Pet Cementary - reconnaissance

Many of you are probably wondering what’s going on with our leading cave diver – Krzysztof Starnawski? In the country winter, exploration of the Czech cave Hranicka Propast for this year came to an end, but is “Starnaś” waiting idly? Well, no! Here is what he wrote today on one of the diving forums. I would just like to add that Krzysztof is currently in Mexico, where he is working on the lighter and warmer side of caves.

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“The balancing of the equipment and myself that I didn’t do at The Pit I decided to do at Casa Senova, which is easily accessible and flooded entirely with salt water. But as is usually the case with me in the morning I changed my plans and instead of wasting time decided to head straight to Pet Cementary. I took extra trowels of styrofoam and weights on the carabiners to make the final balance and trim adjustments already at the bottom of Blue Abyss.

For those who have not been to the Mexican caves, the caves are shallow, with an average depth of 15m, and are flooded with fresh water to this depth. Deeper the water is salty, and the deeper it gets, the thicker it gets. Sometimes there can be even three consecutive haloclines.

I know the Pet Cenmentary caves very well so after 3 jumps and 40min of swimming I was already at the beginning of the Blue Abyss, after another 15 minutes I had all the safety (decompression) cylinders set up in case my SM CCR failed.

I got the trim of myself, the reba and the cylinder almost perfectly and the correction was very small. Under the rocks I deposited excess styrofoam, when it will be useful again =). The main purpose of this trip was to set up the deposits, trim the equipment for salt water and control the TKM clamp.

I will honestly say that when I saw my TKM clamp at 60m I felt a strong sense of excitement. For a few months since I constructed my SM HH I have been wondering if I would fit in this clamp. Now came the decisive moment i….. it turns out that I am passing the clamp, with difficulty but I am passing !!!!. I have found it very useful to train in my training clamp before.

The rest of the dive was standard. I went around some of my handrails and took out the flashing I left there last year. I also found a new side passage, which I had not noticed before. On the way back I corrected the rigging and checked the gas pressure in the bailout cylinders.

The whole dive only took me 160min so I still had time for the chickens in Playa =)”

Source: divetrek.com.pl