GUE Course reports - a great way to spend time, especially in the midst of a dry spell! Partially motivated by somewhat unusual course circumstances, I present to you a write-up of my first foray into Florida cave diving in the form of a Cave 2 course in July of 2018.
As a bit of background, I've been diving for 10 years and dabbled in GUE since 2012, when I attended a demo day after reading a lot about GUE and DIR online. I took fundies in 2013, upgraded to a tech pass in 2014, and went on to take Cave 1 in Mexico, followed by a week and a half of experience dives. By this time, we had a healthy and sizable GUE community where I was living. As I hail from Finland, where we no natural underwater caves, the environment where I was to apply my skills was cold, flooded mineshafts, often located under frozen ice at the bottom of quarries. Sometimes we also visit Sweden - also to dive flooded mineshafts. Due to family commitments, I cut back on my in-water hours and took a break from cave diving, but attempted to keep the skillset up to date with open water practice. Early in 2018 I decided I wanted to get back in the saddle and resumed diving the Ojamo mine, which offers at the C1 level a few different passages, all at the 28 metre level.
As I had already gained quite a bit of familiarity with the local mine, and had heard great stories about Cave 2, upgrading was naturally on the table ever since 2014... and when a fortuitous opportunity arose, I took it and signed up for a class with Kirill Egorov in High Springs, Florida. I was visiting Florida for a work trip and was able to extend my stay, which of course was beneficial from a financial standpoint, and also allowed me to be well rested instead of jetlagged when the course began. The downside was that none of my regular dive buddies were able to meet my schedule - so I took advantage of what GUE offers, and trusted that whoever else I could entice to join, being already at the C1 level, would be more than enjoyable as a coursemate. A few weeks before the course I was indeed confirmed that I had a buddy, Will, who was familiar with the Florida caves.
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DAY -1
What a week! It's Friday 9PM, and I'm settled at the dining table in a house in High Springs, rural Florida. I've just finished a week at a Panama City Beach resort, where I was attending a work conference. I just finished a load of laundry, the clothes are in the dryer, the fridge has been filled with some basic amenities, and things are looking up for a week and a half of cave diving! I'm staying at the EE guest house, which is a really nice setup, just a short drive from EE and downtown High Springs. There are three rooms, two twins and one king, with the king room apparently empty, and the other three bunks about to be filled some time soon. According to the notes on the doors, Randy and Mike are going to be staying in the blue room, whilst I'll be sharing the red room with Matt, who's arriving tomorrow. For now, though, it's almost eerily quiet, being alone in this big house. The dryer is keeping me company, as are the crickets in the yard.
Due to the conference trip, I had flown to the Northwest Florida Beaches airport, from where I rented a car this afternoon. I had hoped to arrive here already around 5PM, but due to a slow airport shuttle and saying bye to conference friends, I didn't set off until half past one. I of course needed a good rest on the way (it's a 4,5 hour drive), and I had forgotten that I would cross the time zone border as well on the way! Additionally, weather got interesting around the intersections of Interstates 10 and 75, with a torrential downpour limiting visibility drastically. We were all doing about 40 mph in a 70 zone, with emergency lights flashing to help others see us through the rain-wall. All's well that ends well, and I even found a nice grocery store for the first batch of shopping.
Tomorrow I'll meet my coursemate Will for the first time. I signed up for the class earlier this year, when I found out that I could combine a work trip with leisure, and tried to attract other Finns to this course. Sadly, no-one was able to meet my plans, so Kirill opened it up for others, and Will was gracious enough to join. He said he'd be happy to show me some ropes with high flow before we start the course. Tomorrow we'll pack up a car with plenty of double tanks, and hit Ginnie springs for some C1 dives. The primary goal is going to be to practice running the reel in high flow.
The weather has been hot and humid, 32+ degrees centigrade, though the rain cooled things off momentarily. Still, I'm going to sweat a lot during the next week and a half, I'm certain of it. Thank goodness for p-valves and gatorade. I'm still going to use a 200g undergarment despite it being the middle of the summer, as the water is going to be only something like 21 degrees celsius.
I only got 5 cave dives in earlier this year, but they all went quite well. Thus, I'm relatively confident about the course, though I expect to be put through the wringer, and hopefully will emerge a better diver. It'll be nice to learn about complex navigation and stages, but I'm hoping to better myself overall as well. Situational awareness can always be improved, it'll be interesting to see how counting jumps and keeping track of gas will go. And then there's valve failures, which were my weak point during Cave 1, because I don't have Tech 1 training. I'll have to go over my valve failure action notes again, but last time it was clear that my coursemates had learnt it all the way to muscle memory whereas I hadn't. Well, we take courses in order to learn!
Now time for a good night's sleep, with an early rise. EE is only 6 minutes away, but I don't want to be late!
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Day 0 (Saturday)
I was up early, eager to get going, and of course hadn't slept quite as well as usual. However, our timetable took form in the way that we would have the day to prepare, and would only hit the water in the evening. The dive sites here do not close at 5PM like they do in Mexico - the plan is this still to do 4 C1 dives, setting off from EE at 4PM. I used the day for some rest, re-reading C1 notes, going for a little jog and refuelling the car.
I had plenty of time to look at the maps of Ginnie, and discuss the flow and measures how to deal with it. There are no mainline T's within C1 limits, so it should be simple enough - though of course it's good to be prepared for someone else putting in jumps. Mainly, it should be just learning the flow, as that is something I have really no experience of. Looks like there's a good chance of a thunderstorm again this evening - shouldn't bother us, and will keep temperatures lower. The standard tanks in Florida are104 or 108 cuft, which translate to 16 or 18 litre doubles, depending on your information source. As such, I'll need a bigger wing than usual - Kirill had set one aside for me. It was a nice surprise that it was a 60lbs evolve! It'll be nice to try that instead of a classic horseshoe.
So, we headed over to Ginnie, and it was crazy! It's the weekend before the fourth of July, and the place was a complete party camping ground with lots of spanish covers of pop songs blaring. Lots of people asking us all sorts of questions. Everyone else was in swimming trunks or bikinis, we geared with full drysuits. The temperature was about 30 in the air, about 22 in the water.
We ended up doing three dives, all through Devil's ear. The river water was very dark and tannic, visibility like 1-2 metres, but there was a strong outflow from the ear where water was crystal clear. Will went as number one to show me how to run the reel and navigate the flow at the entry. We ended up doing three dives, as after the third one it was very late and we were feeling tired - surface intervals were quite short. It was hard work going against that flow! I also got to run the reel once and remove it once - it's challenging stuff, compared to the reel running back in Finland, where the mines have zero flow and you're limited to just a few stations. It was past 10 PM when we got back, quite tired even before the course had begun. And my lack of experience with high flow was visible in the condition of my fingertips
As a bit of background, I've been diving for 10 years and dabbled in GUE since 2012, when I attended a demo day after reading a lot about GUE and DIR online. I took fundies in 2013, upgraded to a tech pass in 2014, and went on to take Cave 1 in Mexico, followed by a week and a half of experience dives. By this time, we had a healthy and sizable GUE community where I was living. As I hail from Finland, where we no natural underwater caves, the environment where I was to apply my skills was cold, flooded mineshafts, often located under frozen ice at the bottom of quarries. Sometimes we also visit Sweden - also to dive flooded mineshafts. Due to family commitments, I cut back on my in-water hours and took a break from cave diving, but attempted to keep the skillset up to date with open water practice. Early in 2018 I decided I wanted to get back in the saddle and resumed diving the Ojamo mine, which offers at the C1 level a few different passages, all at the 28 metre level.
As I had already gained quite a bit of familiarity with the local mine, and had heard great stories about Cave 2, upgrading was naturally on the table ever since 2014... and when a fortuitous opportunity arose, I took it and signed up for a class with Kirill Egorov in High Springs, Florida. I was visiting Florida for a work trip and was able to extend my stay, which of course was beneficial from a financial standpoint, and also allowed me to be well rested instead of jetlagged when the course began. The downside was that none of my regular dive buddies were able to meet my schedule - so I took advantage of what GUE offers, and trusted that whoever else I could entice to join, being already at the C1 level, would be more than enjoyable as a coursemate. A few weeks before the course I was indeed confirmed that I had a buddy, Will, who was familiar with the Florida caves.
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
DAY -1
What a week! It's Friday 9PM, and I'm settled at the dining table in a house in High Springs, rural Florida. I've just finished a week at a Panama City Beach resort, where I was attending a work conference. I just finished a load of laundry, the clothes are in the dryer, the fridge has been filled with some basic amenities, and things are looking up for a week and a half of cave diving! I'm staying at the EE guest house, which is a really nice setup, just a short drive from EE and downtown High Springs. There are three rooms, two twins and one king, with the king room apparently empty, and the other three bunks about to be filled some time soon. According to the notes on the doors, Randy and Mike are going to be staying in the blue room, whilst I'll be sharing the red room with Matt, who's arriving tomorrow. For now, though, it's almost eerily quiet, being alone in this big house. The dryer is keeping me company, as are the crickets in the yard.
Due to the conference trip, I had flown to the Northwest Florida Beaches airport, from where I rented a car this afternoon. I had hoped to arrive here already around 5PM, but due to a slow airport shuttle and saying bye to conference friends, I didn't set off until half past one. I of course needed a good rest on the way (it's a 4,5 hour drive), and I had forgotten that I would cross the time zone border as well on the way! Additionally, weather got interesting around the intersections of Interstates 10 and 75, with a torrential downpour limiting visibility drastically. We were all doing about 40 mph in a 70 zone, with emergency lights flashing to help others see us through the rain-wall. All's well that ends well, and I even found a nice grocery store for the first batch of shopping.
Tomorrow I'll meet my coursemate Will for the first time. I signed up for the class earlier this year, when I found out that I could combine a work trip with leisure, and tried to attract other Finns to this course. Sadly, no-one was able to meet my plans, so Kirill opened it up for others, and Will was gracious enough to join. He said he'd be happy to show me some ropes with high flow before we start the course. Tomorrow we'll pack up a car with plenty of double tanks, and hit Ginnie springs for some C1 dives. The primary goal is going to be to practice running the reel in high flow.
The weather has been hot and humid, 32+ degrees centigrade, though the rain cooled things off momentarily. Still, I'm going to sweat a lot during the next week and a half, I'm certain of it. Thank goodness for p-valves and gatorade. I'm still going to use a 200g undergarment despite it being the middle of the summer, as the water is going to be only something like 21 degrees celsius.
I only got 5 cave dives in earlier this year, but they all went quite well. Thus, I'm relatively confident about the course, though I expect to be put through the wringer, and hopefully will emerge a better diver. It'll be nice to learn about complex navigation and stages, but I'm hoping to better myself overall as well. Situational awareness can always be improved, it'll be interesting to see how counting jumps and keeping track of gas will go. And then there's valve failures, which were my weak point during Cave 1, because I don't have Tech 1 training. I'll have to go over my valve failure action notes again, but last time it was clear that my coursemates had learnt it all the way to muscle memory whereas I hadn't. Well, we take courses in order to learn!
Now time for a good night's sleep, with an early rise. EE is only 6 minutes away, but I don't want to be late!
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Day 0 (Saturday)
I was up early, eager to get going, and of course hadn't slept quite as well as usual. However, our timetable took form in the way that we would have the day to prepare, and would only hit the water in the evening. The dive sites here do not close at 5PM like they do in Mexico - the plan is this still to do 4 C1 dives, setting off from EE at 4PM. I used the day for some rest, re-reading C1 notes, going for a little jog and refuelling the car.
I had plenty of time to look at the maps of Ginnie, and discuss the flow and measures how to deal with it. There are no mainline T's within C1 limits, so it should be simple enough - though of course it's good to be prepared for someone else putting in jumps. Mainly, it should be just learning the flow, as that is something I have really no experience of. Looks like there's a good chance of a thunderstorm again this evening - shouldn't bother us, and will keep temperatures lower. The standard tanks in Florida are104 or 108 cuft, which translate to 16 or 18 litre doubles, depending on your information source. As such, I'll need a bigger wing than usual - Kirill had set one aside for me. It was a nice surprise that it was a 60lbs evolve! It'll be nice to try that instead of a classic horseshoe.
So, we headed over to Ginnie, and it was crazy! It's the weekend before the fourth of July, and the place was a complete party camping ground with lots of spanish covers of pop songs blaring. Lots of people asking us all sorts of questions. Everyone else was in swimming trunks or bikinis, we geared with full drysuits. The temperature was about 30 in the air, about 22 in the water.
We ended up doing three dives, all through Devil's ear. The river water was very dark and tannic, visibility like 1-2 metres, but there was a strong outflow from the ear where water was crystal clear. Will went as number one to show me how to run the reel and navigate the flow at the entry. We ended up doing three dives, as after the third one it was very late and we were feeling tired - surface intervals were quite short. It was hard work going against that flow! I also got to run the reel once and remove it once - it's challenging stuff, compared to the reel running back in Finland, where the mines have zero flow and you're limited to just a few stations. It was past 10 PM when we got back, quite tired even before the course had begun. And my lack of experience with high flow was visible in the condition of my fingertips
