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Cave Diving video in Sardinia

Started by r4e ·

  • 4Posts
  • 4Replies

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Cave Diving video in Sardinia

4 posts
  1. I just spent a week diving at Cala Gonone Sardinia with Protec. This was in the beginning of April. The area is certainly a cave diver's paradise! At least to a newbie like me. They have something like 15-20 kilometers of line in the cave systems. I did my Intro to Cave course there and I was amazed of what kind of cave sites you can visit at that level.

     

    Please view the video of one of the caves I visited ten days ago:

     

    Grotta del Fico - Sardinia on Vimeo

     

    In this dive (and video) you can see stalactites, dry caves, haloclines, unbreathable gas pockets, vertical shafts, line sharing, "minor" restrictions just wide enough to wiggle through etc. Fun.

     

    I posted my video in order to encourage and inspire divers to train to atleast Intro to Cave level certification. It really is worth it.

    Edited by r4e
  2. Great video!

     

    Sardinia's caves have been on my list for a long time. How did you access the caves? Did you utilize a live-aboard or did you stay on land and charter a vessel each day? I'm also curious about gas, tanks, etc. If you have any further information regarding logistics for such a trip, I'd be quite grateful. Many thanks!

     

    Seainggreen

  3. Thanks for your comments.

     

    I had had the same idea of diving caverns(caves) of Sardinia for a long time. Finally I did some research to locate dive operators. The single best dive operator listing can be found here: http://www.madebysardinia.it/diving

    The key words I searched for were: Grotta = cave, Bombole = tanks, bi-attacho = Dual valve.

    I did my diving with a company called Protec Sardinia located in Cala Gonone on the East coast near Dorgali. Their web pages in English and German are here: http://www.protecsardinia.com

     

    For certain weeks they do offer a live-aboard option, but, I was living at a family-run medium-class hotel "La Playa" in/next to which the dive center is located. Very convenient. This is just a couple minutes from the harbor. With their RIBs it takes 15-30 minutes to access the cave sites. Of course there is the normal loading and unloading of tech gear that takes a while. Thus the day begun at 9 am by kitting up and loading the van and we would be back by 4 or 5 pm.

     

    The operator has twin 12 liter manifolded tanks plus stage tanks, all with DIN valves. They have air, oxygen, helium and mixtures. I didn't see an helium analyzer, so you might have to take your own if you prefer trimix. They also support CCRs provided that you have the right CCR training for caves. The majority of the caves are 5-25 meters deep. But there are also 40-80 meter depths and uncharted caves if you prefer challenges.

     

    I used a 1960 lumen Green Force LED lamp as my primary lamp (as seen in the video). For the mainly white-walled Grotta del Fico this was good enough for videography. However in some of the black-walled caves you really would have needed more light. For additional videos, please see the Sardinia labelled videos by http://www.vimeo.com/slawekpacko

  4. PS. Seainggreen, I noticed from your public profile that you own a Sony 550 camera. That is essentially the same as my Sony MC50 which I used for shooting my video. http://www.vimeo.com/r4e

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