NSS-CDS Full Cave: The Live-Blog

[dewdropsonrosa]

Trip 3 Prologue

The last time I was here, I left specific instructions to hide the palmetto bugs and hide the gators. The six-foot gator chilling in Pothole Sink this morning clearly did not get the memo.

When we left off last time in September, I had finished the old NSS-CDS Basic curriculum and was finishing Apprentice, which is where I now stand. After that, the year became much more difficult for my diving career:

• I started grad school in Seattle, nearly opposite from the caves in the lower 48, and my diving availability tanked pretty heavily.
• My beloved cave instructor Reggie Ross passed away on December 24. I had been scheduled to come for a trip the week of December 17 but had to cut it for budgetary reasons (see: grad school income). I’m still not up for forgiving myself for missing the last chance I had to spend time with him.
• I had a tumor biopsied in early January, which had to be removed in February. I had been benched for about four weeks when the pandemic started…
• which kiboshed my AI research trip Austria (which was going to include trips to Kobanya and Molnar Janos for my 31st birthday)…
• … and it wasn’t until June that diving became viable for me again.

I’m excited to be back in cave country again. It just feels right to be here and be in the water here. I’m completing my training now with Chris Brock, who is also a part of the CaveDiving.com team. Chris and I first dove together for two days in September (Reggie had a monster summer cold at the time) and had a great time in Ginnie Springs and my first cave fun-diving up in Madison Blue.

This week is intended to be a mixture of fun diving so that I can see more of the beginner cave sites and some light instruction to earn the Apprentice-Plus rating. This is a new interim step between Apprentice and Full Cave that lengthens the leash a bit re: air consumption, navigational decisions, etc. when practicing for the final certification.

I’ll be diving the caves Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Wednesday’s plan is to snorkel with the manatees at Crystal River. Before I head home after the weekend, I’d like to get down to Blue Heron Bridge and/or do the Spiegel.

 

[dewdropsonrosa]

Day 8 (Monday, July 13) - Part 1

As I mentioned, one of my goals with this trip has been to dive sites that I’ve never been to before. I mean, Ginnie Springs is a wonderful place but I am completely ready for a change of pace after six training days in one spot. I don’t know if I can avoid it entirely on this trip, but I can try!

(For the record: when I started training in January 2019, I came during the flood. Ginnie Springs was the only site open at the time, so I racked up time there through lack of options).

We kicked off Day 8 by meeting at Peacock Springs this morning. The woods were beautiful and serene and not too hot this morning as we hiked around the park. We studied the map of the cave system and walked around to the various openings so that I could orient myself to some of the thousands and thousands of feet of passage that the park offers.

The first planned dive of the day was the traverse from P1 (I think? It’s the end of the day and I welcome corrections) to Olsen, which is about 1400 ft (425m). Chris and I sat down to do some dive planning math, joined by instructor intern David and Harry Averill, also part of the CaveDiving.com team. We estimated an average depth of 60 feet (~2.75 ATA) and a swimming rate of ~40 ft (12m) per minute. Based on my recent open water diving, I supplied a SAC rate of 0.6 cuft/min to finish the math. Our numbers looked good based on those assumptions, so we hopped in the water and went off to Do The Thing.

Once my tanks cooled in the water, I had 3700 psi and we planned for a third of 1200 – which if I had made a better guess about my SAC rate, would have been enough to finish the traverse. While I was enjoying myself immensely looking at the limestone formations (Including some of the prettiest keyholes I’ve yet witnessed) and keeping track of my progress by watching the distance counts grow and fall past the parallel arrows and seeing the ghostly crayfish… the first dive back is always an adjustment. I hit my turn pressure of 2500 psi while we were still under the cover of darkness…

By no more than 50 feet. When we got back to the surface, Chris told me that we were just nearly within the first sight of sunlight and that he had actually been reaching for his reel to set the line when he saw my signal. Because this was my first time in the cave, I didn’t know that I was close enough that I was mere moments from the taste of victory. I like to think of myself as a stickler for safety margins – I hit turn pressure so damnit, I was going to turn back around and make a safe exit. While I’m sure that this was at least mildly frustrating – so close! so far! – for Chris and Dave to know we were so close, we talked about it at the surface and there was no debate that it was a correct call to make.

During a leisurely surface interval, we calculated my actual consumption for the dive and came up with 0.95 cuft/min. News reports suggest that the sound of my cringing at the bad estimate and bad air consumption could be heard as far away as the firepit at Amigos Dive Center in Fort White.

I hadn’t felt like I was huffing and puffing during the dive, but clearly my breathing patterns were not optimal. We did a little bit of reverse-engineering and determined that if I could have found enough chill to drop my SAC to 0.88 cuft/min, I would have made it with our original inbound time of 35 minutes.

 

[dewdropsonrosa]

Day 8 (Monday, July 13) - Part 2

I was not willing to end the day by having lost to the laws of physics by seven-hundredths of a cubic foot per minute, so I asked to repeat the program on our afternoon dive. Based on having seen the passageway before, being more familiar with the navigation, and having had 98% of a practice run in the morning, my SAC rate on Dive #2 dropped to 0.79 cuft/min. This is much closer to my working SAC rate in cold, cold open water, so I was pleased with the improvement. I expected to see another small drop tomorrow and/or throughout the week as my cave legs are restored to me.

We took a short surface break to bob among the duckweed at Olsen, so I could do some math about the outbound dive, enjoy my victory, and catch my breath. As we were relaxing and enjoying ourselves, there was an offhand comment about instruction: "If there are going to be any drills, they'll be during the exit. The first half of the dive is yours, the second half of the dive is ours." I nodded because it described my training experience well.

The words echoed in my head about fifteen minutes later on the way out, as the middle diver in our underwater caravan of three. I was frogging along merrily when I saw a pinprick of light start dancing across the cave in front of me that hadn't been there before. When I turned around, Chris was on his backup light. I stopped to let him catch up and realized that he was signing "LIGHT BROKEN." I confirmed and signaled for him to move into the middle position and I took up the rear.

Not long after that, he turned around and signaled "OUT OF AIR!" I happened to catch him visually while he was turning around, so I was already prepared to deploy my long hose and make a couple of super-kicks to get to him. NSS-CDS rules currently prohibit air-sharing for training purposes because of the coronavirus, so he clipped off my donated regulator and we did a long practice swim together.

That drill went successfully and we finished the last few minutes to the exit as a normal team. Chris attempted to wander off the line and have me follow him, but we did this exercise last year (and I biffed it then), so I was ready this year. I flagged him down, signaled to him to come back, pointed back at the line, and we popped out of the water shortly after.



Reflecting on the dives:

• I’m in a rental Santi drysuit this week, because my usual Fusion just isn’t suited for cave diving. This particular suit is a men’s cut, so it’s an okay (but not excellent) fit. It felt super squeezy on the first dive and I wouldn’t be surprised if I burned 200 pounds of air trying to get comfortable at various points during the dive. A women's cut suit is going to be available for my later dive days.
• I’m using LP85 tanks because I know that they’re a manageable size and weight for me. When I tried LP108s during Trip 1, it was just too much tank for me to manage while I was brand-new to backmount doubles. We’re going to try 108s again on one of the dives tomorrow to see if I’m better prepared after 18 months of diving in BM.
• My innate fitness abilities are about slow, steady endurance over a long period of time rather than short or medium-length sprints. We were keeping a 40-45 foot/minute swimming pace, which didn’t feel like much exertion but probably cost me some extra air. Quarantine and the absence of my usual 7-8 miles a day of walking over the last four months were not helpful today.
• During the first dive, I would have described the cave as feeling like it had zero flow. During the second dive, I was able to feel it more keenly and adjust accordingly.
• At 2800 ft (0.53 mi) for a roundtrip, this is my longest set of linear dives in the overhead to date. I’m happy with how the first day of the trip went as a shakeout and look forward to practicing and improving as the week goes on.

We’ve heard tell that conditions are fabulous at Little River right now, so that’s the plan for tomorrow.

 

[Manatee Diver]

Hopefully the tumor came up as something minor.

The Spiegel is fun, I got to see a lot more of the ship while doing my AN/Helitrox on it. I did BHB with @Scuba_Jenny she pointed out all the little stuff that I would’ve swam right past if it weren’t for her eagle eyes.

Harry is great, it is a really history tome of the various caves in cave country and can supply the reasons why procedures or things are certain ways at the various locations. I really wish I could get a dive brief from him for every site.

 

[dewdropsonrosa]

Hopefully the tumor came up as something minor.

Looks back at post content...

I did leave that part out, didn't I? We did catch it before it became cancerous and I'll be on a monitoring schedule for a few years.

 

[Manatee Diver]

Looks back at post content...

I did leave that part out, didn't I? We did catch it before it became cancerous and I'll be on a monitoring schedule for a few years.

Sounds like good news to me, but I hated those monitoring scans. Nothing was more nerve racking than the 24 hours from scan to doctors appointment.

 

[The Chairman]

Way cool. I'm glad you're doing so great. Peacock is my favorite. Little River is right behind that. I live halfway between Wayne and Little River.

 

[Efka76]

I have never dived in caves, however, I really enjoy reading your stories about your progress! Wish you all the best in cave diving!

 

[NothingClever]

@dewdropsonrosa - I really admire your courage to post everything here in such a candid manner. Your articulate writing style is exceptionally enjoyable and informative. I think you’re kicking a$$ with your skill development and I hope to get to dive with you someday.

 

[dewdropsonrosa]

Day 9 (Tuesday, July 14)

Reader, the conditions at Little River were not merely fabulous. They were close to the very best that Chris has seen in twelve years of Florida diving. It was so nice, we did guided dives twice.

I’m turning into a fan of same-day repeat dives for these new sites. Dive 1 is purely exploratory, so that I can take in the new cave. What’s it shaped like, how does the water flow, what is the substrate like, etc. Taking in all of these new stimuli is fascinating, but doesn’t do great things for my air consumption while I’m also trying to be a good diver and an attentive buddy. After taking a short break to hydrate and talk about the dive, I feel prepared to capitalize on the prior knowledge and enjoy myself more.

The basin at Little River was incredibly high when we arrived. The clear water from the spring was completely obscured by a layer of tannic water from the Suwannee that was about 3-4’ thick. Aside from jumping the tarp at Ginnie Springs to descend through Devil’s Ear, I haven’t spent much time diving in unsweetened tea before.

We tied off at the stairs and ran the line down to one of the logs across the entrance (visual reference of Marissa Eckert there today, shot beautifully by one of her students). I wasn’t terribly concerned about the tannic on the way in because I was mentally preparing for new cave. However, once I had relaxed on the way out, it got weird. The morning clouds had disappeared and the sun was shining mightily into the tannic, rendering it a brilliant scarlet. Then I hit a warm spot and ewwwww.

One day, I’d like to have dived in a non-aqueous fluid to say I did/have the experience. I am now quite certain that I do not want to go diving in a pool of blood.

Underneath the tannic layer, Little River continues to pump surely (the clarity was excellent), but ever so gently. I was ready for an Ear-type descent of awkwardly muscling myself around, but none of that was necessary. I enjoyed gently drifting down the (surprisingly!) steep passage with ease. It seemed like we had dropped from 20’ to the 90-100’ range in no time at all, even with a stop to clip off bottles around 55’.

We decided to bear left into the mud tunnel, which has abundant rocks across the floor – pulling saves a ton of air, which is helpful for me on Dive #1 at a new site. The passage has a very small slope, but does eventually hit 100-ish feet. On top of the New Cave Energy, I felt a little narked and a little nervous as we headed through a wide passage with low, low ceilings and what felt like a lot of bumps on the floor that narrowed vertical clearance. I dragged out my breathing cycle to the very Zennest calm that I could manage (7 counts in, 10 counts out) to cross it. The cave opened up significantly on the other side, which made me very happy. We managed a few jumps (the last one was just past a triangular plate on the line, if anybody can point that out to me on a map) before turning to head out.

The exit on the first dive was fairly smooth and uneventful. On the second dive (in which we made it past the triangular plate and made a hairpin turn into a wavy passage), the exit was a bit more complicated. I knew that my O2 bottle was going to be light when I picked it up, so I had been dumping air out of both my wing and drysuit in anticipation.

However, I wasn’t quite aggressive enough and had to take some extra, one-handed measures with my elbow and butt as far up into the air as I could manage. To the best of my knowledge, there is no footage of this particular manuever – and thank god! It probably wasn’t pretty. Once I had stabilized, I found a nice scalloped section of wall out of the flow, finished securing my bottle, and had a nice rest-of-trip up into the basin. We had a few minutes of deco and spent it taking photos of one another in the green-to-red transition layer: