need advice on Royal Spring

[DiveBandit]

Doing a spring diving road trip this sunday on my way up to the Dive Outpost for a Monday morning NSS Basic Cave class. I have NSS Cavern.

One spring that looks real close to the Dive Outpost is Royal Spring, however I cannot find much on the site. Cavediver.net posts say you dive that spring for one of two reasons. 1-to become a body, and 2-to recover a body.

Is that place really that bad !?

We'll be doing Little river and maybe Cow or Telford as well that day.

Any info/advice is appreciated.

Dave.

 

[deepdiver4]

very bad this is a one time place.. be very careful run a line close your eyes on the way out because you will not see any thinganyway one misplace fin kick an your done.. GOOD LUCK BE CAREFUL POAST WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT IT

 

[PerroneFord]

There are LOTS of places to go. This is not one of them.

Telford is currently off-limits. However, in the area, you have the entire Peacock system, so go play in Orange Grove or P1. You have Little River and Troy (OW only) close by.

Save yourself the trouble, and potential heartache, and stay out of Royal.

 

[b1draper]

Royal isn't all that bad. It's right along side the river with a short little run out to the river. Royal isn't really that deep (now this is speaking from an OW perspective) it was maybe 30-40 feet when I went last year. There's not much to see. On the day I went we went to Troy then Royal, we were done with Royal in about 10-15 minutes.

Though, you may see a lot of locals jumping in the water and swiming down to smile at you. It's a fun one timer.

Have fun and let me know what you think.

 

[SuPrBuGmAn]

The basin is just a silty mudhole with lots of building material trashing up the bottom. Clarity when I was there was around 30' and milky and there was nobody else onsite to stir the visibility up. There is one crappy platform. The cavern area is basically a large overhang with a cave going straight back as far as visibility would allow me to see from staying out of it(which is where the danger is?). The bottom is uber silty in the overhang and in the basin.

Its free.

I had fun.

I didn't go into the cave.

I would consider doing it again because its free.

I understand lots of people ate it there, certainly in the cave.

Are you planning on diving caverns on the way to your Basic Cave class, or caves on the way out from your Basic Cave class? Certainly not diving caves until you complete the class?

As for Intro level caves, probably best to go elsewhere - just from the outside, I can see that it was some nasty, low/no flow cave. If you are just looking for an OW hole in the ground to add to your log, give it a try.

 

[Teen Diver]

posted wrong forum

 

[DiveBandit]

Are you planning on diving caverns on the way to your Basic Cave class, or caves on the way out from your Basic Cave class?

Both.

Seems like there are a few springs with nice cavern dives I can do on the way up, and i was thinking of doing the ear at Ginnie on the way home from class.

 

[SuPrBuGmAn]

Does Little River even have much of a cavern zone?

Troy is OW, but fun. Dive the Cavern at the Ear and Eye in Ginnie, the Ballroom as well at the main spring. Blue Grotto has a cavern(basically a large overhang). Paradise has a great cavern, lots of fossils in the walls. Devils Den is neat, not sure if thats really considered a cavern though. Alexander is a pretty little blue spring, not much in terms of overhead though.

Those are springs in the area I've done.

Some I haven't dove that supposedly have some great cavern(and Intro Cave in some cases) potential... Jug Hole, Peacock's many springs, Madison Blue, Buford, Manatee/Catfish Hotel, Blue Spring(Orange County), ect... All on my list, to do.

 

[JahJahwarrior]

Troy is a fun OW dive. It's not fun for vacation divers. But I had fun there. And I plan to go back soon, before I leave for college in two weeks. Top water is very warm, it's got a thermocline about 17 feet down where it drops to 72, but top 17 feet is murky (5-6 foot of decent viz, you can see shapes past that a little ways) and 82. Cavern is basically a very large overhang but it's still fun to swim around, and the silty-ness gives you a chance to work on bouyancy. I agree on the cave though, just having poked my head in to the sign, if the entryway is any clue as to the rest of it, very low flow, very easily silted. Woudln't want to cave there. The "platorm" is a sunken dock....

And we didn't spend much time down, as we had to get back to town for my buddy to go to the beach with friends, and most of our time was spent in the cavern area, but if there's so much trash, why aren't we cleaning it up? My next trip out there, we'll take a mesh bag or two down and pick up everything we see.

And it's free!

 

[karstdvr]

Algae bloom may be bad there this time of the year,which may mean the only place that you'll get viz is into the cavern/cave.