Everyone got in the water except Kathy, who didn't have a wetsuit to fit her. There were 9 scuba divers and 3 free divers, and I got to dive with every one of them over the course of the 3 dives that I did!
Dive #1 I of course had to socialize for a while when I first got there so I wasn't among the first to hit the water. My first dive began at 9:29 and I went in with Frank and Andy. My tank which had been filled the day before in Destin had gotten bumped and the air was slowly leaking out so I only had about 2000 psi when I started this dive. We made it to the opening of the cavern and Andy started having trouble with his ears and eventually had to abort the dive. I hovered around the entrance to the cavern so that I could keep an eye on Frank while he explored the cavern and also keep an eye on Andy who was near the surface trying to clear his ears. When Andy surfaced and went back in, Frank and I continued to explore the basin. Vis was a good 40ft and my max depth was 64ft with an average of 40ft in 68F water with a total bottom time of 20 min.
Dive #2 After much more socializing and abuse(everyone picked on me
)
...I hit the water again at 12:13pm with Brandy and Kayla. Andy didn't try to make anymore dives because of his ears. I decided to finish the air in Andy's tank on this dive so again I started with less than 2000 psi. After a little ways into the dive, Kayla had trouble clearing her ears so she aborted the dive and Brandy and I dove around the perimeter of the area searching for gators. Brandy took me through an obstacle course of trees and burrows and in some places about 5 ft of water
, but we never found Scubakris's gator
. As I was diving on borrowed gas and Brandy was swimming at top speed
, I had a total bottom time of 12 whole minutes with a max depth of 37ft and an average depth of 15ft. It sure seemed like longer than 12 minutes because we were swimming at marathon pace
My computer actually recorded the temp on this dive at 70F!!
After this dive, we started eating. Man what some cooks. These guys are smokin good!! Our menu consisted of PHD's famous smoked ribs and chicken, Brandy surprised us with some smoked fish that was out of this world good, Frank brought along some sausages but I never even saw them. They must have eaten them straight off the grill.
Our sides were sweet potatoes, corn, Kathy's famous coleslaw and garlic bread. The food was awesome and the company was even more awesome. It took awhile to get back in the water after a meal like this. I was afraid I wouldn't need any weights to sink me to the bottom
, so my third and final dive didn't begin until later that afternoon.
Dive#3 began at 2:29pm and I started out with Brandy and Clay. We had an awesome time exploring the large cavern and I got to meet the infamous gnome. We spent about 10 minutes in there before moving back into the basin. Brandy decided to head back in but Clay and I wanted to finish burning our tank so we explored the basin and surfaced when I had about 800 psi. As we were making our way in, Perrone and PHD were headed out so I went back out with them to the basin for a about 11 more minutes. During this dive, MDB, Frank Sr, Frank Jr and Daniel did some free diving to the log and back. My max depth on this dive was 82ft with an avg of 57ft for a total bottom time of 42 min.
