Serbia, Jelovacko Vrelo - "serbische Ressel" (part 2/3)
Participants: Andreas „Andi" Voigt, Marc Große, Tobias „Tobi" Ziegler, Wilke Reints, Oliver „Oli" Kurtz, Danny Beiert, Darko Petkovic, Manuel „Manu Fio" Fiore, Florian „Flo" Hang, Steffen Kiesecker, Sven Bender
Continuing to our next position, Jelovacko vrelo reminded us all very much of the familiar Carjac environment. After an exciting drive of about 1 hour we reached our destination, an unknown cave, near the Bulgarian border.
A quick look into the crystal clear pool immediately triggered a euphoria in us. Until now we were rather used to caves with moderate or worse visibility. After the inspection we decided to implement the already predefined plan. So Danny and Darko prepared for the first dive, while the rest of the team brought the equipment to the cave pool.
In about 40min Danny and Darko were already in the water putting on their side tanks and doing the obligatory surface check.
Darko describes the dive progress as follows:
"I took a quick look towards the entrance after the briefing, and found that the entrance was quite comfortable and large. We descended to 3m to place our primary tie off there. At 6m the secondary tie off was placed and just before the entrance to this unknown cave we checked all valves again under mutual control.
Very carefully and with extremely deliberate fin strokes we slowly advanced into the cave. Together we searched for another deep off and observed the surrounding area closely in order to capture the course of the cave as precisely as possible. After 10m of penetration we already encountered our first restriction. The restriction was almost comfortable, a slight shift to the right allowed a smooth passage with our D12 including the two stages.
After I was the first to pass the restriction, I turned around and watched Danny diving through the restriction. Shortly after that we set the next tie off and went further into the cave. After about 20m the next restriction was waiting for us at a depth of 16m, also this narrow spot we dived through without any problems.
Both of us now noticed that the slope of the cave was increasing more and more and the water depth was now increasing noticeably faster. At 21m water depth the next restriction was already waiting for us, this one was now a bit more difficult to dive, we had to bring all our side tanks forward to be able to pass this narrow passage at all. During my first attempt to cross the restriction, I noticed that I was actually already stuck. Danny had observed this situation from behind and with a courageous jerk he adjusted the part of my equipment that had prevented me from passing through. After passing the restriction I also watched Danny diving through and gave him a little help.
Without further problems we continued to follow the cave course and again and again we set new tie offs to fasten the line. The cave was in this area, at about 30m very spacious and reminded with its rock formations and dimensions very much of the French Ressel. The cave course changed again and again from left to right and this with constantly increasing water depth. At a penetration depth of about 110m we stopped briefly to check the situation behind us. All I could make out was a slight, but not alarming, siltout. We checked our gas supplies and decided to push further into the cave.
The next 50m were steeply sloping, so that we quickly reached a depth of 38m. We took a lot of time for the advance and looked very closely at the structure and formation of the cave in order not to miss possible branching passages. When we reached a depth of 48m, we set the last tie off, but did not cut the line from the reel. We wanted the second team to continue diving there to have a continuous line laid at the end.
3 to 4 minutes later we finished the dive and started the way back. On the way back, we optimized the course of the line at one point or another in order to be able to dive out safely on the line even in a zero visibility situation. Especially at the three restrctions the visibility had already deteriorated, so that our diving out took a little longer. On the way up we initiated our deco stops and during the deco break we were already "talking" underwater about what we had just experienced.
We were both overjoyed to have been the first people to dive such a beautiful cave with such good visibility. We congratulated each other underwater and here again it was shown that good training and proper planning leads to a successful dive.
After surfacing we informed the team who also congratulated us on this experience. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Danny very much for the sovereignly executed first dive of the "Serbian Ressel" - it was great fun!"
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