Eventually we reached a point where the team could be put to a real test. To safely attempt the record, Verna had to do a series of progressively deeper dives, which meant we needed to start diving soon. The first proper work up dive would be the biggest step from her previous deepest dive. To do this dive in as low stressed a way as possible, she’d ideally have her full team of support divers. The Easter weekend was set for a dive at Badgat in the sub-140 meter range. Unfortunately, as things turned out, only Peter and myself finally made the weekend. Annoyingly the rest of the team announced they couldn’t make that weekend. But Verna was determined, so with a team of just three people, complete with club compressor and stage tanks in tow, we set off. The weekend started off as usual, with some initial shallow cave drills and second level penetrations, which took us to about twenty-five metres. After that our focus was very much deeper diving since we were to be doing the deeper dives on the eventual record trip. Verna, Peter and I needed to do some acclimatisation dives to at least 50 metres down the shaft. In addition we did a 60 metre dive down the mines main shaft. I’m sure it would raise an eyebrow or two nowadays to say that we did these dives on compressed air. We believed that this sort of deep air diving would help us build up some level of tolerance to nitrogen narcosis, so we’d be able to cope well when we began Trimix diving in the sub-100 metres range. Today received wisdom is a little different. Given the potential for fatalities as a result of the effects of nitrogen narcosis, modern technical diving generally regards 50 metres as a maximum for air. Some organisations even advocate diving no deeper than forty metres on compressed air. Other groups go even further, and suggest Nitrox for dives up to 30 metres and Trimix below forty metres.
At this point we all felt pretty positive for Verna’s deep push. For Verna to dive to 140 metres she would not only have to go down the main shaft to 110 metres, but in addition she’d have to swim into a tunnel that leads off the bottom. Even then she could not reach her destination, she still had to swim about twenty metres into the tunnel and from there descend into yet another inclined shaft to get the depth she wanted. Given that she’d only been down that shaft once before, and the requirement to swim down an inclined shaft, this dive carried with it some additional risk factors we don’t see at Boesmansgat, which is usually more of a vertical descent. As her deepest support diver this would be a very tense time for me. I’d arrive at 110 metres, knowing that I had enough breathing gas for only a short stay at that depth. Given the complex path she would be coming out it was likely I’d have to wait for her to emerge from the tunnel. I’d need to factor this extra time into my dive plan so I didn’t arrive too early on the bottom. No way I could be exact in this, the nature of Badgat means timing is always a bit of a ‘best guess’.
Our final dive before the deep push was to the bottom of the main shaft, around 110 metres. Of course we used Trimix and on this occasion my bottom mix was around 8/60, which meant 8% oxygen and 60% helium, the balance of the mix being nitrogen.
Verna was diving a very similar mix. This gave an equivalent narcosis level of about forty metres on air. So in the face of our build up dives to 50 and 60 metres on air we would be able to think very clearly.
The dive went very well, although in my wetsuit I found it very cold at the bottom and was relieved to stop breathing the helium mix and switching to Nitrox36 at thirty metres. Helium, being a much thinner gas than air, conducts heat away from the body via the gas exhaled much, much faster than normal air. Our total time under water was 120 minutes. I shivered on and off from the switch to Trimix at thirty metres until I got back onto Nitrox.
The very next day, 5 May 2001, Verna did her deep push, eventually turning her dive at an exceptional 146 metres. Whilst I was still on my way down the shaft I noticed Verna’s brilliant cave torch shining up at me. Too early, I thought. Had something gone wrong? My initial thought was that she’d aborted the dive for some reason. Given the timing she’d given me she could not have reached her goal. I was relieved to be wrong. Everything had gone as planned. By being very conservative in her planning Verna had overestimated her time to get down the shaft, thus allowing herself a wider safety margin for the gas required to do the dive. So it was that she met me at 89 metres and not at 110 metres. Oh well, I’d figured my next 100 metres dive would have to wait for another day.
The surface of Badgat showing the diving platform. The caves are in the wall to the right of the picture. (Courtesy Derek Hughes)
As an aside from Verna’s pursuit of the world record at this time, WUC ran a number of trips to Aliwal Shoal on the South African South Coast of Kwa-Zulu Natal, and Wondergat in the northwest of the country. I took the opportunity at Wondergat to use up the remainder of my Trimix from Verna’s Badgat build up dive, and do a ‘back of the cave’ on mix. Wondergat is a natural sinkhole with the classic rubble pile at the bottom and two caves off to the sides at the bottom. One is called False Cave, because although it is around forty metres at times, it’s really a big hollow rather than a cave or even cavern. The other is far larger and has claimed the lives of around thirteen people over the years. I have often dived there and even gone to the back on air. The “back” has been known to go as deep as 60 metres with a bottom lined with thick sediment. I elected to do the dive solo with support divers meeting me at the entrance at about forty metres.
The surface of Wondergat near Lichtenberg in the NorthWest Province of South Africa
I remember this dive as one of the most relaxing I’ve ever done. I slipped down the shot line to the metal grid that lies on the bottom at forty metres. After a quick check on my stage bottle clipped off to the grid I switched to my back-gas. Following the permanent line I headed towards the back of the cave. At about half way one comes across what we call The Police Sign. Quite simply, this is a sign put in place by the Police Diving Unit to warn people of the dangers of diving there. Given the number of people who have lost their lives diving in Wondergat, I think it’s a sign worth thinking about.
The inscription reads,
“You have never lived until you’ve almost died,
and for those who fight for it life has a flavour the protected will never know”
I’ve never been able to find out who actually wrote those words, but they do give one pause for thought, especially when you’re at 50 metres halfway to the end of a 50-60 metres deep cavernous hole underwater. The interesting thing about dives like this, particularly if you are narc’d on air or just have smallish torches, is that the cave can appear to change character. I heard people walking out the hole say that the cave is very small and other say that its over 100 metres long. I’ve also heard divers on mix accurately describe it as a large cavern with the mouth visible almost to the back. In fact on this dive when I reached the back and turned towards the entrance I could see the green-blue halo that is such an awesome site from back there. As an added stress test I isolated my manifold and switched to my back up regulator whilst at the back, and was relieved to see that the system I’d learned and practiced, did indeed work. I deliberately switched to a stage bottle as well to compare my various regulators at depth, once again everything worked. I then made my way back along the line, past the Police Sign and up to the grid. Next I retrieved my stage cylinder and followed my planned ascent to the surface, a very contented diver.
Finally in November of 2001 we set off for Boesmansgat. This trip was a difficult one in that we had a number of very strong personalities on the team. I’m not suggesting that anyone did not want to support Verna, just that between Verna and some of the other members of the team there were quite a number of personal issues that created a lot of additional tension during the week. For example, Verna had not quite finalised her configuration for the deep dive and seemed to some team members to be leaving things too late.
Courtesy of Derek Hughes, Gareth, Verna, myself and Theo do some mixing.
Those of us on Nuno’s team were used to him diving for months in a particular configuration of gear
before a big dive. He and some of us believe that one’s gear should be almost part of one, almost like a cyclist who can feel if anything is wrong with his bike at high speed without having to look, or a race car driver who can feel when some small thing is not quite right. Not to say that Verna’s approach was wrong, just different. We all needed to give her the space she needed to develop the level of confidence required to do the dive she was planning. Anyhow, the guys sort of took over and started almost dictating what she should do. This led to major tension. In retrospect, I think they could have been a bit more diplomatic perhaps, but then by the same token Verna could have sorted out her configuration earlier. Ultimately I think that all the debate and discussion taught us some valuable lessons that stood us in good stead for a second record trip a few years later.
One event from that trip that has remained in my mind was the dive we did to put the main shot line in place for Verna. As with all our diving at Boesmans we need a marked shot-line with loops or rings on it to hang stage bottles on. The first thing we did wrong on the dive was we put too big a team in the water. I think we had seven divers in all. The second thing we did, which I think added an unnecessary degree of risk to the dive, was to take the entire spool of rope underwater and into the cave with us and deploy it from forty five metres underwater. I guess it must have been due to our inexperience and the large number of people, all of whom were enthusiastic to get the job done. I think we did not weigh up the risk really well that time. Once again we were lucky.
Visualise, if you can, a reel (similar to a garden hosepipe storage reel) made of steel, so obviously would sink if we dropped it. It contained over 200 metres of about 10-millimetre line. We divided the team into two groups. Gareth, John, Derek & Peter would handle the reel. Craig and myself would take the running end and swim under the roof of the cave to where we had fixed a 5-gallon drum by filling it with air. The plan called for us to swim up to the drum and pass the weighted end of the line through a steel ring. Once we’d done this we’d pull the line and feed it through on down. In the meantime the other team would begin unwinding the reel and slowly ascending to the surface, where they’d tie off the line.
So there at forty five metres, in the dark, with our powerful lights flashing every direction as we tried to keep the reel and the line steady and control our descent at the same time, one might have been forgiven for thinking this was a bit chaotic. Nonetheless the initial phase went well and we got the rope running smoothly through the ring. After a few minutes under the roof, the bubbles from our exhaust valves began to loosen a substantial amount of silt and our visibility dropped to a few metres. This in a cave with visibility usually as far as our torches can shine.
I remember shining my light in the direction of Gareth’s group and seeing through a silty brown haze that everything looked okay. One minute we were pulling the line smoothly, the next it jammed solid. Surprised and a little annoyed we all look towards Gareth’s group. I saw to my amazement that the reel had developed an over-wind. This means that the line had some how wrapped itself around the outside of the reel and jammed. Given our current depth and the time we’d already spent there, we had only a few minutes to solve the problem. Our only other alternative was to abandon the reel for another dive.
After that things happened very fast. Before we could swim back to assist with the reel the other guys managed to free it up. With some relief I thought great, let’s get this done and head out of here. The next thing I saw gave me another nasty surprise. John had grabbed the reel and single-handedly started ascending with it. Now it may seem like he had just taken control and was getting the job done. But at forty five metres, the extreme exertion that his efforts took, at least initially, could have led to him becoming very badly affected by nitrogen narcosis or worse developing decompression sickness.
While I appreciated his efforts, I was very concerned about the possible consequences. Even worse, he could have become entangled in the line and who knows what could have happened then. But, we were lucky and no one came away from that dive with anything more than a few valuable lessons. Not the least of which is that to take a steel reel full of rope underwater in a cave, is, not surprisingly a very dangerous proposition. We all took the lessons to heart and on Verna’s second trip we devised a much safer and more efficient system for deploying the shot-lines. In the end everything got sorted out, but after quite a lot of arguing and some team members saying that they would not be coming on any other of Verna’s trips. For me this is a great pity as the people who felt they could not work with Verna are some of my oldest friends and some of the most experienced divers I’ve ever met. Experience of the kind these people had to offer had been hard won on many years of diving in difficult and dangerous places. As things turned out, the dive went fine, and Verna was able to reach a depth of 186 metres and in the process, set a new cave record for women. Unfortunately whilst we were there Claudio Serpieri broke the then woman’s depth record in the sea. That meant Verna had only got the cave diving record and not the overall record.
Verna decompressing after reaching 186 metres
(Courtesy Derek Hughes)
I think all the stress and strain took some toll, and perhaps Verna didn’t quite drink enough on her dive, but after about an hour on the surface she began to show mild signs of shock and dehydration and had to drink four full Energades and be monitored under a sleeping bag for at least two hours before she could walk out the hole again. It was only due to her alert medical support that this did not turn into a very serious situation.
The team helping Verna out of the water after her 186 meter dive
(Photo Derek Hughes)
If I took away a lesson from that particular trip, it was to do with how people relate to each other in the face of background tensions. These trips, for all their joking and fooling around, have a deadly earnest undertone, which I think if not managed properly can really make things very unpleasant for everyone. The interpersonal tensions that inevitably build up may even cause errors to be made that could get someone seriously injured or even killed. I think that people need to recognise that everyone has a wealth of experience and skill to share - if only egos don’t get in the way. Of course the day after Verna’s dive was just like the one after Nuno’s dive. We the support divers had to extract all the remaining stage cylinders, take out the shot lines and generally pack up the site. It’s usually a very long day, although by that time in the trip we’re all pretty fit.
Verna holding up a slate that shows her depth(courtesy Derek Hughes)
In recent years we’ve actually started hiring farm labourers to help us carry and pull all the lines up. I think we didn’t do it before because we basically could not afford them. Typically the team would not allow Verna (or Nuno on his trips) to do any of the heavy work. Given the extreme nature of the dives they did, they could not do any heavy physical work for at least a few days. We gladly did it for them and every time either Nuno or Verna tried to lift or carry something the rest of us gave them a really dirty look. Almost as if to say just you dare get bent now that the diving is over. Besides, the job was not done for the rest of us until we cleared the hole, and left it the way nature kept it when we weren’t there. The only sounds are the birds and the bees and the occasional frog. Over that trip I did a total of eleven dives, five below 50 metres, one below 60 metres, one below 85 metres and two dives deeper than 100 metres (if just; 107 and 103 metres respectively).
I also brought out five stage cylinders from Verna’s deep push. All in all I thought the trip was a success, even though the team changed quite dramatically after this trip. I think that the guys who elected not to be part of Verna’s team took very difficult decisions. Over the years they’ve stayed good friends and been happy to discuss any issues around some expedition or other. For this advice and discourse I’m very grateful.
The team that supported Verna on her 186 meter dive (back row, Craig Kahn, Joseph Emmanuel, Craig Newham, Gareth Lowndes, Andries van Z
yl, Theo van Eeden. Front row, John De Wet, Debbie van Zyl, Verna Van Schaik, Kimberley Yeoman, Peter Zakaria, Hermie Brits and Derek Hughes)
After yet another successful trip to Boesmansgat the team was all really tired and in need of a break from the physical and emotional stresses of extreme deep diving. So we sort of put the exploration of Boesmansgat on a back burner for a while. It was almost a year later that I once again accepted an invitation from Nuno to join him at Boesmansgat.
A Polish Gentleman
First meetings
I first met Dr. Leszek Czarnecki and Witold Smilowski around November 2002, when Nuno asked me if I’d like to come along as a support diver to Boesmansgat again. Of course I jumped at the chance. Nuno explained that we were going to spend a few days at Wondergat to allow our Polish guests some time to acclimatise and to be able to assess Leszek’s level of skill. As things turned out he was not just a competent diver. He had diving experience ranging from frozen lakes in Poland to the balmy blue waters of the Red Sea. Far more variety in fact than I had at the time. For his part Witold, being a professional diving instructor and PADI Course Director, had a vast number of dives behind his name from almost every diving mecca around the world.
Indeed Leszek and Witold both had more varied diving experience than almost everyone on the South African team. In spite of this, and one of the things that impressed me about Leszek, was the fact that he was very gracious about accepting advice from Nuno, and when it came to gear configuration and decompression planning he invariably bowed to Nuno’s deep cave diving experience. My role on the trip was as usual to act as support diver for Nuno and Leszek. A personal high-point for me during that first “Polish Expedition”, as we came to call this series of trips, was that I finally got to do a dive I’d been hoping for since Sheck Exley visited this country in 1993. That was to follow Exley’s line from about twelve metres in the chimney down to around 60 metres on the other side of the cave. I should point out that this line is only about a millimetre thick and has its own story to tell. The story goes that when Sheck Exley put this precarious line in place, he actually dived to about 120 metres on air. When the time came to turn around he found an appropriate tie-off point, but that’s when he made what could have been a fatal mistake.
Into The Deepest And Darkest Page 7
