LiteHedded
Contributor
the forum is kinda quiet lately so I figured I'd post a trip report of a dive we did the other day.
We've been exploring in northern florida for quite some time but tropical storm Debbie put a stop to that for the foreseeable future. There will be an article about all that in next month's Quest magazine for those interested.
So with all that shut down, AJ and I decided to head to Manatee Springs. The storm that ruined our exploration project has made Manatee the best I've ever seen it. Crystal clear in the front and no flow to speak of except in the smallest sections of cave.
The dive plan was to take three stages (maybe a scrap of backgas depending on how things looked) and two standard gavin scooters each as far out as we could. We hit the water pretty early (for us) and as soon as we started strapping on stage bottles another diver in the water spotted an argon leak that transformed my argon bottle into a paper weight and my right post was irreparably borked as well. so we fixed all that stuff in the water (standardized gear being the key here) and an hour behind schedule we hit the trigger.
We ran the first stage out to about 1000' or so past Friedman's sink and the second to the "sign" (5000' or so. put there by an old-timer smart ass some years ago). at the second stage drop we stopped to switch to fresh scooters and stages to continue on.
The cave really looks fantastic now. You can really enjoy it when the water is this clear. In the back of the cave there are a few vertical cracks and T's to negotiate which can be tricky to negotiate with a heavy payload. It gets quite small in spots and has some delicate structures you don't really see in the front of the cave. The line is also highly suspect in spots but all in all it's in pretty good shape. Anyway we turned the show around at about 70 minutes or so at maybe 8500' penetration and started heading out.
I was able to see things that we normally miss with this awesome visibility. I spotted a vertical fissure on the right wall on the way out and tossed my primary scooter at aj to wiggle in and see where it went. went straight up for a good ways before I had to turn it around. percolation was getting nutty and i had way too much gear on to really check it out. not to mention being a teensy bit off the line. maybe an old sinkhole? at our next stage pickup i noticed bones on the floor well upstream of friedmans so it's possible.
anyhoo we continued out pretty uneventfully, after 150 minutes or so on the trigger my finger was begging me to stop.
we did about 30 mins of o2 deco in the headspring to avoid the duckweed and finished up just in time to load up all the gear in the pouring rain
This was also the third dive on my santi heated vest and I have nothing but good things to say about it. it's a life saver if you get wet.
Manatee is always good practice and a lot of fun negotiating the ups and downs and small spots on the scooter.
Dive profile looked like this:
scuba divers looked like this:
We've been exploring in northern florida for quite some time but tropical storm Debbie put a stop to that for the foreseeable future. There will be an article about all that in next month's Quest magazine for those interested.
So with all that shut down, AJ and I decided to head to Manatee Springs. The storm that ruined our exploration project has made Manatee the best I've ever seen it. Crystal clear in the front and no flow to speak of except in the smallest sections of cave.
The dive plan was to take three stages (maybe a scrap of backgas depending on how things looked) and two standard gavin scooters each as far out as we could. We hit the water pretty early (for us) and as soon as we started strapping on stage bottles another diver in the water spotted an argon leak that transformed my argon bottle into a paper weight and my right post was irreparably borked as well. so we fixed all that stuff in the water (standardized gear being the key here) and an hour behind schedule we hit the trigger.
We ran the first stage out to about 1000' or so past Friedman's sink and the second to the "sign" (5000' or so. put there by an old-timer smart ass some years ago). at the second stage drop we stopped to switch to fresh scooters and stages to continue on.
The cave really looks fantastic now. You can really enjoy it when the water is this clear. In the back of the cave there are a few vertical cracks and T's to negotiate which can be tricky to negotiate with a heavy payload. It gets quite small in spots and has some delicate structures you don't really see in the front of the cave. The line is also highly suspect in spots but all in all it's in pretty good shape. Anyway we turned the show around at about 70 minutes or so at maybe 8500' penetration and started heading out.
I was able to see things that we normally miss with this awesome visibility. I spotted a vertical fissure on the right wall on the way out and tossed my primary scooter at aj to wiggle in and see where it went. went straight up for a good ways before I had to turn it around. percolation was getting nutty and i had way too much gear on to really check it out. not to mention being a teensy bit off the line. maybe an old sinkhole? at our next stage pickup i noticed bones on the floor well upstream of friedmans so it's possible.
anyhoo we continued out pretty uneventfully, after 150 minutes or so on the trigger my finger was begging me to stop.
we did about 30 mins of o2 deco in the headspring to avoid the duckweed and finished up just in time to load up all the gear in the pouring rain
This was also the third dive on my santi heated vest and I have nothing but good things to say about it. it's a life saver if you get wet.
Manatee is always good practice and a lot of fun negotiating the ups and downs and small spots on the scooter.
Dive profile looked like this:
scuba divers looked like this:
