” closed block VII of the Saturday meeting. With the event taking place in the Tri-City area, it would be a sin for the Divers24 team not to attend.

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Krzysztof began his presentation by explaining what motivated him when, in 1999, he began his adventure with cave diving in Hranicka Propast. It was for the exploration of this cave that he was then awarded the Colossus.

The assembled audience had the opportunity to learn what cave diving was like 13 years ago and what the main obstacles and limitations were. The main problem was the number of cylinders you had to take with you and their transport during the dive.

After his first experience with cave diving, Krzysztof Starnawski decided that in order to go further in this direction, he would need to develop on various levels. First of all, he realised that in order to take on this type of challenge, he needed more experience and familiarity with caves. An important part of getting to where he is today is becoming more and more familiar with depth. He conducted his training mainly in Mexico, a country full of magnificent caves.

In addition to the human factor, equipment was not insignificant. For such serious expeditions, the diver needed better and less unreliable equipment. Let’s remember that these were times when this type of diving was in its infancy, and everything was done on open circuits.

Over the years, two new pieces of equipment appeared, which changed the image of diving (not only cave diving) forever. We are, of course, talking about diving scooters, which significantly improved the transport of gases, as well as movement, and rebreathers.

By working on a closed circuit, Christopher was able to gradually increase his dive times. From 4 hours to 7 hours, until he reached the point where he was able to stay under water for 12 hours! Unfortunately, despite the new possibilities offered by the rebreather, backup was still done using open circuit and normal cylinders. This was quite problematic and the obvious way was to look for another solution.

In 2009. 10 years after the memorable exploration of Hranicka Propast, the work on creating a dual rebreather began. The first training with the dual rebreather could be started already in 2010, but here there was another problem to face – lack of procedures and diving techniques. Therefore, Krzysztof Starnawski, was forced to create them on his own.

Finally we come to the moment which the whole diving Poland remembers. The deepest closed circuit dive in November 2011, conducted by Krzysztof and the Dualrebreather team.

Dualrebreather Team – Irena Stangierska, Krzysztof Starnawski, Marek Klyta and Grzegorz Rutkowski

Preparations had been going on for 3 years, with a team of 4 people. It was assumed that a small team means small problems, while the larger the number of members, the more adversities that can stop it.

After adapting the double rebreather for dives below 200m, it remained to find a suitable site close to shore. After 3 days of bottom probing, we were able to find a suitable location, which was 500m from the shoreline.

The first week was dedicated to preparations. In the second week, the dives started, which became deeper and deeper, until finally one of them… ended up breaking the depth record by 13m! Interestingly, during the record-breaking descent, the readings on the measuring instruments were different by as much as 3m (283m and 286m). A deeper descent was no longer possible as the bottom had been reached.

The whole dive lasted 9min, while the decompression, which was done on shore, took 9h! During the decompression, not for the first time, Krzysztof recommended reading newspapers as a great way to kill time. The whole thing ended with a presentation of great photos by Irena Stangierska – a full-time member and photographer of the dualrebreather project.

Photo: Irena Stangierska/Dualrebreather.com