scubafool
Contributor
Well, a few weeks ago I finally managed to locate a sinkhole in Ocala National Forest that I have been trying to find for some time. It is called Blue Sink by all of the locals and dirt bike riders in the area. But the water color seems to be more of a green to me. And after today's dive, the thread title seems a more appropriate name for this site. Thanks to JahJahWarrior's research, we had a report of a previous dive that gave a depth of 47', and a max viz of about 25'.
Since neither myself, JJW, or Marchand have four wheel drive trucks, the closest that we dared get was about 100 yards away from the sink. I never managed to get fills this week, so the only tanks that I had to dive were my double HP 100's. The hike through the sugar sand was, well, probably the highlight of the dive experience. At least I wasn't carrying Jeff's tanks.
We made a dive plan that involved us using my dive flag as a surface bouy, and dropping a downline from that, attached to a 4 lb weight at the bottom. It was challenging to try to keep the descent slow, as the 8 or 9 feet of visibility didn't leave us much visual reference. We couldn't see the bottom until we were within 2 or 3 feet of it, so I almost did a face plant in it. Oh yeah, did I mention the slight thermocline at about 15'? It dropped from a toasty warm 68 degrees down to a comfortable cool 63 degrees. Comfortable in a dry suit, maybe. I have decided that 63 is the basement temp for my semidry and me. Brrrrrrrr.
Anyway, enough of my infantile complaining, and on to the FUN part of the dive. The plan was that if the viz wasn't pretty good at depth, I would tie my big reel off onto the downline and we would use that to explore. There was no need for discussion, I tied into the line. Mostly by feel.
And we were off! Across silty bottoms, happening upon brown bottle fish camoflauged by thick silt, white beer can fish similarily disguised, and the occasional log. And the ever present silty bottom. I kept turning to the right everytime the depths started to shallow up, managing only a couple of line placements on logs. The rest of the time, I had to be careful to keep tension on my line as we gradually turned following the bottom contour of the sink. We saw the plastic fins of a model rocket, a plastic plate, lots and lots of those prolific breeders, the brown bottle fish, and a couple of more logs. Viz, at it's best, was maybe 4 or so feet, turning into a negative number if you were so foolish as to even look too hard at the bottom. JahJah was last in line, and he said later that he was truly grateful for the line, otherwise he would have lost us almost immediately. Jeff didn't seem to ever be far from my fintips.
After about 20 minutes of divetime, with a maximum depth of 39 feet, and only a couple of layers of line left on my 400' reel, I turned the dive. I was cold. I got the tail end Charlie treatment on the way back, experiencing the Negative Visibility Syndrome most of the way, until we arrived back at the downline. Holding the safety stop was once again challenging in the low viz. I can tell that I need some work with this. I am used to having pretty good bouyancy control, but this was a different animal entirely than what I am used to diving in.
We floated at the surface for a while and joked about doing another dive for a few minutes, then swam back to shore. The hike back to the trucks was no more pleasant than the hike out. (I won't do this dive with doubles again) We got out of our gear, and managed to drive back up the sand hill without getting stuck, though I had all types of chains and heavy ropes and come-alongs in the back of my truck to assist just in case.
All in all, I would like to dive there again, but hopefully when the water is warmer. I don't think that the visibility will ever be very good, and what we saw of the sink isn't what I would call interesting. But learning to function and dive well in this type of enviroment is a challenge for me, one that I think that I would be a better all around diver for overcoming.
JJW and Marchand got some surface pictures, so hopefully they will be along at some point to post them. It is a really pretty spot, as long as you direct your gaze away from the trash that seems to grow everywhere. The next time I go there, I want to bring a couple of trash bags to haul some of it out with me.
Since neither myself, JJW, or Marchand have four wheel drive trucks, the closest that we dared get was about 100 yards away from the sink. I never managed to get fills this week, so the only tanks that I had to dive were my double HP 100's. The hike through the sugar sand was, well, probably the highlight of the dive experience. At least I wasn't carrying Jeff's tanks.
We made a dive plan that involved us using my dive flag as a surface bouy, and dropping a downline from that, attached to a 4 lb weight at the bottom. It was challenging to try to keep the descent slow, as the 8 or 9 feet of visibility didn't leave us much visual reference. We couldn't see the bottom until we were within 2 or 3 feet of it, so I almost did a face plant in it. Oh yeah, did I mention the slight thermocline at about 15'? It dropped from a toasty warm 68 degrees down to a comfortable cool 63 degrees. Comfortable in a dry suit, maybe. I have decided that 63 is the basement temp for my semidry and me. Brrrrrrrr.
Anyway, enough of my infantile complaining, and on to the FUN part of the dive. The plan was that if the viz wasn't pretty good at depth, I would tie my big reel off onto the downline and we would use that to explore. There was no need for discussion, I tied into the line. Mostly by feel.
And we were off! Across silty bottoms, happening upon brown bottle fish camoflauged by thick silt, white beer can fish similarily disguised, and the occasional log. And the ever present silty bottom. I kept turning to the right everytime the depths started to shallow up, managing only a couple of line placements on logs. The rest of the time, I had to be careful to keep tension on my line as we gradually turned following the bottom contour of the sink. We saw the plastic fins of a model rocket, a plastic plate, lots and lots of those prolific breeders, the brown bottle fish, and a couple of more logs. Viz, at it's best, was maybe 4 or so feet, turning into a negative number if you were so foolish as to even look too hard at the bottom. JahJah was last in line, and he said later that he was truly grateful for the line, otherwise he would have lost us almost immediately. Jeff didn't seem to ever be far from my fintips.
After about 20 minutes of divetime, with a maximum depth of 39 feet, and only a couple of layers of line left on my 400' reel, I turned the dive. I was cold. I got the tail end Charlie treatment on the way back, experiencing the Negative Visibility Syndrome most of the way, until we arrived back at the downline. Holding the safety stop was once again challenging in the low viz. I can tell that I need some work with this. I am used to having pretty good bouyancy control, but this was a different animal entirely than what I am used to diving in.
We floated at the surface for a while and joked about doing another dive for a few minutes, then swam back to shore. The hike back to the trucks was no more pleasant than the hike out. (I won't do this dive with doubles again) We got out of our gear, and managed to drive back up the sand hill without getting stuck, though I had all types of chains and heavy ropes and come-alongs in the back of my truck to assist just in case.
All in all, I would like to dive there again, but hopefully when the water is warmer. I don't think that the visibility will ever be very good, and what we saw of the sink isn't what I would call interesting. But learning to function and dive well in this type of enviroment is a challenge for me, one that I think that I would be a better all around diver for overcoming.
JJW and Marchand got some surface pictures, so hopefully they will be along at some point to post them. It is a really pretty spot, as long as you direct your gaze away from the trash that seems to grow everywhere. The next time I go there, I want to bring a couple of trash bags to haul some of it out with me.
