SuPrBuGmAn
Contributor
I'll let some of the other participants fill in the happenins in between dives, as for the dives that I made...
10-28-5 Troy Springs-attempted
I met up with Perrone Ford in Tallahassee and we caravaned into cave country. We decided we would try to get a dive in at Troy Springs before arriving at Ginnie Springs to set up camp. It costs $10 to dive Troy and you cannot dive past 5PM, despite the park closing at sunset. The park rangers told us this after we were geared up - D'Oh! We'll be back Sunday.
10-29-5 Ginnie Springs
After eating some ziplock bagged omlets, a bunch of people from the campsite were ready for a morning dive. I was to buddy up with two newer divers(Perrone Ford and Vayu) to help them get acclimated to the water as well as fill them in on dive info on these sites. Hoss, Cardzard, and Crawdad also dove with us as their own buddy group. We went through the dive plan, which was basically check out the cavern until you're down to 2/3rds your starting pressure and then check out the basin before heading up the spring run to the Sante Fe River, and we also went through hand signals. Neither diver had many dives under their belt so I figured we'd just take our time with the dive and not push things any. We checked out the basin until everyone was fairly certain they were weighted correctly and trimmed out well enough and everyone OK'd for entering the cavern. After penetrating about 20' into the cavern(I hit 35' in depth), we had a little bouyancy issue, so we turned the dive, got back into the basin and got everyone comfortable again. We spent the rest of our 53 min dive looking around the basin and the spring run. Everyone seemed to have fun and the dive made for a nice start to the weekend of diving.
10-29-5 Devils System(Little Devil, Devil's Eye, and Devil's Ear) and Sante Fe drift back to Ginnie Springs
We spent a little more than an hour warming up during the SI before gearing back up to dive the Devils System. Being as none of us were cave divers, we were restricted from using lights in the run. We looked at all 3 springs and watched as cave divers exitted at the Eye before deciding to do a river drift down the Sante Fe from the Devil's System to Ginnie Springs. I buddied up with Vayu. Hoss, Cardzard, and Crawdad made another buddy group and dove as well. Hoss joined us for the river drift since Cardzard and Crawdad didn't want to have anything to do with the tannic water
Vayu and I grabbed a bunch of trash off the bottom and we saw a few fish that we hadn't seen in the spring run such as Bowfin and Gar. We maxed our depths at 38' in Devil's Ear and the entire dive including the drift lasted for 78 minutes.
10-29-5 Ginnie Springs
After a bit of lunch, Perrone and I were ready for another dive at Ginnie Springs. We decided to stick with the original dive plan from earlier in the day. Brewone0to and Xcountry buddied up and came as well. Jeandiver and ScubaFool were exitting the water as we were about to enter and they had to cut their dive short due to a light flood. Jeandiver ended up diving with our group as well. We didn't have any problems this time around and Perrone got to see the extent of the Ballroom at Ginnie and we explored the basin a bit before he had to leave. I joined back up with the other divers after surfacing briefly with Perrone and continued the dive which lasted for 45 min in all after hitting 52' in the Ballroom.
10-29-5 Ginnie Springs Night Galaxy Dive and pumpkin carving
After eating BBQ chicken and some kinda stew we decided it was time for an UW pumpkin carving and Galaxy Dive in the Ballroom. DeepSeaWolf dove in a full chainmail knights outfit(didn't need to use a weightbelt and complained that he was top heavy in water - LOL). He and Adder70 carved some pumpkins in the basin and were rewarded with some ScubaBoard mugs from NetDoc. The galaxy divers consisted of DeepSeaWolf, Cardzard, Xcountry, ScubaFool, JeanDiver, Crawdad, Adder70, BrewOne0to, and myself. A bunch of them brought a lot of chemlights(light sticks) into the cavern, got em glowing real bright, broke them open, and shook the glowing contents out into the flow. It didn't take long for the entire cavern to fill up with millions of glowing particles flowing around all the limestone formations making up the bottom, walls, and ceiling of the cavern. We probably dove for 10 minutes or more without light swimming around the floating "stars", which were numerous enough to flow around everything alerting us of each others position as well as the cavern wall locations. Its the first time I've ever seen anything like that. I hit 50' in the cavern and between watching the pumpking carving in the basin and the galaxy dive in the Ballroom, the dive lasted 36 minutes.
10-30-5 Troy Springs
After failing to dive Troy on the 28th, I was pretty determined to dive it Sunday morning before heading back home. After eating some more ziplock bag omlets, packing up camp, and telling everyone bye, I got some tanks filled at Cave Excursions East and met up with Hoss at Troy Springs. Troy Springs is in a State Park and there are clean bathrooms and they have a shower area outside to wash gear off. There is a handicap accessible ramp leading to the water as well. The spring itself is fairly clear but always has a green hue to it. It doesn't have much of a cavern or even much of a cave system(although some cave has been surveyed onsite), it does have a Civil War wreck in the spring run making the site very unique. The Madison was scuttled by it's captain in order to keep the boat out of enemy hands while he led troops into the woods. The limestone basin drops off almost straight down, 75' was as far down as we could go and we explored pretty much everything we could find before heading back up to the spring run and headed towards the river. We found a few turtles and scared off a large Bowfin before finding whats left of the Madison. It basically consisted of several ribs with some large brass pegs sticking out of them. Despite it not being all that impressive, it was an interesting dive with some historical significance. The dive lasted about an hour.
10-30-5 Royal Springs
After leaving Troy, Hoss and I headed straight to Royal for our final dive before heading back to our homes. We found Royal empty, which was fine by us, since we didn't have to share the smallish basin with any other divers. There was an aqua colored tint to the water and it was slightly milky. Visibility in the basin stretched 30-40' in places and the entire bottom of the basin and cavern was covered in silt, so we had to be carefull not to let our fin kicks reach the mud. The cavern is fairly wide open and high and was more of an overhang than anything else, but it did contain a smallish cave opening inside that looked silty as well. We shined our lights inside and scared some catfish away, but couldn't really see very far in. You could see the limestone bluffs above the water from inside the basin and they made for quite a good view with the clear blue skies and forests surrounding everything. We chased a few turtles and played with some fish before calling the dive. We hit 52' near the cavern opening and the dive lasted for nearly 30 min.
All in all, I had a great time at this years Halloween Megadive and I'm looking forward to going again next spring. I took lots of pictures while I was diving and they can be found at http://www.suprbugman.com/gallery/album94 Enjoy
10-28-5 Troy Springs-attempted
I met up with Perrone Ford in Tallahassee and we caravaned into cave country. We decided we would try to get a dive in at Troy Springs before arriving at Ginnie Springs to set up camp. It costs $10 to dive Troy and you cannot dive past 5PM, despite the park closing at sunset. The park rangers told us this after we were geared up - D'Oh! We'll be back Sunday.
10-29-5 Ginnie Springs
After eating some ziplock bagged omlets, a bunch of people from the campsite were ready for a morning dive. I was to buddy up with two newer divers(Perrone Ford and Vayu) to help them get acclimated to the water as well as fill them in on dive info on these sites. Hoss, Cardzard, and Crawdad also dove with us as their own buddy group. We went through the dive plan, which was basically check out the cavern until you're down to 2/3rds your starting pressure and then check out the basin before heading up the spring run to the Sante Fe River, and we also went through hand signals. Neither diver had many dives under their belt so I figured we'd just take our time with the dive and not push things any. We checked out the basin until everyone was fairly certain they were weighted correctly and trimmed out well enough and everyone OK'd for entering the cavern. After penetrating about 20' into the cavern(I hit 35' in depth), we had a little bouyancy issue, so we turned the dive, got back into the basin and got everyone comfortable again. We spent the rest of our 53 min dive looking around the basin and the spring run. Everyone seemed to have fun and the dive made for a nice start to the weekend of diving.
10-29-5 Devils System(Little Devil, Devil's Eye, and Devil's Ear) and Sante Fe drift back to Ginnie Springs
We spent a little more than an hour warming up during the SI before gearing back up to dive the Devils System. Being as none of us were cave divers, we were restricted from using lights in the run. We looked at all 3 springs and watched as cave divers exitted at the Eye before deciding to do a river drift down the Sante Fe from the Devil's System to Ginnie Springs. I buddied up with Vayu. Hoss, Cardzard, and Crawdad made another buddy group and dove as well. Hoss joined us for the river drift since Cardzard and Crawdad didn't want to have anything to do with the tannic water
Vayu and I grabbed a bunch of trash off the bottom and we saw a few fish that we hadn't seen in the spring run such as Bowfin and Gar. We maxed our depths at 38' in Devil's Ear and the entire dive including the drift lasted for 78 minutes.10-29-5 Ginnie Springs
After a bit of lunch, Perrone and I were ready for another dive at Ginnie Springs. We decided to stick with the original dive plan from earlier in the day. Brewone0to and Xcountry buddied up and came as well. Jeandiver and ScubaFool were exitting the water as we were about to enter and they had to cut their dive short due to a light flood. Jeandiver ended up diving with our group as well. We didn't have any problems this time around and Perrone got to see the extent of the Ballroom at Ginnie and we explored the basin a bit before he had to leave. I joined back up with the other divers after surfacing briefly with Perrone and continued the dive which lasted for 45 min in all after hitting 52' in the Ballroom.
10-29-5 Ginnie Springs Night Galaxy Dive and pumpkin carving
After eating BBQ chicken and some kinda stew we decided it was time for an UW pumpkin carving and Galaxy Dive in the Ballroom. DeepSeaWolf dove in a full chainmail knights outfit(didn't need to use a weightbelt and complained that he was top heavy in water - LOL). He and Adder70 carved some pumpkins in the basin and were rewarded with some ScubaBoard mugs from NetDoc. The galaxy divers consisted of DeepSeaWolf, Cardzard, Xcountry, ScubaFool, JeanDiver, Crawdad, Adder70, BrewOne0to, and myself. A bunch of them brought a lot of chemlights(light sticks) into the cavern, got em glowing real bright, broke them open, and shook the glowing contents out into the flow. It didn't take long for the entire cavern to fill up with millions of glowing particles flowing around all the limestone formations making up the bottom, walls, and ceiling of the cavern. We probably dove for 10 minutes or more without light swimming around the floating "stars", which were numerous enough to flow around everything alerting us of each others position as well as the cavern wall locations. Its the first time I've ever seen anything like that. I hit 50' in the cavern and between watching the pumpking carving in the basin and the galaxy dive in the Ballroom, the dive lasted 36 minutes.
10-30-5 Troy Springs
After failing to dive Troy on the 28th, I was pretty determined to dive it Sunday morning before heading back home. After eating some more ziplock bag omlets, packing up camp, and telling everyone bye, I got some tanks filled at Cave Excursions East and met up with Hoss at Troy Springs. Troy Springs is in a State Park and there are clean bathrooms and they have a shower area outside to wash gear off. There is a handicap accessible ramp leading to the water as well. The spring itself is fairly clear but always has a green hue to it. It doesn't have much of a cavern or even much of a cave system(although some cave has been surveyed onsite), it does have a Civil War wreck in the spring run making the site very unique. The Madison was scuttled by it's captain in order to keep the boat out of enemy hands while he led troops into the woods. The limestone basin drops off almost straight down, 75' was as far down as we could go and we explored pretty much everything we could find before heading back up to the spring run and headed towards the river. We found a few turtles and scared off a large Bowfin before finding whats left of the Madison. It basically consisted of several ribs with some large brass pegs sticking out of them. Despite it not being all that impressive, it was an interesting dive with some historical significance. The dive lasted about an hour.
10-30-5 Royal Springs
After leaving Troy, Hoss and I headed straight to Royal for our final dive before heading back to our homes. We found Royal empty, which was fine by us, since we didn't have to share the smallish basin with any other divers. There was an aqua colored tint to the water and it was slightly milky. Visibility in the basin stretched 30-40' in places and the entire bottom of the basin and cavern was covered in silt, so we had to be carefull not to let our fin kicks reach the mud. The cavern is fairly wide open and high and was more of an overhang than anything else, but it did contain a smallish cave opening inside that looked silty as well. We shined our lights inside and scared some catfish away, but couldn't really see very far in. You could see the limestone bluffs above the water from inside the basin and they made for quite a good view with the clear blue skies and forests surrounding everything. We chased a few turtles and played with some fish before calling the dive. We hit 52' near the cavern opening and the dive lasted for nearly 30 min.
All in all, I had a great time at this years Halloween Megadive and I'm looking forward to going again next spring. I took lots of pictures while I was diving and they can be found at http://www.suprbugman.com/gallery/album94 Enjoy
