Well this afternoon David (Scubafool) and myself went over to Blue Spring to see what the fuss was all about with the river rising! This was my first post-cavern cert dive and i am guessing only David's 3rd or 4th after we caught him out whilst doing his with one of the Ginnie guys (cant recall who - not good with names 
). In the past i have probably only got about 6-8 dives in here and David a few less dives (with many more free dives) so we have a pretty good handle on the "OW" portion of the spring and the light penetratable cavern zone. After chatting with some people regarding the spring and the best way to approach it as well as looking at the map our plan was to tie off to the tree, run a line down the invert (for want of a better word) of the tube that is blue spring, placing and tying as we went, maybe going more along the left wall to stay out of the current and we were told there were better features to use with the line.
I was diving air and David was on 28% (i think or 27%), so my NDL was going to be somewhere in the range of 12-15mins at the bottom with a max depth somewhere around 110-120ft (couldnt tell quite what it would be as the river was up), then once we had reached our thirds or were within a few mins of NDL we were going to turn, recover the reel to around 50-60ft (variable due to river level again) and play in the flow in the OW section before making our way up to the logs and safety stop time.
Well we did our S-drill, i lead and tied off to one of the logs and started to make my way down with David providing some light and checking my placements. Seeing as the previous forays into the spring were all sans reel, i spent a little time on the way down looking for suitable places to tie or place the reel. I think we did pretty well on that front except it took us from the time we dropped in, did our S-drill and started the line work, and got to the main room - we had already used up around 8mins of our NDL. Now i will say there was some task loading involved in this, checking air and time/NDL as well as looking for the tie-off points (which were surprisingly few as the walls are so well worn by the flow) and of course the usual buoyancy issue in that system. The buoyancy issue is that above 80ft or so the flow buoys you up, so you hardly touch the inflator, however once you hit that bend were it goes to 45 deg slope, the flow is just pushing you and not buoying you up - so you have to make up for the other 80ft you have just dropped, well i think David and i again did ok, but at times i was wondering if i could have a spare hand to check those things, just have to get myself an order to check things i guess - comes with practice i am sure. I tied off the reel on the left at about 113ft in the little room where the spring shoots out from and we just spent a couple of minutes shining our lights around to see what was in there. Some silty vertical cuts/chimneys, a hole in the ground which i assume was the vent point (even though it was covered in sticks) and a few other features. After all the diving that we had done in OW there without lights, this was one of those springs we wanted to see what it was like down there now that we have our cavern certs. After about a minute of just floating there David pulls thirds and we turn to head out to our next planned point in OW. Things seemed ok on the way out, not much to complain about. The vent at my back made reeling a hasty, but not badly done job, once we hit that elbow and started to get some upthrust i had to work a little harder on buoyancy (or at least dumping most of my air) to stay with the reel. We finished the rest of the dive off as we had planned playing in the flow. It was a nice fun, if not a little humbling dive. We didnt hit the vent, in fact we were probably a good 5-8ft higher than it when i tied off the reel. I do believe that the water is about 5ft higher at least than our previous dives there as the logs were almost dead on 16ft and the little passage underneath at the back of the logs that is usually around 15ft was around 22ft give or take.
When we thought about how we had done on the dive, David and i agreed that it was a bit of a challenge playing with that flow with all the extra tasks loaded up but not impossible, a nice dive to cut our teeth on after the cavern training. We also agreed that it might be better to do the primary tie at the locatiion that used to have the sign (~60ft) and now there is just a stump where it was broken off. This would have cut down some of our tying time and still been in OW, not to mention less likelihood of free diving kids/other divers tangling or accidentally cutting the line. Any thoughts on placements or tying points?? It was a nice dive, i would have liked to explore the room a little more if we had had the time, but on AL80's that wasnt happening. Total dive time 40mins, max 113ft ave 55ft i think.
To anyone else reading this who is not cavern trained, please get the training and dont take lights into the spring
). In the past i have probably only got about 6-8 dives in here and David a few less dives (with many more free dives) so we have a pretty good handle on the "OW" portion of the spring and the light penetratable cavern zone. After chatting with some people regarding the spring and the best way to approach it as well as looking at the map our plan was to tie off to the tree, run a line down the invert (for want of a better word) of the tube that is blue spring, placing and tying as we went, maybe going more along the left wall to stay out of the current and we were told there were better features to use with the line. I was diving air and David was on 28% (i think or 27%), so my NDL was going to be somewhere in the range of 12-15mins at the bottom with a max depth somewhere around 110-120ft (couldnt tell quite what it would be as the river was up), then once we had reached our thirds or were within a few mins of NDL we were going to turn, recover the reel to around 50-60ft (variable due to river level again) and play in the flow in the OW section before making our way up to the logs and safety stop time.
Well we did our S-drill, i lead and tied off to one of the logs and started to make my way down with David providing some light and checking my placements. Seeing as the previous forays into the spring were all sans reel, i spent a little time on the way down looking for suitable places to tie or place the reel. I think we did pretty well on that front except it took us from the time we dropped in, did our S-drill and started the line work, and got to the main room - we had already used up around 8mins of our NDL. Now i will say there was some task loading involved in this, checking air and time/NDL as well as looking for the tie-off points (which were surprisingly few as the walls are so well worn by the flow) and of course the usual buoyancy issue in that system. The buoyancy issue is that above 80ft or so the flow buoys you up, so you hardly touch the inflator, however once you hit that bend were it goes to 45 deg slope, the flow is just pushing you and not buoying you up - so you have to make up for the other 80ft you have just dropped, well i think David and i again did ok, but at times i was wondering if i could have a spare hand to check those things, just have to get myself an order to check things i guess - comes with practice i am sure. I tied off the reel on the left at about 113ft in the little room where the spring shoots out from and we just spent a couple of minutes shining our lights around to see what was in there. Some silty vertical cuts/chimneys, a hole in the ground which i assume was the vent point (even though it was covered in sticks) and a few other features. After all the diving that we had done in OW there without lights, this was one of those springs we wanted to see what it was like down there now that we have our cavern certs. After about a minute of just floating there David pulls thirds and we turn to head out to our next planned point in OW. Things seemed ok on the way out, not much to complain about. The vent at my back made reeling a hasty, but not badly done job, once we hit that elbow and started to get some upthrust i had to work a little harder on buoyancy (or at least dumping most of my air) to stay with the reel. We finished the rest of the dive off as we had planned playing in the flow. It was a nice fun, if not a little humbling dive. We didnt hit the vent, in fact we were probably a good 5-8ft higher than it when i tied off the reel. I do believe that the water is about 5ft higher at least than our previous dives there as the logs were almost dead on 16ft and the little passage underneath at the back of the logs that is usually around 15ft was around 22ft give or take.
When we thought about how we had done on the dive, David and i agreed that it was a bit of a challenge playing with that flow with all the extra tasks loaded up but not impossible, a nice dive to cut our teeth on after the cavern training. We also agreed that it might be better to do the primary tie at the locatiion that used to have the sign (~60ft) and now there is just a stump where it was broken off. This would have cut down some of our tying time and still been in OW, not to mention less likelihood of free diving kids/other divers tangling or accidentally cutting the line. Any thoughts on placements or tying points?? It was a nice dive, i would have liked to explore the room a little more if we had had the time, but on AL80's that wasnt happening. Total dive time 40mins, max 113ft ave 55ft i think.
To anyone else reading this who is not cavern trained, please get the training and dont take lights into the spring
