Reports

February 2001

The Trip basically started on Wednesday 7th, when all participants had arrived. Costa Dongas and Gordon Harris had arrived over the previous weekend, Jason McHattan and Dave Hughes arriving the afternoon of the 5th. I had been in Nelson since the 2nd, spending most of the weekend tasting as many local dark ales as I could find. (Flying over a couple of days early was certainly worth it.) After spending Wednesday morning transporting our 1800kgs of equipment to the Pearse river carpark, Syd Deaker arrived in his chopper to finish the job of getting it to the mouth of the river. The four guys were left to arrange equipment in 400 kg piles and co-ordinate activities with Syd while I returned to Nelson to drop off the hire Truck. My return lift was with my mad Irish caving mates, Simon, Al, & Mark who had been in N.Z for the past 2 months, ice climbing, tramping, paragliding & caving their way throughout the country. We left their vehicle at the carpark and walked into the Pearse following a track that weaves it's way along the river. The day before I had met a guy who owned property just at the beginning of this track, & as I walked, I fantasised about living in the surrounding steep terrain, next to the river, and only one and a half hours walk from the deepest water filled hole I'd ever seen. This track was easy walking and about half way along we met our first river crossing. I was instantly reminded of what I was about to put myself through. Fifteen seconds walking through the 7 degree water and my feet were numb. There were 8 or 9 river crossings on the rest of the walk which we completed after about 1hr 30mins, and by that stage I was wishing I wore my drysuit boots in. This walk is highly recommended for anyone going to the Pearse, as it, one, gives you a satisfying feeling of isolation from the rest of the world, and two, it's a fantastic bushwalk. You go through a range of vegetation, from pine trees on steep terrain, through riverbed with surrounding clearings, to pristine rainforest with hundreds of ferns the size of small gum trees. That basically saw out Wednesday for me, but the guys had been sitting at the Pearse campsite since 3 o'clock, it was now 10!! They'd completely set up the whole site, mess tent, equipment tent, sleeping tents, and had the compressor going flat out filling tanks. They were keen to get in that lovely crisp, clear water that was emerging from the side of the mountain approximately twenty metres away.

Thurs 8th: "GOOOOOD MORRRNNING VIETNAM" that was the cry we awoke to at 6 a.m. Christ, I thought I was on holidays. Dave Hughes, being awarded D.O.A Master Equipment Instructor Trainer, had taken on the role of a Chief Drill Sargent. His mission in life was to wake us early every morning with an incredible holler that was shortly followed by the consistent drone of the compressor. The first exercise was to get the Habitat (an IBC, the same as last year) to the cave entrance and then into position at approximately the 6 metre mark. Dave H & Company volunteered to move it into position and then proceed to do a quick recon trip to the main shaft to check out the line & sort out some gear configurations. Costa had been diving his side mount rig consistently in Sydney and was keen to try them out in a real cave environment. Once the Habitat was roughly in position, Jason and myself tried in vain to manoeuvre it into its final position. We felt as if we were fighting each other each time we went to move it. We surfaced to discuss the situation after approximately 40 minutes of wrestling it into the correct spot, only to have it move slightly or get hooked up on a bit of cave projection just at the wrong time. Our problem lay in the fact that the habitat when flooded was extremely negatively buoyant so the air we put inside to keep it neutral tended to roll to the highest point whenever the habitat went more than 1 degree off horizontal. Imagine a glass upturned with a small bubble in it and you have to keep that bubble in dead centre off the glass. Now imagine trying to do that with a square container that was 1.2 metres cubed and fitting it through a section of the cave that was about the same width. So, we had a brainstorm, we fitted a liftbag (two in fact) to the Habitat so we could move it without any air inside and any tilting action would have no effect on the bags. Problem was solved, and the unit was moved into position. Jason and I looked at the area on which this habitat would sit once full of air & were confident it would sit fairly flat. This was enough for one day, time to get out and go warm up with a coffee.

Fri 9th: "GET OUT OF BED YOU MISERABLE LOWLIFE MAGGOTS!!!" was the call to break the incredible silence of early morning in the bush. Dave's a mountain man, and when the sun's up, so should everybody else (even if everything's still soaking wet from the night's dew). Gordon, Dave H & Costa decided to do a dive to 40 metres that morning and Dave H in particular stating he wanted to take some times to get to certain areas of the cave and back up again for future use in planning the deeper dives. (As you're aware, if you look at the map, there is the 13-18mtr tunnel to move down before hitting the almost vertical bit.). I think a comment when they returned was something like " Shit, it really starts to open up past 40!!" (Wait 'till you see what's at 60 , I thought). Jason and myself were to continue with our efforts on the habitat. Fixing bolts to the wall was one of my major goals of the trip. Firstly, we were to try "bolting" in the entrance area in approx 10 metres of water to attach rope to the habitat to hold it level. If this were successful then more bolting would be undertaken to possibly fit a larger habitat that would be variable depth, for future trips. Two 100 cubic foot tanks and two drill bits later I had drilled one 3 inch hole in this incredibly hard marble. That was enough for one bolt. Had I brought ten drill bits, then I would have persevered and fitted the four bolts required to fully support the habitat. We looked at what we had, and decided that if we tied one side of the unit to the bolt, then the other side top section would rest on the roof and it would stay level. (That is, the rope would hold down the unsupported side.) It was time, we had mucked around for four dives trying to get this thing right, it was time to inflate. So inflate the Habitat is what we did, I think we had four Poseidons cranking into it at one stage. Everything was sitting perfectly level until it became about 75% full, then a cloud of silt erupted from one side of the roof, large chunks of rock fell to the floor, and, the habitat moved noticeably. On closer inspection (once the silt had cleared) we saw that the side that was being supported by the roof had completely broken off what appeared to be a little ledge that it had been resting up against. This meant our habitat sat at six metres with one edge lower than the other and containing about six inches of water. Good enough for me, I could get in comfortably, and sit on the high side and be almost completely out of the water. This was a definite improvement on the previous year's effort, this habitat had a seat & somewhere to rest your feet. I exited the water with a minor feeling of triumph, although the cave had beaten us on the bolting idea for now.

Sat 10th: "GRAB 'YER SOCKS & DROP 'YER COCKS, RISE & SHINE" This was getting more entertaining as the trip progressed. Gordo, who was not as impressed as myself, replied with a call of his own, an audible blurp that erupted from the opposite end and helped him gain his trainer rating in his field of expertise, gas mixing. What was on the agenda today? Well, the rebreathers were coming out to play. Gordo had his Drager Dolphin and was keen to try out his modifications in the shallow sections of the 13-18 metre tunnel. With his Oxygauge fitted, along with a manual addition oxygen button, he was keen to see what sort of consistent PPO2 readings he could manage and also what success could be had with fully flushing with O2 for decompression purposes. Costa dragged out his Buddy Inspiration, and configured it for diving with offboard diluent supply. Jason produced his work of art, a fully modified FGGIII to a fully closed circuit unit. Basically, the only original parts were the mouthpiece and breathing bags. The electronics, which has fully automatic oxygen addition, heads up display, and the canister are both fully designed and built by Jason himself. Jason's main goal for the trip was to give his breather a rigorous test out and slowly build up to some big depths in a nice controlled environment. (You don't have to deal with changing weather conditions in a cave environment as you do in the ocean) So, with all the rebreathers working effectively, Dave H, Costa, and Gordo spent the morning setting up stage tanks which would be left in the cave for the next seven days as bailout gas for the deeper dives. They then laid these tanks at 20 metres (nitrox 50) and 40 metres (nitrox 30) and went off for an explore through various parts of the cave. The campsite was alive with talk after they returned, Gordo " hey did ya see that big passage at 25mtrs?, Costa "What about those two down at 50? I couldn't quite get through with the 'breather." And Dave H "Hmmm, I think I'll have to get the sidemounts out for those holes 'round the 35 metre mark". My mission for the day had been to set up my front mounted homemade O2 breather. This unit was what I would be using for the 6 metre oxygen stops on the deeper dives as my redundant unit would not be able to fit into the habitat and would also be uncomfortable out of the water. I had no sensors on this unit but it can be calculated before the dive, how often to flush the loop when using nitrox. I was going to use nitrox 50 and flush the loop once every 5th breath. Many people may think that dangerous as you may lose count or forget to count, well I figured if I lost count, I'd flush anyway and if I forgot to count then the loop volume would drop as I metabolised O2 and that would remind me to flush. However, this system only is foolproof with relatively high supply gas FO2. So anyway, off I went with the front mounted unit and a separate bottle of bailout gas and did 40 minutes in the habitat at 6 metres then off down the 18 metre tunnel to the main shaft, had a look around, started to remember how fantastic this shaft was, then proceed to the opposite wall where a large passage heads off on approximately the same bearing as the 18 metre tunnel (290). At the end of this passage (approx. 30 metres horizontally) it widens slightly to a rift which goes up and down. I am almost certain the bottom section joins up at 60 metres to the main shaft, and later Gordo discovered that the upward section joins back to the main shaft at almost 0 metres. I terminated the dive, confident that the front mounted unit was working correctly.

Sun 11th: "GRMMMMMMMMMMM" What was going on? 6am, and no wake up call from Dave H, just the consistent purr of the compressor. Dave must've been running out of puff, and it was only day four. A point should be made at this stage. It was unanimously agreed at the beginning of the trip that the diving schedule would maintain a casual line, without the need for logs, support divers, timetables, etc. I believe there is a lot less peer pressure placed on people when schedules are kept casual, therefore allowing divers to attain their goals at their own pace, regardless of the stages of other divers. Cave diving can, in certain situations, place more than enough pressure on an individual without them also having to deal with an ego based competitive type pressure. So, you could say that a typical pre dive brief to the surface personnel might be " Hey guys, Dave and I are going off to lay stages at 60 metres, our run time's going to be about 73 minutes 'cause we're on trimix 17/45. Can one of you guy's come up and check us in?" That sort of brief is all that's necessary, it tells all concerned all the details they need to know, the rest is up to the divers. After all, we were all experienced divers who should know our own limits. After one or two slight hiccups in achieving this simple task everybody had it well sorted by today. The boys had a 60 metre dive planned. Costa and Dave were to take some air stage bottles to that depth for part of their future diving bailout scenarios. Costa, was diving his Inspiration, (after learning a valuable lesson that reinforced the value in predive checks. He had mistakenly fitted his air diluent cylinder to the 'breather the night before but picked it up in his predive check and quickly rectified the fault). With Dave H, on the trusty open circuit. I believe the dive went totally according to plan, but as I was totally engrossed in my own preparations I didn't hear how the dive went. Jason & Gordo were surface support on this occasion. My redundant Inspiration rebreather was my new toy for this trip, and it seemed to need a fair bit of TLC when configuring the unit. While extremely heavy, weighing 47kgs with bottles, it was completely redundant. That is, it was two rebreathers configured onto the one backpack. The two scrubbers sit vertically, one below the other, with all pipework from these scrubbers coming up to the shoulders. One set of Inspiration bags run down behind the shoulders(T-pieces sit just above but behind shoulders) ala Les Maddens style (Inspiration Mailing list 1998) The other set of bags sit over the shoulder in the standard Inspiration manner. The supply of both diluent & oxygen are from completely independent cylinder and valve systems that while separate, carry identical diluent supplies & O2 supplies as required. Separate hoses and mouthpieces complete the fully redundant loops. After approximately four hours of assembly, I was ready for a dive. Unfortunately, I had not been able to dive the unit as much as I would have liked in the weeks preceding the trip. I had encountered a lot of problems with transferring the second Inspiration electronics & ended up having to build my own PO2 meters for it. This meant that the second unit would be a manual add O2 unit. This would not cause a problem as I had dived manual add units before and also run the Inspiration in manual mode on many occasions. As I cruised up and down the 13 metre tunnel, I swapped from one unit to the other repeatedly, aiming to make the transition smooth and second nature. The operation of the two units was that I would obviously add diluent to the unit I was breathing off, but also add it to the second unit. This served two purposes. 1, It would keep the second unit at ambient pressure ensuring the watertight integrity, 2, it meant I would have a full breath instantly whenever I switched to it, and 3, adding this gas to the second unit meant that it acted like a BCD, my wings became only a backup should one of the unit's flood. On this dive it was planned to swap units every 30mins to ensure the other unit always working. After spending about 30 minutes in the 13 metre tunnel writing notes on my slate to correct small configuration problems, I descended down the main shaft. This part of the cave is awesome, as you descend the cave just becomes bigger and bigger, beckoning the diver deeper and deeper. It took a fair bit of control to stop a 60 metres and level off. The virgin passage was deeper but it would have to wait until another day. I headed off across the rift, which at this point is approximately 20 metres wide. There was some old guideline left from a previous trip that I began to tidy. "BEEP BEEP"…. "BEEP BEEP" this was the warning buzzer on the Inspiration that warns of various faults happening on the unit. I instinctively looked at my handset, "Cell Error" was the cause of the incessant noise. One cell was reading .2 PPO2 higher than the others. I did a quick diluent flush and discovered that it seemed that 2 of my cells were reading incorrectly and only one was right. I could have stayed on this unit and operated it in semiclosed mode for the decompression and exit but "Hey, I've got another rebreather, I might as well use it." I completed the dive on the other unit without any further drama and exited about 80 minutes later to return to the campsite, slate and list in tow to correct the half a dozen configuration faults that I had noted.

Mon12th: This was day five, everyone was starting to get pretty stale. The 7 degree river water was not too inviting for a bath but by this stage it had to be done. Dave H & Costa were already at the water when I crawled out of bed around 7.30 am. They had planned 100 metres, so were fully "psyched". Dave H, an experienced cave and trimix diver, realised early in the trip that the way on in this cave was down deep. He wanted "to know where the water came from". Costa, however, after originally joining this trip with the intent of doing some extra cave training, had changed his goal to reaching the 100 metre mark and seeing this impressive tunnel at120 metres. This reorganisation came, I presume, when he initially saw this incredible shaft on day two ( as I said before, this hole just beckons the diver deeper & deeper). Twenty minutes after the beginning of the dive, Costa returned. His dive had not gone well. He said he reached the same point as yesterday, but today, had an incredible feeling of anxiety. We discussed the possible causes, with Costa best being able to explain his feeling as " I was just sitting at 60 metres saying to myself, "Costa, what the hell are you doing at 60 metres in this dark filthy hole, you don't need this" It's always hard to explain these types of dives, there are many different possible reasons ranging from being actually too straight (subtle narcosis can "chill" you out a touch) to just the simple fact that Costa was in a very unfamiliar environment, pushing his own personal limits at the same time. Whatever the reason, he decided another few casual cruises around 60 and 80 metres over the next few days were what was in order. Dave H had a great dive and said his build up for the bottom tunnel was progressing well. His one main problem, however, was a big one, the cold! He had doubts he could do the time in the water necessary to go much deeper or longer in the cave. Gordon and Jason's dive today was around the 50 metre section of the cave. Both of their modified rebreathers had been working well and the efforts of the last four days of trialing were starting to pay off. Once again the day for me consisted of playing with the 'breather for most of the morning and starting my dive around 2 pm. I ventured off with an 85 metre for 25 minutes dive planned. Journeying across to the bridge at 60 metres on the far side of the shaft was uneventful. (Except that I still saw holes at 30-40 metres that I'd never seen before.) Once at the bridge, I went over it and further on to the left to find another huge void. I'd never had a good look over here before. This was still part of the same rift but was basically separated from the main shaft by a series of columns all the way down to 85 metres. I quickly hooked on a guideline and started to descend. It was at about 70 metres that I could see the floor of this room. I followed it's contour with my torch and traced it to the ledge at 85 metres where we had previously found Dave Weaver's body (This ledge is called Weaver's Ledge). This confirmed my thoughts that this room joined the main shaft. I left this room at this point and entered back into the main shaft to pick up the original guideline laid by Kieran McKay several years before. A cruise across the width of the main shaft saw my bottom time spent, and I began an exit from the cave. Decompression was fairly uneventful for the 140 minute runtime which I managed to do without the use of the habitat (Argon is a wonderful thing). Another thing I would have to change on the redundant setup. Previously I had done my last mouthpiece swap at approximately 60 minutes with no problem. However today I tried my last swap at around 100 minutes. My hands by this stage did not have the feeling in them to operate my mouthpiece correctly, the lever on the second one was too stiff. Something would have to be done, had I needed to get on this second unit for real, I wouldn't have been able to open the mouthpiece.

Tues 13th: The problem encountered with my mouthpiece yesterday was quickly rectified by swapping the offending one with the mouthpiece off the oxygen rebreather. This one had a large orange "T" handle, which was easily operated. I had a big day planned. A dive to the horizontal tunnel at 120 metres with a turnaround time of 25 minutes and leaving the 120 metre section for my ascent at 31 minutes. This would see me getting out of the water around 180 minutes. I was confident of doing this time as I'd comfortably achieved 140 minutes yesterday, and today 72 minutes of my total time would be in the habitat. The morning was spent changing scrubbers, filling cylinders and putting the two units through their pre dive checks. This included pre –breathing both units while walking around the campsite to ensure the scrubbers were working correctly. Everything was ready… except me. For some reason I felt an incredible amount of pressure. I think this had been building up over the previous few months. This feeling and situation I found myself in had never happened before and will be hard to translate but here goes. I had received an award at the recent Oztek conference for "Australasian Technical Diver of the Year" for the previous year's diving at the Pearse & R.M.S. Niagara. Although I joked about it, calling it the Tech Wanker of the Year, I was actually quite proud to get it. In the following months many people asked me what I had planned for this trip to the Pearse. More to the point, it was " How deep are you going this time??"….. " Do you think you can get to 180?" …… " What do you mean that's deep, more people are going past 150 metres everyday". Correctly or incorrectly, I felt it was almost expected that I would go further than last time. When I'd answer some of the questions with " I dunno how far I'll get, I just want to get comfortable with the redundant RB concept first". I would get these really strange looks that basically said "You've been there heaps of times before, what's yer' problem?" So while I kept telling myself that I was just there to get comfortable with my new kit, it was in the back of my mind that 1: I'd spent basically the entire year reconfiguring and building the redundant unit, and 2: I was there to push the cave and satisfy other people's ideas of the trip. Subconsciously, I didn't want to dive, I still don't know why because my kit was perfect and I'd been over the dive completely in my head and was quite comfortable with it. I have always been big on pre dive visualisation, not meditation, humming to the sky type stuff but spending a good 15-20 minutes picturing every point of the dive and everything I can think of that could go wrong and how I'll handle it. I decided to go and have a rest in my tentand told myself I'd dive when it got a bit cooler, at about 4 pm. Lying in the middle of the New Zealand bush, it took about 1 hour of varying thoughts running through my head to finally, and convincingly, realise that it really didn't matter if I didn't get in the water for the rest of the trip. It was MY holiday, and I'd do whatever I wanted to. This finally realised, I felt a great sense of relief, and drifted off in a light sleep where I pictured that bottom passage and the big room with no floor. About 6 pm I woke, feeling the most relaxed I had for the whole trip, and decided to go for a dive. The full gear up process takes about 20 minutes, putting on three or four layers of undergarments, drysuit, twin rebreather, lights, helmets, argon cylinder, three layers of gloves, hoods etc, so I started my dive at a bit after seven o'clock. Part of my plan was to breathe off both units for 5 minutes each at approx 10 metres to ensure both operational. With this done I started my dive down the 13-18 metre tunnel, reached the main shaft and effortlessly descended. At 70 metres I swapped rebreathers and spent 2 minutes stationary, checking the unit. On descent again I quickly reached 100 metres and saw the familiar river gravel about 10 metres below. At this point the line should have headed off to the left to the horizontal passage below. It wasn't there! "Bugger !"(when in N.Z. say as the kiwi's say) the line had obviously broken from the previous years floods. While attaching my reel I realised that having to lay new line would severely chew into my bottom time so quietly accepted the fact that I wouldn't be diving virgin passage today. I ran this line out as I descended through 110 metres being well into the horizontal tunnel. Spotting a great tie-off point, I saw the remainder of our previous guideline. Great, the line was only broken between two points, I could continue now along the original line. Time for an rb swap, I had wanted to swap regularly at depth to be comfortable that both units were still working. This done I continued along the passage. Last year I didn't realise how wide it really was, my 75 watt spot torch could only just make the other wall. Approx half way through the passage now and the line was broken again. "Double Bugger!" I had left my reel at the previous tie to cut and secure on the way out (we live and learn, I won't do that again). The only other reel I had was a 10 metre jump reel, and I could see that far down the passage. I tied it on and decided to cruise across and around the tunnel to see how wide it really was. This had been another of my main goals for the trip, to become really comfortable at this depth. Last year had been a rush. Our run times meant we were moving really quickly into and out of this passage so not to incur to much decompression. This time however, I had time to enjoy the time at depth and really started to feel like I was back at Long Reef, playing around in 50 metres of water. Time still went quickly, and before long I'd hit turnaround time. Another great feeling, "Hey dive's not quite over, I've still another 6 minutes before I have to be on my way up, might as well do another breather swap." Slowly I cruised back, cut my reel off and secured the line, then started up the main shaft. First stop was 78 metres, with regular stops all the way from there. I won't bore you with the runtime details except to say that I felt really comfortable with the cold even at 130 minutes so only entered the habitat for the last 40 minutes of the dive. Removing the rb probably needs refining, or a diver there to help, as stretching the arms etc to get out of it at this point of a lengthy deco is probably not good for you. However everything went well and I exited the water at about 10:30 pm to see Jason and Gordo waiting to assist.

Wed 14th: Day off for me today, due to the big dive last night. Gordo had been busy the last few days building up for a trimix dive. Today he went to 70 metres with a perfectly planned and executed dive. Only one slight hiccup was when he returned to 6 metres for his last stop on O2, he found the supply cylinder for his constant flow had a frozen tank valve. The idea was he would turn off the supply gas and manually add O2 for the 6 metre deco. No problem, part of his contingency allowed for him to simply switch to the surface supply O2 and complete the deco on open circuit. Costa did his planned 80 metre dive, and all went smoothly, while Dave H set up the video and took a bit of film down to around 50 metres. Jason and I decided to wander up to Nettlebed Cave for a look at a sump I'd seen with guideline in it the previous year. We had also been told of a section of the cave called the Hinkle Horn Honking Holes (I think that's right). These holes were three squeezes that were the only way through for the 800 metre vertical dry cave. Due, primarily to the difference in air pressure and temperature of the top entrance at approximatley 1100 metres altitude and the bottom at 300 metres, the airflow through these holes is phenomenal. These holes literally "honk" with a sound resembling a raging waterfall. Average wind speeds are around 60kph through a hole no wider than a slim person! We were really keen to see and hear these holes especially when someone goes through the hole because they block the airflow thus creating dead silence from this "waterfall of air". However, turns out we had bum directions on how to find them, so ended dry caving through some pristine sections of stals, shawls, flowstone (really clean), false floors of calcite? etc for about an hour before thinking we better turn around before we get lost. By the time we came back to the area I was going to dive, we were cold and muddy, and looking forward to a coffee. This turned out for the best as later we found out that this guideline didn't lead to a sump but was put there one year when the cave was flooded but could be walked through at this time of year.

Thurs15th: Hmmm, what should we do today? Go for another cave dive perhaps. Gordo was keen to finish laying his line in one of the side passages he'd been playing in. By the end of this dive he'd completed a loop passage that could now be added to the survey. Jason was planning a 70 metre dive that he'd attempted on Tuesday but had major equipment failure while gearing up. I could feel Jason's frustration. Imagine putting on all those undergarments, all that equipment, then just as you're about to start your dive you have a blow out that dumps all your oxygen in about 15 seconds! A few adjectives spring to mind!! So Jason was off on his dive today only to have the same malfunction when he reached 70 metres. He completed the dive on open circuit and exited the water not a happy chappy. We realised his disgust at these failures after he spent considerable money and gained assurance from the supplier that they would work only to have them fail at the most inopportune time. Oh well, that's Murphy's Law. Costa decided today was his final chance to reach 100 metres (not quite sure why, the cave's not going anywhere and it's only getting bigger). Upon exit he explained how perfectly the dive went, "Runtimes were spot on....no anxiety problems....'breather performed flawlessly....deco wasn't a problem....didn't get cold....oh yeah, broke the tie off at 100 metres when I was holding on to it, there's line everywhere!!" In hearing this, my plan was to do basically the same dive as Tuesday. We discussed our options and figured we needed to put some descent line in at the deeper depths to avoid it being broken in next season's flooding. We scavenged together all the 6mm line we could find and planned to lay it from the end of the 6mm already in the cave at 70 metres. My dive on this day did not go well, I gained a lot of confidence from the previous dive but was still being "anal" about the two units. While breathing the two units at 10 metres for their customary 5 minutes each, I noticed a small amount of water in the exhalation pipe of one of them. I had an experience a year or so ago that resulted in a full exhalation counterlung after 70 minutes of diving. With this in mind and the fact I couldn't clear this gurgle from the pipe, I decided to abort the dive. I understood exactly how Jason felt the day before, 20minutes gearing up, only to get a 10minute dive. As it turned out it was just my paranoia and my inability for some reason to clear this pipe, as the unit didn't have a leak at all.

Fri 16th: Last diving day as tomorrow we were flying out at 10 am. Costa and Dave H went off to retrieve the 60 metre stages, Jason and Gordo grabbed the 40 and 20 metre ones, and I laid the 6mm quickly down to 100 before returning and deflating the habitat to drag it out of the cave. The rest of the day was spent slowly packing our 1800 kgs of equipment back into some sort of order for the trip out.

Sat 17th: This was the end of a fantastic several days diving and the hectic task of moving equipment back to Nelson began. For the other guys it was the end of their stay in N.Z. but for me, I had another week with Kieran Mackay, (NZ 's foremost cave diver) at Blue Creek Spring about an hour from the Pearse carpark. But that's another story.....

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