Well, my camera is still in the shop, so no pics.
Yesterday a buddy and I drove over to Jackson Blue Spring in Marianna to do some cave diving. Jackson Blue is a very pretty spring, but closed to OW diving (from land), and is mostly a cave dive. It is the head spring for a mile long clear pond that was dammed up some time ago. There are many other springs along the pond.
We dropped by Cave Adventures on the way and filled up our doubles with nitrox, then headed over to the spring. We planned on doing a basic mainline dive to a third of our gas, or 10 minutes at max depth, which was a third of the no deco limit. After setting it all up, we hopped into the 68f water and proceeded to do a bubble check, safety drill, and then headed on in.
Flow seemed to be up a bit, which made the going a bit tougher, and viz also seemed down a bit, maybe 50ft rather than the usual 100ft. Still we made it about 900ft back before turning around for the ride out. As we neared the chimney which rises from 90ft to 40ft in the cavern, I decided to do a lights off drill, and switch to backup lights. That really reminded me how dark it is in the caves. Back in the cavern we marveled at the exit, possibly one of the prettiest cavern around, and hung out at 15ft for the saftey stop, while the fish kept an eye on us. Max depth 96ft, bottom time 40mins.
After lunch and some more nitrox fills, we headed back into the cave on the same dive plan. Unfortunately I had forgotten to defog the mask which ruined the dive for me. After huffing it to 900ft again, and not being able to see clearly the whole time, I called the dive early.
Our advanced nitrox instructor was also present and so we decided to take some stage bottle into the basin and work on putting them on and taking them off and switching regulators, which was a bit tricky at first, but once we did it a few times it wasnt hard. We also swam into the cavern and practiced droppign them on the line. THis will all be for when we start needing to do deco with 02 bottles.
Anway, it was a full day of diving, and I saw some new stuff and managed to survive, so a great day day of diving. Attached is the cave map and where we went.
Yesterday a buddy and I drove over to Jackson Blue Spring in Marianna to do some cave diving. Jackson Blue is a very pretty spring, but closed to OW diving (from land), and is mostly a cave dive. It is the head spring for a mile long clear pond that was dammed up some time ago. There are many other springs along the pond.
We dropped by Cave Adventures on the way and filled up our doubles with nitrox, then headed over to the spring. We planned on doing a basic mainline dive to a third of our gas, or 10 minutes at max depth, which was a third of the no deco limit. After setting it all up, we hopped into the 68f water and proceeded to do a bubble check, safety drill, and then headed on in.
Flow seemed to be up a bit, which made the going a bit tougher, and viz also seemed down a bit, maybe 50ft rather than the usual 100ft. Still we made it about 900ft back before turning around for the ride out. As we neared the chimney which rises from 90ft to 40ft in the cavern, I decided to do a lights off drill, and switch to backup lights. That really reminded me how dark it is in the caves. Back in the cavern we marveled at the exit, possibly one of the prettiest cavern around, and hung out at 15ft for the saftey stop, while the fish kept an eye on us. Max depth 96ft, bottom time 40mins.
After lunch and some more nitrox fills, we headed back into the cave on the same dive plan. Unfortunately I had forgotten to defog the mask which ruined the dive for me. After huffing it to 900ft again, and not being able to see clearly the whole time, I called the dive early.
Our advanced nitrox instructor was also present and so we decided to take some stage bottle into the basin and work on putting them on and taking them off and switching regulators, which was a bit tricky at first, but once we did it a few times it wasnt hard. We also swam into the cavern and practiced droppign them on the line. THis will all be for when we start needing to do deco with 02 bottles.
Anway, it was a full day of diving, and I saw some new stuff and managed to survive, so a great day day of diving. Attached is the cave map and where we went.
