CDAA Deep Cavern Course

Between 15 and 18 February 2008 we attended the first CDAA Deep Cavern Course held in Perth for many years. It has long been our intention to plan a trip to Mexico or Florida to do our Cave 1 course but when the opportunity came up recently to take the CDAA Deep Cavern Course in WA J and Rich took it.

If you want to dive caves or sinkholes in Australia you need to be a member of the CDAA regardless of your cave training with other organizations. This is because the CDAA are the only organization in Australia who can provide you with access the the sites.

Altogether there were seven students on the course run by Linda Claridge and Gary Barclay who are two of the most experienced instructors in the CDAA.

The Course
The Deep Cavern Course is the amalgamation of skills and knowledge necessary to safely dive in Cavern and Sinkhole rated sites. The first two days consisted of classroom training that covered the planning, organization, procedures, techniques and problem solving in a variety of cavern and sinkhole diving situations areas that may have zero visibility and the potential for unlimited visibility.

The classroom portion of the course involved about twelve hours of theory covering: CDAA history and bureaucracy, Natural History, Equipment Considerations, Buoyancy and anti-silting techniques, Communications, Line usage, Gas management, Physiological Considerations, Decompression, Access, Dive Planning, Emergency Procedures, Hazards and Accident Analysis.

These classroom sessions were broken up by land based practical skill sessions covering reel use, line placement, reel locking, blackout line following, OOA sharing. At the end of these two days we had a formal written exam to complete.

In addition to the theory we also conducted four controlled water training sessions in the Swan river at Blackwall Reach. The sessions are structured to gradually increase the task load on the students. For J and I these dives were a great deal of fun, having recently completed Tech 1 our buoyancy and trim, line skills and comfort under stress were already at a level way beyond the level required of this course and this gave us the opportunity to simply enjoy the tasks and the dives including the final pre-assessment 'stress-test' dive.

Due to the scarcity of suitable inland dive locations in WA on the 17 February the class drove 100km to Waroona Dam, only to discover upon arrival that the water level was much lower than had been reported prior to the commencement of the course. In an attempt to find deeper water the class then drove a further 100km to Wellington Dam where the class conducted a training dive in which we encountered multiple failures and simulated deco.

Whilst at Wellington Dam we also completed rope access training at an adjacent rock bolted quarry facility.

Stockton Lake near Collie WA

On the 18 February the class again drove 250km to Stockton Lake outside Collie which is a flooded coal mine where we conducted two qualification dives in about 32m of water.

Qualification Dive 1
Date: 18/02/2008
Max: 22m
Avg: 16m
BT: 17mins
RT: 27mins
BG: EAN32
Deco: NA






Qualification Dive 2
Date: 18/02/2008
Max: 32m
Avg: 22m
BT: 20mins
RT: 32mins
BG: EAN32
Deco: NA







Conclusions
The course was interesting and a great deal of fun, it provide an opportunity for us to dive in some of WA's more unusual locations. Both Gary and Linda are very experienced and capable instructors with a clear passion for Cave diving and it was a pleasure to meet and dive with them. In contrast the CDAA organization appears to overly bureaucratic and be mired in its own internal politics and were it not for its monopoly on land access to cave sites in Australia I doubt that it would be of any interest to us.

Linda Claridge after our qualification dives.