SuPrBuGmAn
Contributor
Up by 5AM and on the road, later than expected, by 6:30AM or so and we were heading East again. I was riding with my dive buddy Dale Wilson and we'd be giving his 15hp outboard a try since he recently purchased and worked it over. I took my 9.8hp as a backup and luckily never had to use it. It was damp outside, but we only encountered a few light showers in Florida. By the time we stopped at Vortex, we were enjoyed breaks in the clouds with sun shining down and warming us up. Dive_Aholic was up there teaching an OW class. Seems like with Morrison opening back up, Vortex was busier than ever! Guess its easier for most to make the drive up when they have a pair of springs to dive, rather than just the one?
After some fills and alot of talking at Vortex, we headed out and over to one of the local rivers to setup and launch. I managed to forget the rails for my floorboards as well as my footpump. Dale usually brings an AL80 to fill the Miss Jellyfish, but it ran dry quickly as he forgot to fill it before the trip. What else could we forget? The cave we'd be diving is short, and relatively shallow(gets to 90', but very gradually) throughout most of the dive. He was diving with LP120s which were overfilled, providing him with a TON of gas for this dive, so we filled off his sidemount tanks. I was diving some newly setup steel 72s(pumped only to rated pressure 2250psi), to give you an idea on how much gas we actually needed.
The new motor didn't really skip a beat on the way to our cave, probably didn't get us there any faster than my 9.8, but it only had a 2 blade prop. I'm thinking with a 3 blade, it might give my motor a run. The spring run and basin were outstandingly clear. Dive plan included trying to get a bit further into the sand restriction at the end of where we had gotten last time as well as getting a feel for diving steel 72s.
The sun warmed us up and we were ready for some cool clear water. This is a strong 2nd magnitude spring that forces a sizable amount of water up a very restrictive sidemount sized chimney. Its like descending down a firehose, lots of fun rock climbing downwards into the abyss. At 30' the cave's chimney ends and the tunnel moves inland, descending slightly as you go. The bottom is covered in a course sand and the limestone surrounding you is adorned with the fossilized skeletons of marine invertebra from yesteryear. Its also luckily a very solid limestone(unlike some caves), which allows you to pull yourself along without damaging the system. There are swimming caves, pull-n-glide caves, and this would be considered a pull-n-pull cave. Before long the passage hangs left and begins a vertical fissure type of passage that requires you to turn sideways and spiderman into the tunnel. Some of the sand at the bottom had been blown away since the water levels had dropped and flow increased compared to our last dive at this site, so we gained a few feet into the restriction. I backed out and let Dale try and it didn't take long for us to start our exit. We explored another vertical fissure crack that pinched off on the way out, then started our controlled ascent against the torrent. By the time we surfaced, Dale had come up with a plethera of bullets, change, and some other interesting finds at the debri pile at the bottom of the chimney. There's a ton of junk in there and next time I'm going to take a lobster bag to pile garbage into. Had a max depth of 93' for a total dive lasting 37 minutes. We stopped by a pond with a cleared out area in the lilly pads that caught our attention. The land owner was onsite and she was nice enough to let us take a look. The water was tannic, but clear, possibly a spring? Who knows, maybe we'll swim out with a mask next time.
We headed back to Vortex to drop off a shovel and show off a few pictures. Then headed a bit further south in hopes of finding a rumored spring we had a few leads on. Took a little bit, but we finally found a promising lead. It ended up being a creek with an impressive amount of snakes around(saw several brown watersnakes and cottonmouths). After making it up the creek, quite a bit, the motor died(there just happened to be a cottonmouth eyeing us from the banks at that moment as well). After several minutes of attempting to get the motor cranking again, we gave up, turned, and started our paddle out. After some paddling, we were able to get the motor going again, but it ended up sputtering dead again, more paddline, then got the motor going again with enough "go" left in it to get us back to the launch this time. The motor doesn't seem to like long periods of idle time and Dale's got plans to fix this. Ran into another local who gave us some more clues to narrow down exactly where we need to be to find our spring(we were close). Still alot of stuff out there. By this time it was overcast and we had gotten hit by a few light showers already. We packed the boat up quickly, hit the Subway and made our way home.
It was a great day and we got alot accomplished despite it being a day trip. Talked about where we'd go next time and how we're going to handle our next spring expedition into the snakey jungles of Florida!
After some fills and alot of talking at Vortex, we headed out and over to one of the local rivers to setup and launch. I managed to forget the rails for my floorboards as well as my footpump. Dale usually brings an AL80 to fill the Miss Jellyfish, but it ran dry quickly as he forgot to fill it before the trip. What else could we forget? The cave we'd be diving is short, and relatively shallow(gets to 90', but very gradually) throughout most of the dive. He was diving with LP120s which were overfilled, providing him with a TON of gas for this dive, so we filled off his sidemount tanks. I was diving some newly setup steel 72s(pumped only to rated pressure 2250psi), to give you an idea on how much gas we actually needed.
The new motor didn't really skip a beat on the way to our cave, probably didn't get us there any faster than my 9.8, but it only had a 2 blade prop. I'm thinking with a 3 blade, it might give my motor a run. The spring run and basin were outstandingly clear. Dive plan included trying to get a bit further into the sand restriction at the end of where we had gotten last time as well as getting a feel for diving steel 72s.
The sun warmed us up and we were ready for some cool clear water. This is a strong 2nd magnitude spring that forces a sizable amount of water up a very restrictive sidemount sized chimney. Its like descending down a firehose, lots of fun rock climbing downwards into the abyss. At 30' the cave's chimney ends and the tunnel moves inland, descending slightly as you go. The bottom is covered in a course sand and the limestone surrounding you is adorned with the fossilized skeletons of marine invertebra from yesteryear. Its also luckily a very solid limestone(unlike some caves), which allows you to pull yourself along without damaging the system. There are swimming caves, pull-n-glide caves, and this would be considered a pull-n-pull cave. Before long the passage hangs left and begins a vertical fissure type of passage that requires you to turn sideways and spiderman into the tunnel. Some of the sand at the bottom had been blown away since the water levels had dropped and flow increased compared to our last dive at this site, so we gained a few feet into the restriction. I backed out and let Dale try and it didn't take long for us to start our exit. We explored another vertical fissure crack that pinched off on the way out, then started our controlled ascent against the torrent. By the time we surfaced, Dale had come up with a plethera of bullets, change, and some other interesting finds at the debri pile at the bottom of the chimney. There's a ton of junk in there and next time I'm going to take a lobster bag to pile garbage into. Had a max depth of 93' for a total dive lasting 37 minutes. We stopped by a pond with a cleared out area in the lilly pads that caught our attention. The land owner was onsite and she was nice enough to let us take a look. The water was tannic, but clear, possibly a spring? Who knows, maybe we'll swim out with a mask next time.
We headed back to Vortex to drop off a shovel and show off a few pictures. Then headed a bit further south in hopes of finding a rumored spring we had a few leads on. Took a little bit, but we finally found a promising lead. It ended up being a creek with an impressive amount of snakes around(saw several brown watersnakes and cottonmouths). After making it up the creek, quite a bit, the motor died(there just happened to be a cottonmouth eyeing us from the banks at that moment as well). After several minutes of attempting to get the motor cranking again, we gave up, turned, and started our paddle out. After some paddling, we were able to get the motor going again, but it ended up sputtering dead again, more paddline, then got the motor going again with enough "go" left in it to get us back to the launch this time. The motor doesn't seem to like long periods of idle time and Dale's got plans to fix this. Ran into another local who gave us some more clues to narrow down exactly where we need to be to find our spring(we were close). Still alot of stuff out there. By this time it was overcast and we had gotten hit by a few light showers already. We packed the boat up quickly, hit the Subway and made our way home.
It was a great day and we got alot accomplished despite it being a day trip. Talked about where we'd go next time and how we're going to handle our next spring expedition into the snakey jungles of Florida!
