Croatia 2014
Participants: Marc, Tobias, Heinke, Benjamin, Anke, Steffen und Wilke
Croatia was on our plan for quite some time. This year it was finally time. Florian took over the complete organization for this project and offered the Cavebase a week of cave diving in a class of its own. Unfortunately Florian could not participate in this project because he broke his foot right before the start - very, very sad.
Like every project, this one also started with a lot of paperwork, Croatia is basically not to be classified as "diving friendly" because of its legal framework. This situation is exacerbated many times over if you want to dive inland caves, which are also designated as drinking water reserves. But Florian had quite good contacts, so after a lively mail exchange the permits were no longer a problem.
Day 1 - Approach:
We spare the epic description of the approach, it is, as always with cave diving, cruelly long and boring. But at least after about 9h of driving we arrived at the hotel.
The first day is as always a day to "acclimatize". It is basically not a good advice to do a deep dive directly after an exhausting drive, so it was here. We checked our equipment, set up the rooms, connected the chargers and enjoyed the beautiful weather. In general this week was a beautiful late summer week with average 20-24°C - all without rain.
Location No. 1: Glavas Cave
The first dive led us to a small chapel with an impressive pool. In Facebook, pictures of this cave pool appeared from time to time in the past months - and what shall we say? It looks really impressive. Crystal clear water in a cave pool that looks like an eye from the air - incredibly beautiful.
We split up into two teams. Tobias and Marc explored the lower part of the cave down to about 80m water depth, while the OC teams explored the two upper side passages.
Marc and Tobias resurfaced after a good 2.5 hours from their dive to a depth of about 100m, despite the heating the two were freezing in the water which was just 8°C cold - the dive time was at least here very limited due to the water temperatures. The OC teams came out of the water no less chilled - but both teams were beaming. All corridors are spectacular in their own way. The shallow and narrow passages at 12 and about 20m change their depth up to an emergence point - the deeper course of the cave winds like a screw into the depth - the cave drops more or less vertically here. The rock color is "snow-white" in places, so the cave is perceived as very spacious and "friendly" at all levels.
On the first day you could still feel the flow - but in the course of the week this became less and less - much to the delight of the OC teams, because they could now swim a little faster and further ahead.
Location No. 2, Modric:
Fancy a day by the sea? In the cave of Modric no problem! We agreed the night before to spend the second diving day at the sea. Just a 2h drive and we arrived directly at the sea in beautiful weather. While in the Glavas cave scootering was not much fun - this cave was much more suitable. Tobias and Marc decided to dive the cave to the known end of about 500m, the depths were between 20 and 40 meters and so no long deco times had to be planned - the water temperature was also much more comfortable here - with about 10-12 degrees could be dived in the freshwater area almost "infinitely" long. However, the cave did not exactly shine with perfect visibility conditions, a dark, slightly silty cave where you had to be very concentrated at least when scooting. Marc and Tobias reached the end of the cave confidently and searched the back part intensively for a continuation. Unfortunately without success - but apparently there is no further way.
For our OC teams the cave was also a welcome contrast to the previous day. Here we had salt water, haloclynes and different water temperatures. The course of the cave was entirely different and the dark walls further compressed the cave. All teams were excited and on the way back they speculated if there would be more caves like this in this area.
Location No. 3, Radonino
Reservoir diving? Yep, in Croatia reservoir cave diving is possible. On this day we chose Radonino cave. The only thing we knew was that here was a max exploration depth of about 200 to 300m. Course, depth profiles, even the entrance are not well documented - so it is mandatory to rely on local support.
This day was probably the best of the whole week! We didn't know exactly where the entrance was, only that it was min. 500-700m away from the nearest entry point. So the only way to get there was by scooter - of course the current conditions were also unclear to us - not to mention the line situation. So we forged the following plan:
- 3 teams were to dive the cave, OC Team 1 to discover the entrance, check conditions and establish a proper line situation.
- OC Team 2 should either replace Team 1 in case of failure or work as a documentation team.
- Team 3 was the Push Team with Tobias and Marc. The two wanted to reach the end of the cave and look for a continuation there.
We were very lucky, team 1 with Benjamin and Anke found the entrance immediately. The current was strong but still bearable and the two could even repair the front piece of line! So it was clear that the push team could dive next. So Marc and Tobias got ready and entered the cave armed with an 18/55. The two reached the end and even extended by about 100m. Team 3 dived shortly after the push team, Heinke, Steffen and Wilke had planned to create a photo session in the cave - the three also got their money's worth and were able to create at least in the front part a few impressive underwater shots.
Location XX:
Location XX? We were in the middle of a huge karst belt, so it is not surprising that many undiscovered caves are suspected in this area. We took the opportunity to look around a bit, in fact after a few conversations we had located new "locations". It is unbelievable how time consuming it can be to search for a cave pool of which you only get an approximate location description. In total we invested a whole day.
In the late afternoon a small cave pool filled with crystal clear water was in front of us. As if in the heat of the moment Steffen and Heinke had put on their dryies to find out if this pool could be diveable. To make it short: there is definitely a diveable cave at this place. However, the entrance is so narrow that you can't put more than your head into the cave. Even clearing away rocks took us only a little deeper into the cave. Here you could have made an entrance only with a massive intervention in nature - logically this was not an option for us at all and so the result remained a little frustrating after initial hope - you really have to visualize this frustration, there you stick a camera under water through the narrow cave entrance, film quasi blindly and later see on the video a large, potentially diveable passage! But you never get in because of the narrow opening! Very, very frustrating, but at the same time almost exciting - that's what "explorations into the unknown" is all about.
Equipment Check:
Cavebase has been developing a dry suit over the past 24 months that will be specifically for technical diving in and out of caves. Some team members had the prototype of this new bare suit with them for the project. This was put through its "paces" during our dives - the suits really had to suffer! But in the end we were extremely happy with these suits! At the boat in Jan. everyone is welcome to inform themselves about these new suits.
Résumé:
The week went by way too fast, the dives at the above mentioned locations literally flew by! We have dived the caves partly several times, because they are simply very, very beautiful locations - and at the end of the week we have already started a little wistfully the return journey, but - we come again!
In this sense,
Your Cavebase
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