Karl and grant enter the water at Muchacho.
Grant and Karl prepare for a long dive.
Renee locates the line arrows. Confirmation!
Every time we dive we see incredible sights.
Soda straw on the ceiling of Aktun Chen.
One of the residents of Aktun Chen.
We woke up early to start another busy day in Akumal. There was quite a bit to do this morning including PT, mixing gas for the dives and insuring the teams were aware and confident in their objectives. Today followed the same format as yesterday with one dry team and one diving team.
Team 1: Karl and Grant
Our mission today was to swim from Cenote Muchachos to Cenote Coati Mundi, a four-bottle swim. Since yesterday’s three-cylinder jaunt using air landed us about 14 minutes deco, we opted for EANx34 with O2 for deco. The dive started as planned. We ran down Cindy’s Passage and jumped to the Black Forest Line, just like yesterday. We reached the end of that line and jumped to the left. According the map data, that should have been the Blind Cavefish Line.
Apparently it wasn’t. We went a ways through some up and down cave, came to another jump and headed right, following the arrows to what we thought was toward Coati Mundi. We hit thirds no where close and turned back for Muchachos. Runtime ended at 110 minutes still in the no stop zone. We added five minutes of safety deco using oxygen. Post dive analysis suggests that the lines are not as recorded on the map. Tomorrow the plan calls for two teams: Grant and Karl, and Terrence and Renee, to go to the same area to confirm that the lines are as we now believe, resurvey, adjust line arrows, resurvey and adjust the map accordingly.
Team 2: Terrence and Renee
Our task was to continue cutting access to Cenote Coate Mundi by land. We headed east from Muchachos on the trail we started yesterday. Today, after checking the calibration on the GPS, we were able to stay on our same trail from Sunday. Terrence marked the trail uniquely so we knew exactly where we ended. We continued on from there on the appropriate heading for about 45 more minutes, when suddenly the terrain dropped off. We had found Coati Mundi by land for the first time! We climbed down the steep bank, across muddy ground and over to the water. There in the sunlight were the three yellow arrows placed by Terrence, George, and Mark on the first traverse ever to the cenote. A big thanks to last year’s team for providing us with the GPS coordinates and other work we’re building upon.
After the exploration activities were completed the team headed to the eco-park across the street from Villas Derosa, Aktun Chen to meet with the owner. The goal was to finalize the arrangements for next week’s arrival of the students from the Fuqua School in Farmville, Virginia. We hoped to use the dry caves their property as an analog to what the dive teams do underwater. Instead of a tourist cave, Lorenzo offered to us the chance to have the students survey an unexplored cave off the beaten path. What a great opportunity! Get ready gang! There’s a lot of work to do. Hurry up and get down here!
Again today, Thecia relaxed on the beach, read her Michael Crichton book, Prey, and watched for pirates.
Team Members
- Grant Graves
- Renee Power
- Karl Shreeves
- Thecia Taylor
- Terrence Tysall