A Palinuro a tragedy happened, four boys who loved the sea died. They died in a beautiful but treacherous place. I know that cave and I know many other caves in that arm of the sea that legend has it also swallowed up the helmsman of Aeneas. They count well trentacin than di caves around the promontory of Capo Palinuro, all between the small port that is just before the Cape and the first practicable beach called Buondormire, that short strip of sand that extends in front of the Scoglio della Marina, known by all as theRabbit Island.
Every dive in that area is fantastic, a triumph of colors and life even at a depth of a few metres. So why the tragedy? What went wrong? I find it hard to believe that there was improvisation, imprudence, there was an expert diving instructor and also a local guide, a pairing capable of guaranteeing adequate safety on the excursion and sufficient experience in the field to face a cave that is part of the more classic tourist circuit, second only to the blue cave and the cave of the cathedrals which are among the most visited and photographed.
Also the silver cave and that of the blood are sought after for the colors and that of the crib for the characteristic concretions, but the eye cave it is a dive not to be missed, not even a demanding one. It's true, the cave of the eyes has three openings, two at the same height, and they are the ones that allow the best photographic effects, the other, the third, is deeper, but it doesn't have a vast expansion room and a dome The vault, as can be seen in the upper entrances, is a narrower, longer and darker passage, I swear, not very inviting, but in the vault, at the end, it has an opening that leads back into the upper chamber. In that cursed gut, however, the bottom is muddy, sediments that are lifted only by the vibration of the fins and make visibility practically zero.
That's why from there, it usually doesn't pass. Here it is good to clarify that a torch lit on the mud or sand raised by the passage of a group of divers plays a even negative role due to the effect of the refraction of light which multiplies with the swirling of the dust and unfortunately in those conditions one does not have the coldness to wait, in the most absolute immobility, for the sediments to redeposit allowing the torches to show where the passage is. It takes minutes, more than one, made up of 60 seconds, not moments, to see again, for the dust to settle and the water to become transparent again. Furthermore, we cannot ignore that a torch has a "limited" range and only in optimal environmental conditions, i.e. it does not go beyond a few meters and with a focused and concentrated beam that does not widen, the illuminated field is slightly larger than that which emerges from the lamp, about a foot, it's not exactly like turning on the light in a room. And as long as the torch is fully charged.
We do not know how many torches there were, perhaps not everyone had one, it happens to rely on those of others, by choice or to carry another object with you, alternatively, such as a camera, or simply to have your hands free for act better on the buoyancy compensator, the second regulator or on the control equipment, depth gauge, watch, pressure gauge and decompression tables. Surely, they told us, they didn't have them with them Ariadne's thread, a trivial spool to be unrolled as one proceeds forward and which ensures the reverse path, a lack however that I cannot imagine as a carelessness, as an oversight, an imprudence. It wasn't there, in my opinion, because perhaps it wasn't needed for that dive, as it had been planned.
Then something else was done, we went to a place where that contraption would have come in handy instead. Why this other could have been done we still don't know, the lead climber is not always the first in line, the positions often change, for someone who lingers or someone else who goes on reconnaissance even though it is not his job, it happens, disconnections can be created between the group and you are no longer on sight or there is an excessive concentration of divers in places that are too narrow, you get in each other's way and getting a fin in the face from whoever precedes you, is something that happens quite often, your mask gets flooded easily, it means you can no longer see anything, and you empty a mask of water under the You can, but you have to know how to do it, and have already done it in calm conditions, down there it can become complicated, difficult if not impossible for the less experienced.
In short, it is probable that something you didn't want to do got done and during the dive communication is only the essential one, with gestures, it becomes difficult to film someone who ventures in the wrong direction and shout "go back!". Lastly the air, we have read incredible nonsense on the subject, for someone the oxygen was out, and we spread a pitiful veil, for others there was air only for a certain number of minutes, and not for all the same, and yet we don't comment on this one, instead we comment on something we know, the panic that seizes you in front of what you don't know, that you don't expect, the panic that is contagious down there, the panic that you don't govern because you stop thinking.
Here, the tables tell me that a no-stop dive, which does not require decompression, at a depth of thirty meters it cannot exceed 25 minutes, well, experience tells me that a similar dive of 25, 30 minutes always requires at least a programming briefing for at least double the time of the dive, and even more so if you are in a group, if not all they know each other and have not gone down together before. The standard says, never alone diving, never too many in caves, always a fair proportion between experts and novices, and then lots and lots of programming. Let's talk about this dive first, on land, let's say what we will do, where, who, how. And maybe, once programming is complete, around a table, not on the boat just before resetting the clocks, we repeat, patiently, what we will do all over again.
We wanted to comment on this sad news, not immediately, we also waited for the mud to redeposit on the bottom, and we could see better. Better understand. Then impressions remain impressions. It's true that you don't die by chance, there's always a reason, and sometimes, not always, maybe there's even a fault. There are still too few elements, at least so far, to say what happened to four young people who loved the sea, in the waters of Palinuro, the same name that was given to the second school ship of the navy sailing ships. Yes, because you go to school, to go to sea.
