Thanks to the excellent support of the Bradford Pothole Club I was able to dive Deep Well during the May winch meet. The previous end was reached by Dave Ryall in 2008 at a depth of 40m and 320m from base. On 22^nd May I was assisted to the sump by a large team and seen off on my dive which starts at the bottom of a 25m pitch, broken by a ledge 3m above the water.

I used my chestmounted rebreather for the long and deep dive and left a 3ltr cylinder of oxygen at 6m for decompression in case of emergency.

Loose line was encountered in a couple of places before the end of line was reached. Here the cave was found to pinch in and progress forward was impossible. After retreating back along the line incase an obvious mistake had just been made I returned to the end and spotted that the passage continued high above above. After rising up to 33m I laid 90m of line in a large impressive tunnel generally on a 300-330 degree bearing before the reel ran out. During the return to base 45 minutes of decompression were required making the total dive time 2hrs and 15mins. The end of line is now 410m from base.

Once back on the surface the team made steady progress to the exit where we were winched to the surface at 2am by Scoff and Basher who had stayed sober all night especially for us!

Thanks to Martin Smith, Will Stewart, Kirsty Bamber, Gerik Rhodden, Ian Lloyd, Andrew Hainsworth, Roger Saxton, Pete Davies, Neil Weston, Brian Scoffield, Basher Baines and all the Bradford Pothole Club for their help and support.

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