sontek
Contributor
Too Long; Don't want to read?: Took cavern, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times, most rewarding experience in diving I've ever had, can't wait to get deeper into the cave.
For the not so lazy:
jhayes75 and I headed out to Wakulla this past weekend to join the darkside of the cave dwellers and it was an amazing experience. I originally decided to do cavern just because I wanted to be a better diver, I had no interest in actually being inside caves.
Needless to say by time we finished I was already talking schedules with Gregg to see when I could come back out
Murphy's law was in full effect this weekend. On Friday we did our line drills on land and I ended up getting 2 bad reels. One had a birds nest of a mess already in it half way down the reel and then my 2nd one wasn't tied on right at the end so I had to wrap it manually to get it started.
We began our diving on Saturday and arrived at Orange Grove around 10am only to find out Jason had forgot his weight belt, primary mask, and I had a leaking high pressure hose, all were easily resolved with extra gear we had brought and we headed to the water.
I decided that I would put my fins on in the water rather than blocking the stairs, so I inflated my BC and jumped in only to find out my inflator hose was leaking and I had to get to the surface without fins on. Then my regulator started free flowing, I got to the surface and had our instructor turn off my air and when we turned it back on both issues had resolved themselves.
So I started our preliminary dive with 2300psi.
Once we got under water we found out that Jason's oncoming cold would indeed affect his ears and he had to descend slowly to get them to clear which was actually kind of nice because it gave us an intense bootcamp on buoyancy control and hovering in one place for long periods of time.
After a couple dives in Orange Grove we decided to head over to Peacock to see a different site and decided to do some blind lost line drills. While I was running my search patterns for the line I stumbled upon the only pile of mung in the whole cavern and silted up the place pretty good (Luckily I was already blind so it didn't really matter), I also ended up getting my reel jammed at the same time and the instructor decided we'd do the line drills the next day at Ginnie since vis dropped pretty quickly.
We ended up surviving the first day and were crazy enough to attempt the 2nd day.
On the way to Ginnie Springs we had a great discussion of decompression theory and I now know more about it than I ever though I wanted to know.
We arrived at Ginnie Springs around 11am only to find out Murphy's law was hanging out there as well. As we are gearing up we found out that Jason had his 2nd bad o-ring in a tank this trip. (Who is doing this guys VIP's?!).
We resolved the leak and start in the ballroom to do our blind out of air drills where we have to lead each other out of the cave. At some point the ziptie on my secondary regulator must have broken off while I was being lead out blind because when it was my time to allow Jason to use my air I handed him my primary and then tried to pull my secondary out of the necklace and I got the regulator but the mouth piece stayed in the necklace I started taking breaths off of the stub and then holding my breath to get the mouth piece back on but the instructor didn't want to chance it and made me take his secondary and resolve the issue with air. Got the mouth piece back on underwater and did the rest of the exercise.
While inspecting the rest of my gear I realized the ziptie hadn't been the only thing that broke, my reel must've banged on a rock as well and the locking mechanism was broken... So I moved onto reel #4 of the weekend!
We then headed over to do Devils Ears only to find out Jason's 3rd and final tank also had a bad o-ring during gear up! Resolved it and entered the cavern and were lucky enough to see a few cave divers coming out from their dive and collecting their O2 bottles and reeling up their line. How easily they were able to flip those tanks onto their backs while maintaining perfect buoyancy and then being able to swim backwards while reeling up the line was amazing and gave me a new goal for what I want to be able to do.
We ended our training in Devils Eye where Jason and I got to run our dives leading each other in and out of the cavern and it was an amazing difference from when we started the weekend to the last dive, we were able to execute everything as if it was second nature and that can only be attributed to the great training our instructor provided us.
Even with all of our silly mishaps, overall I think it went really well and I feel like a much better diver after being challenged like that.
They also gave us tours of all the caver dive shops around the area and I'm amazed at how great of operations are running out of divers garages! Amigos was my favorite
For the not so lazy:
jhayes75 and I headed out to Wakulla this past weekend to join the darkside of the cave dwellers and it was an amazing experience. I originally decided to do cavern just because I wanted to be a better diver, I had no interest in actually being inside caves.
Needless to say by time we finished I was already talking schedules with Gregg to see when I could come back out
Murphy's law was in full effect this weekend. On Friday we did our line drills on land and I ended up getting 2 bad reels. One had a birds nest of a mess already in it half way down the reel and then my 2nd one wasn't tied on right at the end so I had to wrap it manually to get it started.
We began our diving on Saturday and arrived at Orange Grove around 10am only to find out Jason had forgot his weight belt, primary mask, and I had a leaking high pressure hose, all were easily resolved with extra gear we had brought and we headed to the water.
I decided that I would put my fins on in the water rather than blocking the stairs, so I inflated my BC and jumped in only to find out my inflator hose was leaking and I had to get to the surface without fins on. Then my regulator started free flowing, I got to the surface and had our instructor turn off my air and when we turned it back on both issues had resolved themselves.
So I started our preliminary dive with 2300psi.Once we got under water we found out that Jason's oncoming cold would indeed affect his ears and he had to descend slowly to get them to clear which was actually kind of nice because it gave us an intense bootcamp on buoyancy control and hovering in one place for long periods of time.
After a couple dives in Orange Grove we decided to head over to Peacock to see a different site and decided to do some blind lost line drills. While I was running my search patterns for the line I stumbled upon the only pile of mung in the whole cavern and silted up the place pretty good (Luckily I was already blind so it didn't really matter
), I also ended up getting my reel jammed at the same time and the instructor decided we'd do the line drills the next day at Ginnie since vis dropped pretty quickly.We ended up surviving the first day and were crazy enough to attempt the 2nd day.
On the way to Ginnie Springs we had a great discussion of decompression theory and I now know more about it than I ever though I wanted to know.
We arrived at Ginnie Springs around 11am only to find out Murphy's law was hanging out there as well. As we are gearing up we found out that Jason had his 2nd bad o-ring in a tank this trip. (Who is doing this guys VIP's?!
). We resolved the leak and start in the ballroom to do our blind out of air drills where we have to lead each other out of the cave. At some point the ziptie on my secondary regulator must have broken off while I was being lead out blind because when it was my time to allow Jason to use my air I handed him my primary and then tried to pull my secondary out of the necklace and I got the regulator but the mouth piece stayed in the necklace
I started taking breaths off of the stub and then holding my breath to get the mouth piece back on but the instructor didn't want to chance it and made me take his secondary and resolve the issue with air. Got the mouth piece back on underwater and did the rest of the exercise.While inspecting the rest of my gear I realized the ziptie hadn't been the only thing that broke, my reel must've banged on a rock as well and the locking mechanism was broken... So I moved onto reel #4 of the weekend!
We then headed over to do Devils Ears only to find out Jason's 3rd and final tank also had a bad o-ring during gear up! Resolved it and entered the cavern and were lucky enough to see a few cave divers coming out from their dive and collecting their O2 bottles and reeling up their line. How easily they were able to flip those tanks onto their backs while maintaining perfect buoyancy and then being able to swim backwards while reeling up the line was amazing and gave me a new goal for what I want to be able to do.
We ended our training in Devils Eye where Jason and I got to run our dives leading each other in and out of the cavern and it was an amazing difference from when we started the weekend to the last dive, we were able to execute everything as if it was second nature and that can only be attributed to the great training our instructor provided us.
Even with all of our silly mishaps, overall I think it went really well and I feel like a much better diver after being challenged like that.
They also gave us tours of all the caver dive shops around the area and I'm amazed at how great of operations are running out of divers garages! Amigos was my favorite
