A Weekend In Review....

[ucfdiver]

Should have a couple pictures up by tonight, I'll post up here whenever I get them online.

Thanks, look forward to seeing them

Yea that basin gets blitzed out pretty quick. I suspect u had much better vis in the cave tho. At least on the way in

It was clearer than Ginnie on the way in. Wish the ceiling would stay on the ceiling where it belongs so we could see more on the way out tho, watching bubbles cause crap to rain down makes for an interesting dive.

 

[LiteHedded]

Worth it though

 

[SuPrBuGmAn]

Worth it though

Its crap, everyone should goto Mexico.

 

[LiteHedded]

Deep, dark, high flow and scary!

 

[_Slacker_]

Maybe it is not just not clear from what you wrote, but what ever happened to swimming new cave passage first and then scootering? You know, learning the cave as you go. The 2 landmarks you asked about are around ~p1600' and yet you turned at p3200'? Then you did the same thing in HITW too?

Your takeaway on scootering HITW was wrong, it's not that low flow silty caves don't like scooters, it is that high flow, non-silty caves hide poor technique.

Nice pictures, but slow down and enjoy the caves a bit. They aren't going anywhere.

 

[ucfdiver]

Maybe it is not just not clear from what you wrote, but what ever happened to swimming new cave passage first and then scootering? You know, learning the cave as you go. The 2 landmarks you asked about are around ~p1600' and yet you turned at p3200'? Then you did the same thing in HITW too?

Your takeaway on scootering HITW was wrong, it's not that low flow silty caves don't like scooters, it is that high flow, non-silty caves hide poor technique.

Nice pictures, but slow down and enjoy the caves a bit. They aren't going anywhere.

I have swam both JB and Hole in the Wall, each with and without stages. I don't own a map of any cave other than Ginnie (which I haven't used in forever anyways), and frankly don't need to know what someone else called a room to enjoy my dives, but was curious.

To answer your question, I do not follow the logic that swimming a passage is a must before scootering it, but I respect those that do. I swam over 3600ft in Ginnie before ever touching a scooter, and frankly I think that a conservative speed on a scooter can provide a much more relaxing and enjoyable diving experience than getting a head full of co2 swimming against strong current, and I notice that my memory of the cave detail is much greater, realistically less co2 narcosis. Wakulla Springs would have a landfill on one of the main aquifer conduits if JJ & Casey bought into the swim first theory. The damage from pulling on the walls in Ginnie, Little River, etc is just disgusting, and could be prevented by running scooters at a slower speed in areas you haven't been to before. Of course, there's two huge scooter shroud scars in JB that remind you how quickly damage can happen, but the biggest of those was done by one of the most experienced old timers still in the game, so I'm not sure what we learn from that.

 

[TSandM]

I can buy some argument about scootering in very high flow, as I have suffered from both narcosis and CO2 toxicity while struggling at JB and at Ginnie. But I do think one ought to swim low flow cave before scootering it. Read Clare Gledhill's description of her truly terrifying experience on the Mill Pond. Know the cave before you introduce scooters to it.

In addition, if you blow the viz with your scooters, you have not only impacted YOUR dive, but the dives of any other team that may come behind you.

 

[ucfdiver]

I can buy some argument about scootering in very high flow, as I have suffered from both narcosis and CO2 toxicity while struggling at JB and at Ginnie. But I do think one ought to swim low flow cave before scootering it. Read Clare Gledhill's description of her truly terrifying experience on the Mill Pond. Know the cave before you introduce scooters to it.

In addition, if you blow the viz with your scooters, you have not only impacted YOUR dive, but the dives of any other team that may come behind you.

Claire's dive plan and previous site experience nearly mirrored mine, however we only went about half as far as she did before turning due to the silt caused in the restrictive part of the main passage. Completely agree about impacting others, and once beyond the restrictive area, we turned the dive. Ours took 40ft viz that we started with and made it about 20-25ft viz, nothing like what she experienced. Fortunately, the group of guys who scootered it after us and the other team in the system reported that it was clear by the time they got in there.

Unfortunately there's very few low flow and low ceiling caves to practice on. I've taken the scooter out multiple times to the local lakes, and done several dives over the past year with it at Manatee and Ginnie. Manatee is the most challenging scooter cave within 3 hours of me, but for totally different reasons. Ginnie is extremely simple to scooter and carelessness is the only reason to really do any damage there. Maybe Little River would be the most local place to practice as it's a bit lower and has plenty of fine silt. Fortunately there's a whole lot of people around with more experience and more skills than myself, so it's a matter of picking one and hashing things out to better prepare next time.

 

[SuPrBuGmAn]

Link to Clare's accident?

 

[ucfdiver]

Link to Clare's accident?

I sent you a message on FB so as not to further derail this thread.