SuPrBuGmAn
Contributor
6-12-10
Saturday morning came and I got a leisurely start at around 8AMish, packed the car, and TheAwesomeFish and I headed to ChickFilet for some breakfast. Afterwards, we hit up a little market for some weird stinky oil that supposedly wards off yellowflies, mosquitos, and evil spirits(ok, maybe not the last part). I had the Miss Jellyfish loaded up and we planned to take it out on one of the rivers east of Tallahassee and dive a couple of the springs that feed into it.
Unlike a few weekends previous, we had beaten most of the crowds, and made quick work of setting up the boat and loading her full of tanks. This particular river is simply awesome for bird watching, herons, egrets, and ducks are everywhere. Reptiles and amphibians are also all over the place, but so are the stinging, biting, nasty flying types of insects... in great number. Although, they weren't nearly as bad this weekend. We made quick time to our first divesite, but still hadn't beaten the crowds completely.
We geared up in the shallows of the run, tied the boat off to a large limestone rock, and scooted on into the basin. A depression drops down sharply to about 40', with some sheer limestone walls on one side, and some fairly steep silt sides on the other. There's filamentous algae on everything and some hydrilla here and there as well. The main vent is at the very bottom, with a few trees sprawled across it. I tied off a primary to one of the trees and headed into the overhead with MissAwesome right behind me, fighting a strong positive flow the entire time. After a secondary tie off, I notice a few blind cave crawfish, then another, and another. There friggin everywhere, and they're huge! The limestone walls were stained and had some goethite in places as well. It was pretty dark, sand made up most of the bottom as well as breakdown. Breakdown led down deeper into the cavern to an area with lots of nooks and crannies to explore. There was a big rope that goes through a bottle off breakdown restriction and looks to open back up on the other side. There's some broken cave line leading down a nomount(both bottles off) restriction that looks to meet up in the same area beyond the breakdown. Worth noting, but not something to play with today. After looking around a bit, and messing with some fearless cave crawfish, we made our exit and explored the basin for a little while. We had a few dives to do on these tanks, so we exitted shortly afterwards with a max depth of 75' for a dive time of 32 minutes, including a safety stop. It was a good dive to start the day.
Nearly 40 minutes later, we were back underwater at a different spring. This one much smaller and nearly imperceptable amount of flow. Huge logs crisscrossed the basin and we geared up while water bugs danced around us. We started the local community of bright red crawfish as we headed into a fairly large rectangular cavern entrance. There was 18#, old, explorer line run messily around the cavern. The formations were beautiful, lots of scalloped limestone, all stained, spires, breakdown, and even a contrasting white colored clay bank at the far end of cavern zone. By the time I finished off tying in the primary line, percolation from the ceiling was raining down on us, dropping the visibility to 5' or so. TheAwesomeFish signalled to turn the dive, got on the line, and we exitted uneventfully. I was really impressed(and proud) of how well she handled a situation that brought her skills to the test. To top it all off, she enjoyed the dive, and thought the cavern was beautiful(while we were able to observe it). I also noticed a vent that likely led to some cave, but thats something to peak at on another occassion. Had a max depth of 27' and we headed elsewhere on the river.
Nearly an hour later, we were at our third divesite for the day. This would be our last, as we'd need to get tanks filled/dropped off for service, before heading to the Wakulla County Dive Club meeting being held that afternoon. We headed up a run that was nearly nonexistant to a shallow spring basin with two solution tubes dropping down a couple dozen feet. The tubes connect on the way down, so you can actually swim down one and come up the other, this is especially fun while just free diving. We had hungry looking bream and crappy watching us as we did the swim through in scuba, then headed into the cavern proper, which was made up of a ledge at the bottom of the solution tube. It wasn't very big, but we found a couple fish to harass and a few crawfish. The ledge leads to a breakdown pile, and there's a cave line running into it. The cave seems to open back up on the other side. After a little while in the cavern, I motioned for MissFish to hold, then shimmied down a tight sidemount restriction made up of a huge log as well as lots of limestone boulders. Once past the restriction, I fell out into the top of a huge dome room with a breakdown pile at around 70'. The room was easily 60' in diameter and got deeper at the bottom of the debri mound on all sides. The line drops under a duck under to wonderous cave, surely, but I headed back up to my cave buddy. Her comment was, "I can't believe you fit down that hole". I'm still not sure if she's refferencing the size of the restriction... or the size of my ass??? I had a max depth of 66'.
All three dives were worth a closer look, and made for great cavern dives, for the trained cavern diver(albeit none of the caverns were large). These aren't the white, clean caverns further west in the panhandle, but with the correct training and gear, one can easily enjoy themselves out there!
We hit up El Jalisco for a late lunch before going to Gregg Stanton's shop. I needed fills and TheAwesomeFish was dropping her very own tanks to get cleaned, and some fresh valves, put on. It was a great day of diving, the weather was great, maybe hot - but the spring water cut the edge off nicely!
I'll have Sundays dive reports up tomorrow.
Saturday morning came and I got a leisurely start at around 8AMish, packed the car, and TheAwesomeFish and I headed to ChickFilet for some breakfast. Afterwards, we hit up a little market for some weird stinky oil that supposedly wards off yellowflies, mosquitos, and evil spirits(ok, maybe not the last part). I had the Miss Jellyfish loaded up and we planned to take it out on one of the rivers east of Tallahassee and dive a couple of the springs that feed into it.
Unlike a few weekends previous, we had beaten most of the crowds, and made quick work of setting up the boat and loading her full of tanks. This particular river is simply awesome for bird watching, herons, egrets, and ducks are everywhere. Reptiles and amphibians are also all over the place, but so are the stinging, biting, nasty flying types of insects... in great number. Although, they weren't nearly as bad this weekend. We made quick time to our first divesite, but still hadn't beaten the crowds completely.
We geared up in the shallows of the run, tied the boat off to a large limestone rock, and scooted on into the basin. A depression drops down sharply to about 40', with some sheer limestone walls on one side, and some fairly steep silt sides on the other. There's filamentous algae on everything and some hydrilla here and there as well. The main vent is at the very bottom, with a few trees sprawled across it. I tied off a primary to one of the trees and headed into the overhead with MissAwesome right behind me, fighting a strong positive flow the entire time. After a secondary tie off, I notice a few blind cave crawfish, then another, and another. There friggin everywhere, and they're huge! The limestone walls were stained and had some goethite in places as well. It was pretty dark, sand made up most of the bottom as well as breakdown. Breakdown led down deeper into the cavern to an area with lots of nooks and crannies to explore. There was a big rope that goes through a bottle off breakdown restriction and looks to open back up on the other side. There's some broken cave line leading down a nomount(both bottles off) restriction that looks to meet up in the same area beyond the breakdown. Worth noting, but not something to play with today. After looking around a bit, and messing with some fearless cave crawfish, we made our exit and explored the basin for a little while. We had a few dives to do on these tanks, so we exitted shortly afterwards with a max depth of 75' for a dive time of 32 minutes, including a safety stop. It was a good dive to start the day.
Nearly 40 minutes later, we were back underwater at a different spring. This one much smaller and nearly imperceptable amount of flow. Huge logs crisscrossed the basin and we geared up while water bugs danced around us. We started the local community of bright red crawfish as we headed into a fairly large rectangular cavern entrance. There was 18#, old, explorer line run messily around the cavern. The formations were beautiful, lots of scalloped limestone, all stained, spires, breakdown, and even a contrasting white colored clay bank at the far end of cavern zone. By the time I finished off tying in the primary line, percolation from the ceiling was raining down on us, dropping the visibility to 5' or so. TheAwesomeFish signalled to turn the dive, got on the line, and we exitted uneventfully. I was really impressed(and proud) of how well she handled a situation that brought her skills to the test. To top it all off, she enjoyed the dive, and thought the cavern was beautiful(while we were able to observe it). I also noticed a vent that likely led to some cave, but thats something to peak at on another occassion. Had a max depth of 27' and we headed elsewhere on the river.
Nearly an hour later, we were at our third divesite for the day. This would be our last, as we'd need to get tanks filled/dropped off for service, before heading to the Wakulla County Dive Club meeting being held that afternoon. We headed up a run that was nearly nonexistant to a shallow spring basin with two solution tubes dropping down a couple dozen feet. The tubes connect on the way down, so you can actually swim down one and come up the other, this is especially fun while just free diving. We had hungry looking bream and crappy watching us as we did the swim through in scuba, then headed into the cavern proper, which was made up of a ledge at the bottom of the solution tube. It wasn't very big, but we found a couple fish to harass and a few crawfish. The ledge leads to a breakdown pile, and there's a cave line running into it. The cave seems to open back up on the other side. After a little while in the cavern, I motioned for MissFish to hold, then shimmied down a tight sidemount restriction made up of a huge log as well as lots of limestone boulders. Once past the restriction, I fell out into the top of a huge dome room with a breakdown pile at around 70'. The room was easily 60' in diameter and got deeper at the bottom of the debri mound on all sides. The line drops under a duck under to wonderous cave, surely, but I headed back up to my cave buddy. Her comment was, "I can't believe you fit down that hole". I'm still not sure if she's refferencing the size of the restriction... or the size of my ass??? I had a max depth of 66'.
All three dives were worth a closer look, and made for great cavern dives, for the trained cavern diver(albeit none of the caverns were large). These aren't the white, clean caverns further west in the panhandle, but with the correct training and gear, one can easily enjoy themselves out there!
We hit up El Jalisco for a late lunch before going to Gregg Stanton's shop. I needed fills and TheAwesomeFish was dropping her very own tanks to get cleaned, and some fresh valves, put on. It was a great day of diving, the weather was great, maybe hot - but the spring water cut the edge off nicely!
I'll have Sundays dive reports up tomorrow.
