My wife and I are planning on doing some camping and visiting some friends in the Orlando area in March. We are looking to dive some of the florida springs ... we have been to Blue Springs SP near Orlando before (snorkeling; wasn't fully certified then).
We both have 10 dives and are *very* new divers. All of our current experience is inland Michigan lakes. We are both PADI AOW.
I am reading stuff on Ginnie Springs, both the 'official' website and somebody else's page... both say that you can enter the Ginnie Ballroom to a certain point until you reach a grate, the sites say that OW is the only cert level required to enter the ballroom and you are allowed to bring a light.
I have done some breathhold freediving into overhead environments at Wekiwa Springs ... not much, maybe 10'-15' into the cave, but enough to have to swim diagonally out to surface, not straight up. Wife is pretty uncomfortable with any notion of overhead, at least until we get more experience. The idea doesn't make me uncomfortable, however, I am patient and cautious and willing to wait until I am more experienced and have had some training. If that's 400 dives and several years and more training, whatever. I've got plenty of time.
So I'm confused. In my OW and AOW, both the PADI books and my instructors strongly emphasized NEVER to enter an environment with overhead without training... ie don't even go under the training dive platform. At what point does it become OK to enter a "safe" or "less risky" overhead environment and what determines such a thing?
I hear a lot about 'swimthroughs' in reefs, some are simply holes in a wall with functionally no overhead, others are several feet or more long with at least that much overhead. What is the distinction that makes something an 'overhead environment' that I now need to be extra careful in or avoid?
We both have 10 dives and are *very* new divers. All of our current experience is inland Michigan lakes. We are both PADI AOW.
I am reading stuff on Ginnie Springs, both the 'official' website and somebody else's page... both say that you can enter the Ginnie Ballroom to a certain point until you reach a grate, the sites say that OW is the only cert level required to enter the ballroom and you are allowed to bring a light.
I have done some breathhold freediving into overhead environments at Wekiwa Springs ... not much, maybe 10'-15' into the cave, but enough to have to swim diagonally out to surface, not straight up. Wife is pretty uncomfortable with any notion of overhead, at least until we get more experience. The idea doesn't make me uncomfortable, however, I am patient and cautious and willing to wait until I am more experienced and have had some training. If that's 400 dives and several years and more training, whatever. I've got plenty of time.
So I'm confused. In my OW and AOW, both the PADI books and my instructors strongly emphasized NEVER to enter an environment with overhead without training... ie don't even go under the training dive platform. At what point does it become OK to enter a "safe" or "less risky" overhead environment and what determines such a thing?
I hear a lot about 'swimthroughs' in reefs, some are simply holes in a wall with functionally no overhead, others are several feet or more long with at least that much overhead. What is the distinction that makes something an 'overhead environment' that I now need to be extra careful in or avoid?