OH yea I forgot about JB, hit that on the way in, the water was a little cloudy but still good vis.
Dive outpost is great, left the gear assebled, dropped it off in the cage at the end of the day, picked it up on the way out in the morning with a cooool top off (cool enough pressure increased upon entering the spring!) and just kept a tab for the entire time we were there, nice porch to take care of our gear to hang it up and keep it out of the sand.
One of the Brits name was Rick, I only remember because well, thats my name too, I'm really bad with names, but it was nice to have turkey and pow wow with people on thanks giving while away from home, that was pretty darn cool.
Stories, I dunno, I think the best dive was the last one, ran line into the ear, tied off to mainline went straight to the ceiling to get out of the flow, water was clear as crystal as always, we picked up a local for the dive named Jean, pulled through the lips and on the other side I noticed paint specs on the rocks, I assume scooters bashing their way trough, started up to the Hill 400 jump, made it almost all the way up there and turned in on NDL, I put my 18 watt HID on flood and just lit up the white walls with a blue glow all the way down through there, between that and the mild narcosis at 95 feet I was quite happy! My complaint was the trip out was much too fast, spat me out in just a few minutes!
Made a haul up Peanut line, 1000 feet on 6ths, turned when we found one of the jumps, on the way out, I noticed all the damange to the cave I hear about but never really noticed, all the hand prints on the walls and such, in one section, large, open, virtually no flow there was a hand print about 5 inches deep in the clay, I have no idea how the heck someone would do that but there it was, further back closer to the entrance I just noticed more and more, can't wait to get that full cave card to see cave that has not been beat to h3ll.
First run into orange grove we went to the left and went into the cavern section of lower orange grove, talk about black silt, I went to make a wrap and got the line in it, a black cloud errupted so we backed out and went for it again, on the way out of the cavern we spoted the upper entrance, tied in and called it a dive, went back again and the tunnel was awsome, small, twisty and turny, flow was about perfect, not hard to swim against but on the way out you cruise good witout kicking, 90 degree turns that drop or rise 10 feet in the process and thick silt show you helicopter turn skills and such are a must to get in and out of this cave without blowing the vis (no we didn't blow it, it was good on the way out too
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Orange grove is going down as one of my favorites!
