Scuba Geek

GUE Cave 2 Scuba Diving Report, Florida, 2005 Part 2 November 28, 2005

Posted by Andy Carroll in : CaveDiving , trackback

Introduction

After spending a week visiting Mickey Mouse and many other Orlando attractions, Elena and I headed up to High Springs so I could take my scuba diving cave 2 class with Tyler. My teammates for the course were Scott, who I had completed my Cave 1 with in November 04, and also Don, who had taken Cave 1 a few years ago, before there was a DIRF course. Elena, SWMBO, had organised some horse riding lessons and a couple of nature trek things to keep her from getting bored, and so I was all set. For those who want to go on a cave course and have non cave diving partners, this was a great idea and Elena really enjoyed herself, which can only mean more cave scubadiving trips for me Florida really does have a lot to offer if you need to ‘balance’ our dive-life and family-life

Sunday

With some trepidation I turned up at the newly refurbished EE store on Sunday morning to be met by Tyler, Scott, and Don. During the night Elena and I had awoken to a lot of fizzing and hissing as my HID battery pack had decided to explode whilst being charged! I found out that you should not use a convertor for the US sockets as it screws up the charging. It cost $570 for me to find that out! After getting our twinsets filled and analysed as well as oxygen deco bottle we went through some initial academics before heading off to Ginnie for the swim test and the first scubadive.

The swim test was easy and I did that in 7 minutes or so. I successfully managed to dodge running the reel for the first dive and Scott volunteered, with Don second and me third. I had been a little nervous as I hadn�t scuba dived a cave since November but as soon as I was in the water and heading down the ear everything came back and it was as if I had not had the break. Ginnie was as beautiful as ever, with limitless viz and comfortable 21 degC water. Our task was to put in the primary tieoff, followed by the secondary and drop our O2 bottles (which were hipclipped at this point). We were then to head off up the main line until we reached thirds. We hipclipped the O2 bottles all week as we don’t take them very far in the cave, just enough to be out of the way of nosey swimmers. Ginnie is an excellent scubadive, the vis goes on for the full spread of the 18W HID and once you know the cave a little, the flow doesn�t beat you up so much. Anyway we headed along the main line and I forget how far we got but I think it was turned when my light mysteriously failed. I switched to backup and called the dive, and so we started heading back. It wasn�t too long before the others lights failed and we all returned on backup lights, picking up the O2 bottles and doing 5 minutes deco. Cave diving is totally different to the ocean. I still find it a little strange doing a deco stop sat on a log rather than in open water.

Monday

The following day we started with some academics discussing jumps, circuits, traverses, and team order. These are all quite informal discussions and Tylers style is to pick the topic and then facilitate discussion rather than preach the answers. After the academics we headed off to Ginnie again to do a couple of scuba dives. Don offered to run the reel and I was happy to let him . I went third again with Scott second. Don hadn�t run the reel very often in Ginnie and this showed a little with a few strange tieoff choices and a little longer to get the reel tied in. The task today was to

head to the �tabletop� jump and it was my job to put the jump in. After pulling our way through the lips, the keyhole and the cornflakes, we reached the jump. Placed my marker, got the spool out and ran the jump. It was all straightforward really. After completing it we arranged order again and headed off up the new line. We did another jump which was set by Scott and shortly afterwards the scuba dive got turned because of a light failure (it turned out that the lights were extremely unreliable all week) and so we headed back.

All of a sudden I was out of gas and needed to go to Don as Scott was in the middle of pulling his jump. Don deployed but not very cleanly and I had to help him a little. It all got sorted though and we changed order so I was in the middle and headed out of the cave. For those that don�t know the tabletop jump comes just before the cornflakes and the keyhole which are pretty tight spots, and then there�s the lips which is also tight with lots of flow. Needless to say we had to be careful getting through these whilst sharing gas but it was all relatively easy and we headed up the gallery to the exit. We still had to pick up the O2 bottles and then head up the ear sharing gas, before I could switch to my O2 and give Don his longhose back. Shortly after we had switched, Tyler came up behind Don and used the bubble gun to simulate a valve failure. Don was on his O2 bottle and so I was a bit surprised to see him spit it out and ask me for gas, but I deployed my O2 stage hose out of my mouth and went to backup. He did a valve shutdown and then, after the bubbles had stopped, gave me my O2 back and we continued the deco with no other problems unless you count Tyler throwing stones at us. Deco is a nervous time when a GUE instructor is around. It seems they have a short attention span and need to find new inventive ways to harass students.

The next scubadive Don ran the reel again but this time through the eye and I was second followed by Scott. Scott did the jump and we headed down the line a little ways before lights started failing again! I still had my primary light and was waiting for it to �fail� when I suddenly heard a burst of bubbles from behind my head. I shut my right post whilst signalling my teammates but I was too quick and by the time they turned to see what the problem was the bubbles had stopped. I signalled that my right post was screwed, and then opened it again (as you do) no bubbles, so I said I�m OK and carried on. Tyler appeared and told me that it had failed so I was a bit unsure where to go at this point. The other guys had backups and I had primary light but I had a dead right post so could not donate. In the end I went in the middle although we learnt later that this was a mistake and I should have been at the back or front. All went OK for the rest of the scuba dive, other than Tyler causing a siltout at the deco stop to make sure we were paying attention.

Tuesday

We headed out to Peacock springs to scuba dive the Pothole tunnel. It was my turn to run the reel but you don�t need to run it very far as the line is to open water. It was all a bit uneventful really. We headed out on the mainline looking for jumps, keeping an eye out for any failures. Its not as good viz as Ginnie with perhaps only 10 mtrs or so and lots of sediment in the water, kind of like an exceptional UK sea dive Don reached thirds first and so we headed back, still with no failures and we were a bit puzzled when we got out to be told that we would not be diving there again as there was nothing for us to learn. Our buoyancy and trim were good and awareness was top notch. It was then that I kind of felt that I had a more than decent chance of passing. We went to the lauraville store and spent the afternoon discussing deco theory and deco practice which was very interesting and I learnt a lot as Tyler has a lot of experience having done the Wakulla stuff as well as the Britannic expedition. I made the most of the opportunity and asked a whole bunch of questions. My opinion about deco? Its all bollox really