Exped FE July 2007

"FONT D'ESTRAMAR SPRING"

Exploration July 2007

-191m (view at -193m) 850 metres from the entry

Bottom of the shaft -186m (+/-800m from the entry, T+40 min) big room 5-6m of diameter, as plan it continued to a second room (bottom -185m), then a third one (bottom -184m), and the fourth one seen last time in January. At that time I thought it was the beginning of a shaft but this time going slowly down I realised it was another big room, and stopping around -191m I could see the bottom of it 2 or 3 meters below me just like a dead end.

Looking up I could see a window up around -187m going to another room, I went through it and arrived to another room with a floor around -184m where I decided to leave my reel, I already covered 50m since the beginning of the shaft and at that depth I decided to turn back facing some possible issues scootering.

Swimming for that distance at that average depth of -186m is for me not an option, CO2 hit is too much of a risk, scootering is possible BUT nobody know about what pressure the seal of the propeller will be able to sustain, theoritically it should just slow down and stop at some point. Some test in open water at deep depth will maybe be done in the near future.

The decompression went flowlessly and the decompression in the dry habitat much appreciated.

A BIG thanks to my friends Jean Luc Armengaud and David Auteza who were the key player of that exploration, installing a perfect decompression back-up line and habitat, and keeping a close eye on me !

Manythanks to Manu Laroche for his help carrying back all the equipment.

Manythanks also to Eric Sormani and Alex Pougeoise for their help through the previous attempts in June 2007

Manythanks to Géry Hondeville, Christophe Richard and David Haselden for lending me some of their equipment.

Main top gallery way in PpO2 1.2b; Puits du Loukoum géant descending 1.45b; Bottom 1.2b;
Deco from -158m 1.4b; Habitat -12m O2 open circuit; habitat to surface back on CCR 1.6b at 3minutes per meters

Due to a recent HPNS at -170m in another cave, it was decided this time to go back after 5 years of Heliox to Trimix 5/80 not very clear for me on the bottom not being used to narcosis any more, so from a -28m END I'll move to maximum -20m in future deep dives. 5% of O2 being also too high when scootering down shafts at depth, creating spike of O2, so move to 3% will help reduce those high ppo2.

The Ouroboros rebreather was 100% working and very enjoyable to use !

A return will be plan to explore the cave who maybe go back up or maybe will continue down, the passage size is average 5-6m so some distance upstream should be able to be covered

will just need to have some thoughts about the possibilities of deep scootering ...

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