A very cautionary tale

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

I've written to the person who posted it, to see if I can simply copy it into this thread. If so, I will; if not, one can sign up for CDF. You don't get spam from it.
The thing that really got me about this story is that they so obviously planned to do this dive. They had to really go out of their way to get to this cave and there really isn't anything much worth diving in that area, from the looks of it. All three of them had flashlights. Then, father posts that his daughter just took off into the cavern, as if he really didn't plan for them to go in there at all. I don't know. I admire him for telling the story and I'm sure he's learned from it. But I'm not sure that he really "got" it. I mean, he's the adult and the dive pro on the team and he obviously lead them into danger, no matter who "took off" first into the cavern. It really seems like he placed the blame onto his daughter, along with a few other people.
i hope he spends some time reflecting on what really happened and his part in the entire incident. I also hope other divers reflect on this and realize how easily this can happen to them.
Last run of the day is a lame analogy, IMO. I've gotten onto some ski runs that were too advanced. The difference is, you can basically slide on your butt or even take your skis off and walk down the darn run if you have to. You get into a cave or cavern where you don't belong. DEAD!

---------- Post Merged at 04:18 PM ---------- Previous Post was at 04:08 PM ----------

It's a good example of how a series of failures to actively make good decisions can lead to a split-second bad decision that, in this case, way against all odds, did not happen to turn out tragic, and we get to hear the tale (I doubt dad would be so willing to talk about it if his daughter hadn't survived).
In this case, I think it was a premeditated bad decision. They got the location of the cave from the dive shop and made the decision to go there. Went there with every intention of entering and diving it.
Why he is now saying that his daughter "took off ahead of him and entered without him expecting it" I'm not so sure. If you look at a picture of this area, it wouldn't be a place to go OW diving. It's basically a grassy pond with a fairly hidden entrance to the cave. I don't think anybody goes there to dive unless their planning on diving overhead environment.
But, I'm not from FL and I'm not a cave diver (yet) so I might be totally mistaken. Maybe it's the best OW dive site in all of FL.
 
In this case, I think it was a premeditated bad decision. They got the location of the cave from the dive shop and made the decision to go there. Went there with every intention of entering and diving it.

I don't know if that was really the case, but it certainly came off that way to me when reading the account. I even found myself wondering if the dive shop guy accidentally mistook them for cave/cavern divers in telling them directions and the statement that it can get blown out in there...
 
I'm still working on getting permission to copy the post.

I think Edd's employees are motivated to give good customer service. If someone asks for information, they don't stop to interrogate the person about what their cert level is (and maybe they should). Clearly these guys intended to go to Twin -- they had to rent a boat to do so, after all. But if all they had ever seen before was big caverns, they may not at all have been prepared for this one.
 

Back
Top Bottom