Ballroom dive report
On Saturday, December 1, 2007 at 2:45 p.m. I checked in at Ginnie springs, Florida. I was wearing an Aqua-man t-shirt and the man at the register got a kick out of it. After paying the ridiculous fee of $30 for a big orange arm band and a dive tag for my car I entered the park.
I arrived at the site and there were about 7 open-water divers in training inside the spring. The air temperature was about 78 degrees. The water looked nice and blue: just how i like it.
I set up my Lp 85's on the table and started messing with SCUBA gear. The Ginnie man that roams the spring came up and commented on how nice a day it was. Since it was almost 80 degrees in December, I felt ready to jump into the cool fresh water.
Today we would enjoy the Ginnie head-spring and a cavern: The ballroom. Both the spring and the cavern seemed in good condition and almost sparkled in the sun. The parking lot was virtually empty except for a few cars. It was nice to have an empty spring and cavern just waiting for us to dive it. We prepared and talked about the dive plan. We made up an extremely interesting 5 person team of various skill levels. TSM as leader, Perrone following, then Pete, Les, and I.
The diving was excellent. The water felt great at 72 degrees (though it might have been even warmer). We brought 10 tanks and 15(!) lights. The two cavern entrances started at 15' deep. At the bottom, the cavern was over 50' deep. TSM tied off my reel to a medium sized boulder. After the team swam into the system, Les and I stayed back a bit and checked the line as well as the tie off of the reel to the mainline. Everything looked good and at 33' deep we prepared to enter the ballroom.
Immediately the corridor dropped off from 33' deep to over 50' deep. The temperature also dropped off to about 71 degrees. The corridor entered into the middle of the ballroom and the roof suddenly began to rise over 10' above us. We had a very nice time in this huge room. We communicated at this threshold and proceeded to drop down.
The flow was intense but I kicked against it and grabbed onto the metal grate that blocks off the cave system in the Ginnie headspring. It was alot of fun to be tumbled around by the cool and fast flowing water. After half an hour we came up and out into the now moonlit spring.
Then we did it all again.
*Special shout out to my favorite dive snack, Goldfish crackers. Thanks to all people involved and to Ginnie spring for providing hot showers. Thanks to Floyd's diner and diveshops in the high springs area.
