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This just in: Another Northeast Atlantic diver found in Florida karst system.
OK, the plan was to complete the IANTD 8-day full cave course by leaving all my stereotypical northeast boat attitudes at home, show up blank slate, and get the full cave experience. Through a complicated course of events, I found an instructor who is best described as a mentor with strong academic ties to technical diving, the Florida karst, caves, anthropology, and cave fauna. He also lives in a below-ground eco-friendly house that he built and makes his own biodiesel, but I digress. He turned out to be a perfect fit for my personal style of learning.
Game on! Mandatory stop at Luraville Country Store, get lunch and plan the day on the table. The tabletop is an artists rendition of the Peacock system. I was immediately struck by the absolute absence of rushing or any perceived need to get anything done in a timely fashion. Arent we supposed to be doing something right now guys??? This was my first exposure to cave community mindset. Pre-dive caving is nothing at all like tearing across NJ in the early morning hours in a scopolamine fog to catch a boat that IS going to leave at 7:00AM with or without me. -Take time to visualize your dive before you enter the water??? OK, this could get to be nice.
Standard start, my buddy and I are following lines in Orange Grove, first topside through the brush then underwater through a serious maze of tree branches. (This guy isnt kidding! We just got started and Im in a major entanglement!) Didnt do as well as I had hoped with respect to silt. Next, repeat everything while sharing air and cant see. On and on the drills continue. Mental note: dont start a cave class with weak dive skills, things arent going to just work out somehow. I thought that my skills were fairly decent, yet I was struggling on day one. I wasnt at all happy about my trim, hoping to get that ironed out in this course. My instructor assured me that proper trim will happen. We run our lines into the cavern then repeat everything. Ran a line to the famous sign at the end of the cavern, turn lights off, experience the cavern. OK, if that little patch of bluish light way up there means Im still in a cavern, fine by me, call it what you want, but this is a fricking cave! Little did I know that I would be returning very close to here to complete the Peacock to Olsen (and back) traverse. I know that this particular traverse is absolutely nothing to you real cave divers, but to me, it remains a very big personal accomplishment.
Sinks, sumps, springs, sloughs, and siphons. My favorite is the return trip in a spring. Endless dos and donts, accident analysis, buddy system. Blew a stupidly simple tie-in to a jump, headed into the circuit with the toy dragging behind me. Most embarrassing and alarming, -that wont ever happen again. The dumbest little thing can get you hopelessly lost in a cave. Beginning to see that just entering a cave and exiting unscathed is not cave diving. Cave diving is all about an ongoing personal obsession with skills, improvement, and endless important details.
Everything went precisely right for a moment and I found myself in perfect visibility hovering over several small blind crayfish at Jackson Blue. Beautiful place. This helped me to comprehend the cavers obsession with visibility. Finally got it on dive number fourteen or so. It is impossible for me to describe the feeling of following a springs flow through a bedding plane into a crystal clear room with no backscatter from your light. A big part of cave diving is about protecting the cave, clear water, and the team skills needed to keep it that way for other cavers to enjoy.
Worked on trim, valve drills, gear changes. Gave up my old ratty-but-dependable DR Rec Wing for a DR Nomad. Things started coming together, easier to reach my valves. I did much better at frog kicking over the unforgiving clay bottom at Peacock. I must have brought my ocean RMV with me, never seemed to have enough gas. My instructor took me to Cave Adventurers and Ed set me up with his slick way to bungee sidemount my Al80 travel gas while still using my backmounted HP 100s. Dont buy it yet, borrow mine first and try it out. Sweet! Shocked at how LDS seem to work together in cave country. I also found that cavers tend to be very helpful toward each other. Trim kicked in, things really started coming together. I can fly. I still cant drop my sidemount travel tank and clip it off without hesitating, but I can practice that anywhere.
New gear, new mistakes. Stressed from rolling a post shut in a vertical restriction and thinking I depleted my back-gas then going to my travel tank that I had neglected to turn back on after retrieving it. More things to practice.
Final day, Jackson Blue. Second time at this cave, JB could very easily become my favorite cave. Lost line drill in a breakdown room: Lights off, not allowed to peek, sitting on top of an immense flat topped boulder in a breakdown room with nothing but way down all around me. Never felt so lost. Bad tie-off with my search reel, didnt orient properly in the current, blew line sense, couldnt remember which side of the room the gold line was on, sweating my gas supply should always know, but didnt think to check before lights out, well into my second third, really wished that I had been attending to these details before the drill started. Situational awareness is the first victim of stress. In spite of my best efforts, I made a mess of the place before I finally found the line. I felt very bad about ruining the visibility for others that I knew were in the cave. If anyone thinks that it would be easy to find a line in a cave
Long hard week of nothing less than 10 hour days, feeling very stressed (stress is cumulative learned that lesson on day one), each day with the same mental load, constantly thinking and problem solving for myself and buddy. Same for him. No one thing was all that hard, but when everything was put together and served up in an easy but relentless fashion, it wears on you. Like fighting the current at Ginnie trying to get to the lips in the Devils system. I ripped through my gas supply while my instructor hovered above me near the ceiling and well out of the main flow. That was his teaching style, explain the simple concept (yeah, yeah, that makes sense) while in class or driving to the site then test us for lesson learned using hard experience.
Nearing the end. What a surprise! I had the great pleasure of meeting Denisegg at Jackson Blue. Wonderful person. I really didnt want to silt the place up for her but the lost-line drill put an abrupt end to that wish. She was ever so nice, but I still cringe when I think about it. Sorry, Denise!
Final revenge of the karst: Exited JBs cavern at night, tried to unclip my sidemount in the head-pool when the flow caught my fins and inverted me at the surface. Fins on the surface -no traction, face down in the eelgrass, the phrase discharged un-improved came to mind. Temporarily helpless, could only laugh at myself. Apologized, tucked tail, and headed home.
Without question, this was the best course I have ever taken. I must return soon. I still cant believe what I have learned, where I have been, and what I have seen. Caves are special places. Skilled cave divers have my respect and admiration. The NE Atlantic Ocean remains my home, but caves are indeed very special places and I am a newbie caver.
lowviz.
OK, the plan was to complete the IANTD 8-day full cave course by leaving all my stereotypical northeast boat attitudes at home, show up blank slate, and get the full cave experience. Through a complicated course of events, I found an instructor who is best described as a mentor with strong academic ties to technical diving, the Florida karst, caves, anthropology, and cave fauna. He also lives in a below-ground eco-friendly house that he built and makes his own biodiesel, but I digress. He turned out to be a perfect fit for my personal style of learning.
Game on! Mandatory stop at Luraville Country Store, get lunch and plan the day on the table. The tabletop is an artists rendition of the Peacock system. I was immediately struck by the absolute absence of rushing or any perceived need to get anything done in a timely fashion. Arent we supposed to be doing something right now guys??? This was my first exposure to cave community mindset. Pre-dive caving is nothing at all like tearing across NJ in the early morning hours in a scopolamine fog to catch a boat that IS going to leave at 7:00AM with or without me. -Take time to visualize your dive before you enter the water??? OK, this could get to be nice.
Standard start, my buddy and I are following lines in Orange Grove, first topside through the brush then underwater through a serious maze of tree branches. (This guy isnt kidding! We just got started and Im in a major entanglement!) Didnt do as well as I had hoped with respect to silt. Next, repeat everything while sharing air and cant see. On and on the drills continue. Mental note: dont start a cave class with weak dive skills, things arent going to just work out somehow. I thought that my skills were fairly decent, yet I was struggling on day one. I wasnt at all happy about my trim, hoping to get that ironed out in this course. My instructor assured me that proper trim will happen. We run our lines into the cavern then repeat everything. Ran a line to the famous sign at the end of the cavern, turn lights off, experience the cavern. OK, if that little patch of bluish light way up there means Im still in a cavern, fine by me, call it what you want, but this is a fricking cave! Little did I know that I would be returning very close to here to complete the Peacock to Olsen (and back) traverse. I know that this particular traverse is absolutely nothing to you real cave divers, but to me, it remains a very big personal accomplishment.
Sinks, sumps, springs, sloughs, and siphons. My favorite is the return trip in a spring. Endless dos and donts, accident analysis, buddy system. Blew a stupidly simple tie-in to a jump, headed into the circuit with the toy dragging behind me. Most embarrassing and alarming, -that wont ever happen again. The dumbest little thing can get you hopelessly lost in a cave. Beginning to see that just entering a cave and exiting unscathed is not cave diving. Cave diving is all about an ongoing personal obsession with skills, improvement, and endless important details.
Everything went precisely right for a moment and I found myself in perfect visibility hovering over several small blind crayfish at Jackson Blue. Beautiful place. This helped me to comprehend the cavers obsession with visibility. Finally got it on dive number fourteen or so. It is impossible for me to describe the feeling of following a springs flow through a bedding plane into a crystal clear room with no backscatter from your light. A big part of cave diving is about protecting the cave, clear water, and the team skills needed to keep it that way for other cavers to enjoy.
Worked on trim, valve drills, gear changes. Gave up my old ratty-but-dependable DR Rec Wing for a DR Nomad. Things started coming together, easier to reach my valves. I did much better at frog kicking over the unforgiving clay bottom at Peacock. I must have brought my ocean RMV with me, never seemed to have enough gas. My instructor took me to Cave Adventurers and Ed set me up with his slick way to bungee sidemount my Al80 travel gas while still using my backmounted HP 100s. Dont buy it yet, borrow mine first and try it out. Sweet! Shocked at how LDS seem to work together in cave country. I also found that cavers tend to be very helpful toward each other. Trim kicked in, things really started coming together. I can fly. I still cant drop my sidemount travel tank and clip it off without hesitating, but I can practice that anywhere.
New gear, new mistakes. Stressed from rolling a post shut in a vertical restriction and thinking I depleted my back-gas then going to my travel tank that I had neglected to turn back on after retrieving it. More things to practice.
Final day, Jackson Blue. Second time at this cave, JB could very easily become my favorite cave. Lost line drill in a breakdown room: Lights off, not allowed to peek, sitting on top of an immense flat topped boulder in a breakdown room with nothing but way down all around me. Never felt so lost. Bad tie-off with my search reel, didnt orient properly in the current, blew line sense, couldnt remember which side of the room the gold line was on, sweating my gas supply should always know, but didnt think to check before lights out, well into my second third, really wished that I had been attending to these details before the drill started. Situational awareness is the first victim of stress. In spite of my best efforts, I made a mess of the place before I finally found the line. I felt very bad about ruining the visibility for others that I knew were in the cave. If anyone thinks that it would be easy to find a line in a cave
Long hard week of nothing less than 10 hour days, feeling very stressed (stress is cumulative learned that lesson on day one), each day with the same mental load, constantly thinking and problem solving for myself and buddy. Same for him. No one thing was all that hard, but when everything was put together and served up in an easy but relentless fashion, it wears on you. Like fighting the current at Ginnie trying to get to the lips in the Devils system. I ripped through my gas supply while my instructor hovered above me near the ceiling and well out of the main flow. That was his teaching style, explain the simple concept (yeah, yeah, that makes sense) while in class or driving to the site then test us for lesson learned using hard experience.
Nearing the end. What a surprise! I had the great pleasure of meeting Denisegg at Jackson Blue. Wonderful person. I really didnt want to silt the place up for her but the lost-line drill put an abrupt end to that wish. She was ever so nice, but I still cringe when I think about it. Sorry, Denise!
Final revenge of the karst: Exited JBs cavern at night, tried to unclip my sidemount in the head-pool when the flow caught my fins and inverted me at the surface. Fins on the surface -no traction, face down in the eelgrass, the phrase discharged un-improved came to mind. Temporarily helpless, could only laugh at myself. Apologized, tucked tail, and headed home.
Without question, this was the best course I have ever taken. I must return soon. I still cant believe what I have learned, where I have been, and what I have seen. Caves are special places. Skilled cave divers have my respect and admiration. The NE Atlantic Ocean remains my home, but caves are indeed very special places and I am a newbie caver.
lowviz.
