DAVE HARRIS' UTD OHP and CAVE 1 course report

Hi guys

here is the latest course report, even if the course was in May...thanks so much Dave to spend time to share your experience with us!!!

He enjoyed so much the UTD approach that he decided to become a UTD open water instructor, we are so glad to have you on board!!!

Next step...help out CAVE HEAVEN in Mexico.....hahaha...



" Ok, so it’s a few months late, but who’s counting? I did say I'd get round to this eventually!


I got hooked on cave diving in about 5 minutes after snorkeling a sump in Honduras a couple of years back, so having the time to spend May in Mexico was an unmissable opportunity. After emailing probably every cave diving center on the mayan riviera I was most impressed by Adam and Ela’s enthusiasm and response. I figured that would be about as good an idea as I would get as to how the instruction would be and looks like it worked out pretty well!


So we started out with essentials of overhead. Ela went through my gear siphoning out the bits and pieces that needed changing a few hoses here and there, some bolt snaps and bungie sorted that out, mostly it was ok. I’d ordered a bunch or gear from the UK that never turned up in time for the trip, so a quick visit to the local dive shops and we were good to go. Free plug here for Divelife in the UK that refunded me for all the gear that never quite made it in time. They didn’t have to do that, so good on them.


Time to get into the water. After the pre-dive brief I have to say I was quietly confident about this. I was a padi DM, could hover perfectly, had spent plenty time helping students with buoyancy control issues, I’d read how steady you are in doubles and watched the videos for the class. Easy right? I think the only piece of equipment I was wearing that I’d ever used before was the backup mask in my pocket but that shouldn’t be an issue right? So I was more than a little surprised to decend 3 ft, get into trim, get straight back out of trim then surface ass first into a nice forward roll. I think it was about this point I realized I was about to learn a lot more than gas management and navigation in overhead environments.


The rest of the session was spent on buoyancy, trim, propulsion and basic 6. Re-learning everything that I’d usually take as 2nd nature and unlearning the bad habits. I’ve never had such a steep learning curve diving since Open Water, but with Ela in front of me completely motionless it was easy to see that it just takes a bit of time. By the end of the day there was a good bit of improvement thanks to Ela’s patients and constructive instruction. The next couple of days went pretty well with a steady improvement on the back kick, valve and s-drills. The first SMB shoot was a good one. It’s interesting how something so basic can change when you’re concentrating on other things! Trim/depth/bag, Trim/depth/bag.. I actually thought I’d done pretty well until looking at the video I must’ve done a complete lap of the Cenote, maybe 2 and checked on the team (Ela) about once. We got there in the end though!


I had a couple of days here before OHP started, so went for a couple of boat dives with Aquanauts in Puerto Aventuras, Nick was happy to take me with doubles, so that was great. Straight away it was very different using the skills I’d just learned and really saw where I’d improved in the last few days. I got a couple of dives just myself and Nick which was great to drift along the reef to min deco limits. I think those were the first fun dives in about year where I’d not had to lead resort style divers so great fun.


As soon as my team mate for the course arrived we got cracking with OHP/Cave1. We started out with the usual dry runs, an intro to failures we ‘may’ come across during the upcoming dives and talking through how things should go. I think the cenote must have been slightly acidic or the like as shortly after the initial s-drills/v-drills valves and lights started failing left right and center! Luck certainly seemed to be against us every few tie offs. It was good though, the first day is always going to be a bit of a mess and we were working better as a team by the end of it.


Day 2 and after the mornings dry runs the failures were becoming a bit more complex as we worked better together as a team. By this point most of the basic cave skills have been introduced and it’s actually quite a lot of fun practicing running line and navigating around a cenote with continual disasters erupting all around you. I’m sure this is just down to Ela and Adam actually enjoying what they do. Over my time there I’d see a few classes going on where it appeared that enjoying yourself was not to be tolerated!


The final day of OHP was a lesson in blindness with Adam taking a turn as our tormentor, we may as well have started the day in blackout masks and kept them on. Blackout exit, blackout exit air sharing, lost line and lost buddy. Even the dry runs for these are challenging enough. In the water completely blacked out for the first time spacial awareness goes out the window. 60ft along a line feels like forever, any reference you would normally have with no mask is gone.


Eventually it was time to get into the Caves and put all this into practice. Unlike in the cenotes we can’t just surface at any time for a debrief and start the next dive. So here all the scenarios lasted a bit longer, great for us to actually get a bit of time to look around the caves for the first time with the occasional solvable problem. Getting out with major failures was a little more tricky. It was good to see the things that had caught us out in OHP improved upon, and as always there’d be a few things thrown in there that needed sorted out. The scenarios for lost line/lost buddy and zero vis really are great to do in a controlled environment. It certainly leads to the feeling that after the constant barrage of failures during the course that should the most likely of problems occur on an actual dive it would be pretty much a non-event.


The highlight for me had to be primary light failure on both team members. I don’t know if you’re supposed to have favorite failures, but coming out of the cave into the cavern zone with limited light is just awesome.


Many thanks to Adam and Ela for a fantastic course, I’ll be back in November for the next trip. And of course my buddy Dan, great to dive with someone willing to laugh about our mistakes, it was a good team.

Dave " THE END ....

Hope you enjoyed as much as we did during the course and hope to see you all soon in Mexico!!!

Dive safely and have FUN !!!

Ela & Adam