To the diver asking about renting/borrowing gear:
I used to have almost two sets of gear (went from "I need to borrow gear!" at the ffirst megadive to that in less than a year.....) but sold some of it to fun dother purchases at college....I still have an extra BC you can use, it's a men's BC, medium.
"Marchand" on this board is a good friend of mine (unless he does something crazy, then it's more ike "who the heck is that?"

) and right now he has ridiculous amounts of gear (he's got a job.....

Hey, 'm a full time student! No time for work! ), I'm sure I can coax him into bringing some of it. It's not all new, but it's pretty trustworthy (check your life insurance policy though....)

He's got a buttload of tanks (unless he already loaned them out....every time he gets them all back from people, he loans them out again) and I'm sure he'll loan them out if you pay for the gas ($4 a fill, if yu want to be really nice, you'll drag them up to Cave Excursions for a fill)
He'll probably see this post, if he doesn;t I'll ask him next Saturday when we meet up to dive Manatee (still working on my trim with this BP/W. I love it, and cannot wait to move even closer to the "dark side," but I need this mysterious thing called a "job" in order to afford an intro to cave or cavern or whatever the cert is.....the more I talk with Rick at CE the more I know I want it

) Ginnie rents gear, and there's multiple shops in Gainesville (Aquatic Centre, Waterworld, Lloyd Bailey) that rent gear, but if you can get it for free or for favors................
As for the diving at Ginnie, there's tonnes of OW diving. I'm only an OW diver (who likes to pretend he knows more than AOW divers) and I'm kept busy. Furthermore, there's so much to do above the water (chilling, drinking chilled beverages, eating decidedly un-chilled baked goods, chilling some more.....bullcrapping with SBers around a fire....or trebuchet.....) that you actually have to work to get in very many dives!