Florida Cave & Wreck Trip Report July 2009

[Zinc]

Howdy ya'll. I don't know how far we'll make it in this trip report, but with a little help from K-valve, perhaps we can combine our memories and produce something worth reading for those who might be scubabored

The first bit I wrote on the way home and is perhaps a bit longwinded, but hey it's a really long drive and I was feeling wordy. Here's a quick breakdown of dives sites to be covered:

Manatee Springs - Spring Basin & Catfish Hotel Entrance
Ginnie Springs - Devils Cave System
Peacock Springs - Orange Grove
Little River
Peacock Springs - Peacock I
USS Oriskany

 

[Zinc]

K-valve left for Florida a week early with his daughter to spend a few days at Disney World. In tow behind the pickup truck was his custom built scuba trailer, packed with 6 sets of doubles: 85’s, 95’s & 108’s (thanks Chris for the loaner) and eight stage bottles of 100% & 50% O2. K-valve added many nice features to the trailer including storage cabinets, hanger rods, tank holders, and best of all a fold down shelf on the side of the trailer to gear up two sets of double tanks side by side. At the end of the week, I flew from Austin to meet them arriving in Orlando Friday evening. We immediately headed north to Gainesville and spent the night in a motel, staying up way too late, but having a good time and setting the pace for the trip.

Saturday morning we slept late, then headed for Manatee Springs State Park about 30 miles west of Gainesville. While we were gearing up in the parking lot for our first dive, a car pulled up and low and behold there was In10se and his gal who’d tracked us down while on their own Florida dive trip. It was a pleasant surprise and we enjoyed catching up a bit while at the same time rigging our cave gear for the dive. In10se was kind enough to carry our two 02 deco bottles while we hiked from the parking lot to the spring. We invited them to camp that night with us, but they had other plans so we said farewell and parted ways.

 

[Zinc]

K-valve and I decided to try the Manatee Springs entrance of the cave system. After a bubble check and our S-drills, we slipped beneath the surface and down to the small cavern entrance of the spring. To say the flow was pumping is an understatement. After staging our deco bottles at 20 feet, K-valve tied off his reel and attempted to enter the cave. I say attempted because on his first try he got blown back out, catching himself on a log. We were expecting some high flow in Florida caves, but nothing like this. On his second attempt, K-valve barely made it through the entrance, pulling and grabbing hold of anything in sight. The next moment, I could barely see that he’d gotten deep enough in to maintain his place outside the flow. I attempted next: I reached out and grabbed rock, pulling myself against the raging flow towards a crack on the side which I’d hoped I’d be able to pass. As the extreme flow of water caused my regulator to purge involuntarily, I saw that our guideline was directly in my path and there was no way I was going to get through that way without getting tangled in our own line. I checked my gauges and realized that we’d already spent 11 minutes and a few hundred PSI of precious gas and still not made it into the system; well I didn’t anyway. I signaled to K-valve to turn the dive and reel back up, to which he unceremoniously proceeded to get spit out by the cave. After a short talk at the surfaace, we decided to carry our gear over to the next upstream sink, Catfish Hotel.

 

[Zinc]

The Catfish Hotel entrance was a 100’ wide circular pool completely covered in duckweed. We eased into the green topped water to find a beautiful blue cavern below. We made our pre-dive checks then headed upstream into the cave, this time with only moderate flow. Manatee Springs is a very cool cave system. Heading upstream from its spring basin are three sinks, Catfish Hotel, Sue’s Sink, & Freidman Sink, all separated by hundreds of feet of water filled passage. As we swam our way up the tunnel, I thought how beautiful yet different this passage was from the cave systems we’d dove in Mexico. There were no stalactites or stalagmites, but instead smooth water carved walls of limestone, darkly stained, curving their own path through the underground. We swam upstream until we’d used a 1/3 of our gas, and turned the dive, allowing twice the amount to get out that we used to get in. We’d hoped to make it to Sue’s Sink, and I’m sure we would have, had we entered Catfish Hotel first, instead of the spring basin entrance. Using Catfish Hotel, we found out later, was the preference of local cave divers, if not entering at Freidman Sink to explore some of the more than 11,000 feet of passage upstream with no other surface opening.

 

[texdiveguy]

What about some details on the USS Oriskany?

 

[Foo]

And more on the cave dives too! Great report so far, thanks! I will have to cave dive through others, it fascinates and terrifies me at the same time. Yall play safe out there, and enjoy! It must be absolutely beautiful down there, the photos I've seen before are amazing.

 

[Zinc]

We arrived at Ginnie Springs late Sunday evening after the weekend crowds had left, leaving most of the park empty allowing us to camp anywhere we liked. We chose a spot next to the river, just east of the Devil’s Cave System entrances where we would do most of our diving. Because we arrived after the main building closed, we could not dive until we checked in the next morning, showing our Cave C-cards and paying for diving passes.

For our first dive we chose to enter in the Devil’s Eye entrance to the cave, a large circular cavern with very low flow making penetration easy. John ran the reel laying line next to a previous team’s and tied off on the main line below where we staged our deco bottles. We then pull-and-glided our way upstream where the mainline joined with reels tied off from the Devil’s Ear entrance. We continued on through breakdown past the catacombs to the infamous "lips", where the flow is intensified by a wide and low bedding plane passage just around a sharp 90 degree turn to the right. Enjoying the spectacular visibility we continued up the main line through the cornflakes, a series of unique formations. We swam to the mud flats where we turned the dive on thirds, roughly 900 feet from the Eye entrance. The journey out of the cave was really relaxing; we simply glided our way through the tunnels we’d just passed, allowing the flow to carry us effortlessly towards our exit. We reached our staged bottles without deco obligations and took our time exiting the cavern and watching the swimmers gathered in the spring pool above.

 

[Zinc]

After a nice long surface interval filled with sandwiches and afternoon naps it was time to hit the Devil’s Ear, notorious for its powerful flow through a nozzle-like chimney. After making our usual bubble checks and S-drills, we kicked on the surface towards the Santa Fe river and the Devil’s Ear awaiting us below. As we dropped beneath the surface of the dark brown river water, we saw the cave entrance through the crystal clear spring pumping out of its narrow opening. We dumped the air in our wings and descended halfway down the chimney where a large tree log is wedged diagonally across its entrance. Here we staged our deco bottles and looked for a place to tie off our reel. I found a small hole in the wall, tied off, and dropped down, pulling my way against the flow through the entrance to the small cavern below.

We tied off and followed the main line 500 feet to the first jump on the left, known as the “Hill 400” line. I tied off a jump reel to span the distance between the main line and the Hill 400 line, so we would maintain our continuous guideline to the surface. Once across the gap, we continued on the main line while noticing another line through breaks in the wall on the left, to an adjacent tunnel running parallel to ours. We reached a breakdown in the tunnel about 1,000 feet in just as I reached thirds and had to turn the dive. Once again we drifted out with the flow enjoying the beautiful cave passages we’d just worked our way through while swimming upstream.

At the exit, we prepared to ascend slowly, defying the flow pumping furiously towards the surface. Once we reached the big log, we attached our deco bottles and took a moment to admire the beautiful scene above. What we saw was a spectacular display of dark, tanic river water mixing with the clear blue spring water causing a firestorm of color in deep reds and yellows… a truly remarkable experience.

 

[Zinc]

After three cave dives, all our doubles were 2/3 empty and we needed more air. We headed for Amigo’s Dive Center, the coolest fill station I’ve ever seen. It was late, definitely after hours as we turned off the road at the small dive flag sign out in the middle of nowhere. We pulled around back of an unassuming trailer house to find a shed with a cascade of over 40 K-bottles of banked 32% Nitrox! In addition there were K-bottles of air, oxygen, helium and everything needed for any trimix fill imaginable. We parked K-valve’s truck, loaded down with six set of doubles behind the shed and got out for our fills. The owner, Wayne was not there, but K-valve called him on the phone and he talked us through the process of finding the fill whips and logging into his computer based, customer fill tab. We hooked up all six sets of doubles at once and began the long process of slowly filling our tanks with 32% Nitrox to a nice “cave fill” pressure of 3,600 psi! Once we were done, we logged our tab in the computer, having promised to return the next day for more fills and to pay our tab.

When we got back to Ginnie, it was time for dinner with an old friend who’d come out to stay the night, followed by a late night/early morning cave dive! We entered the water around 1:30am and headed back through the Ear. This time we went to the first jump on the right and headed towards the “Bone Room.” We had hoped to make an unmarked jump from there down to the “White Room,” but after a very long day, we were feeling a bit tired and chose to turn the dive early, slightly before thirds, to relax again and enjoy the ride out. I slept soundly that night

The attached map shows our routes highlighted in yellow.

 

[Zinc]

The following morning we slept late and awoke to a cool morning and perfect day for cave diving. We suited up, this time planning on a shorter penetration dive to allow K-valve time to take pictures in the cave. We chose to head up the main line, past the lips to about 700 feet penetration, then take our time on the way out, snapping pictures along the way. We took some pictures at the “stop sign” warning to prevent your death and not proceed further unless trained and equipped for cave diving. As we headed out the ear, K-valve took some amazing pics of me re-entering the Ear from above through the fire-like tanic and spring mixed water. Check these out…