A Weekend In Review....

[LiteHedded]

Maybe one day we'll get steps in the panhandle!

then you lose all that hipster street cred

 

[SuPrBuGmAn]

Then I don't want steps!

 

[Dive-aholic]

then you lose all that hipster street cred

And all this time I thought I was just cool!

 

[_Slacker_]

The issue becomes where? You're not going to get good at scootering low flow at Manatee Ginnie and JB because as you said, they mask any mistakes.

No, they mask the mistake, but I didn't say you couldn't get good there. You can get away with it though. A buddy behind you can tell you how you are doing, but you don't see it if you go through and never look back or come back 20 minutes later on your trip out.

As I said earlier, I didn't realize that is what everyone was doing today so I brought up the topic and from your response and a few of your buddies posts I have my answer.

BTW, so I don't have to be rude and continue to refer to you by your screen name, who am I talking to here?

I don't read or post here often if you haven't noticed. This is Ben. We met in Marianna last weekend.

 

[ucfdiver]

As I said earlier, I didn't realize that is what everyone was doing today so I brought up the topic and from your response and a few of your buddies posts I have my answer.

Well, if it answers your questions, the 6 rules of accident analysis I was taught were-
1) Never Solo Dive.
2) Never go beyond your level of training.
3) Always run a continuous guideline.
4) Never use more than 1/3 gas rule
5) Maintain 100ft END or less.
6) Always carry 3 sources of light.

Beyond that, there's tons of "best practice" theories, and I guess it all depends on the situation, experience, etc.

I don't read or post here often if you haven't noticed. This is Ben. We met in Marianna last weekend.

Nice to meet you.

And all this time I thought I was just cool!

Maybe in your younger days :mooner:

 

[ucfdiver]

Well, I'll post an early one from this weekend. Kinda disappointing, but hopefully the best is to come tomorrow at Hart Springs!

After getting to bed late and then having to get up early, I drag myself out of bed, throw the gear in the car, and head to subway for a breakfast sandwich. Kevin meets me there, and then we head over to the spring. Kevin had rented a house near this place, and knew several land owners, so gaining access wasn’t as difficult as one would imagine. Since he had laid the original line out to about 3600ft of penetration, it was nice to have him guide me on my first dive here. His memory of all the details was amazing, and really helped with a challenging dive. With access to plenty of scooters, stages, qualified buddies etc, I just knew that we'd get a group of buddies together, setup the cave with safeties, and have a complete map and wall this thing out in no time....wishful thinking, 100ft into the cave I gave up hope of that lol.

A few weeks back, I had stopped by to chat up the land owners and get on their good side. The surface visibility wasn’t stellar, and to be honest, it really hasn’t improved much since then, even with other low flow systems that are near the river (like Peacock Springs) now clearing. Even with poor viz, we decided to get into the system and at least do a familiarization dive, since waiting for this spring to really clear was unrealistic.

The line was still run out into open water as Kevin described, so no primary was needed. We did bring a primary just in case any lines were in need of repair. The first 400ft of this cave doesn’t have knotted line in it, however the lines after that are knotted. Fortunately we didn’t come across any broken line, however the line was buried and had gone limp in several places, so we tied a knot to take up the slack, or tied off again when we could.

Our total dive time was under 1hr, with the majority of it spent at 100ft. We got about 800-1000ft into the system I would guess, taking the right side of each T. At the first T, the left side is smaller, has more silt, and shorter than the right, but they both meet up again at the second T, where we continued on into the cave.

Unfortunately this cave is going to require a period of no rain to map. The way things have been this year, and with hurricane season right around the corner, the window of opportunity just doesn't exist to map it properly...I would say I wasn't bummed, but that would be a lie. I'm really hoping the river continues to clear and hurricane season holds off.

Here’s a few videos-
(we both have 21w HID’s in this one, for perspective)
Kevin Leading The Way on Vimeo

A neat formation-
Neat formation in some random spring in FL. on Vimeo

Cavern view on deco-

The cave ceiling-

 

[Belmont]

Hi James,

Thank you for the presentation. Very informative for those who have not yet had the chance to visit North Florida.

On your last pic of the ceiling, are the white specs fossils?

 

[ucfdiver]

Hi James,

Thank you for the presentation. Very informative for those who have not yet had the chance to visit North Florida.

On your last pic of the ceiling, are the white specs fossils?

It's actually just nasty silt globs, I don't know what they are... You can see it kinda flying out of the cavern zone while we were on deco here-
Cavern zone. on Vimeo

We did find a bone, which I took a quick video of (meant to take a pic)
YouTube - Bone in a Florida Spring

A few 100ft in, we found a huge cypress stump that was petrified, rock that was so soft the line cut right through it when we attempted a tie off, silt too deep for 2ft tall silt stakes, and all sorts of weird stuff that you just don't see in the Fl caves I've been in elsewhere. In the cavern, we found a captain morgan bottle, several beer/coke cans, and various other things. The entrance restriction is fairly small, so there was almost no trash beyond the entry point....so I'm not sure how a huge cypress stump made it's way into the cave unless there's something we don't know about further upstream, of if there was a sink over that spot earlier in time. There's also a slimy bacteria that was very shiny (link), I haven't seen that before. Near where we turned, there was a white (bacteria?) on the ceiling that looked nearly identical to what's found in Ginnie except for color (click here for a photo of what's in Ginnie). Funny how trying to describe all this makes me think about what all I really did get to see on the dive, even though it didn't seem like much.

If you make it to Florida, you'll see something like that at Telford. I was recently given a series of DVDs by cave2exproductions.com where they show Telford springs I think back when it was open, and it looks COMPLETELY different than it does these days now that it's only dove a few times a month. Other than just seeing how caves change, the lead divers in this video are amazing. Older gear, and certain things aren't up to today's standards, but these lead divers took great pride in the way they navigate the cave, karstdvr on here is one of them.

 

[Dive-aholic]

Well, if it answers your questions, the 6 rules of accident analysis I was taught were-
1) Never Solo Dive.
2) Never go beyond your level of training.
3) Always run a continuous guideline.
4) Never use more than 1/3 gas rule
5) Maintain 100ft END or less.
6) Always carry 3 sources of light.

Beyond that, there's tons of "best practice" theories, and I guess it all depends on the situation, experience, etc.

There are actually only 5 rules of accident analysis:

1. Training
2. Guideline
3. Air
4. Depth
5. Lights/Equipment

Solo was a knee jerk reaction to Berman's death. It was added to the list for a year or so and then appropriately removed.

For trained divers there are 3 rules of accident analysis:

1. Depth
2. Guideline
3. Air

While there have been some solo diving deaths in caves, they all involved breaking one of the 3 rules listed above. While it may be true that having a buddy may have prevented those depths by having someone else there that could have "reeled" the divers back in, solo wasn't the cause. In fact, the last solo diving death I know of was caused by an intentional disregard for the rule of 1/3s.

Sometimes solo diving is safer than diving with a buddy. I was in a passage today that I will only go in alone or with one other person from a very select few, and there would have to be a really good reason for going in there with someone else. The risk in increased greatly when you add another diver...especially one that's between me and the exit!! :cool2:

 

[ucfdiver]

There are actually only 5 rules of accident analysis:

1. Training
2. Guideline
3. Air
4. Depth
5. Lights/Equipment

Solo was a knee jerk reaction to Berman's death. It was added to the list for a year or so and then appropriately removed.

For trained divers there are 3 rules of accident analysis:

1. Depth
2. Guideline
3. Air

While there have been some solo diving deaths in caves, they all involved breaking one of the 3 rules listed above. While it may be true that having a buddy may have prevented those depths by having someone else there that could have "reeled" the divers back in, solo wasn't the cause. In fact, the last solo diving death I know of was caused by an intentional disregard for the rule of 1/3s.

Sometimes solo diving is safer than diving with a buddy. I was in a passage today that I will only go in alone or with one other person from a very select few, and there would have to be a really good reason for going in there with someone else. The risk in increased greatly when you add another diver...especially one that's between me and the exit!! :cool2:

....okay Rob, you caught me...I took the liberty of adding one based off of my own observations and opinions!