mrmccoy
Guest
After planning a trip for a few weeks nothing worked out as planned! I made plans to check out vortex then morrison spring and cypress spring and only got to see vortex. I tried to get in touch with the man that rents canoes at cypress but had no luck. I did stop and check out morrison in the flooded state and have a few pics I might try and post.
My g/f and I drove over to vortex thursday and got there around 3pm and set up camp and got to bed early. Friday morning we rented her gear and geared up. There was one class that made it into the spring before we did so that water was nice! We checked over each others gear and decided after we looked around we would do an OOA drill. We looked around for about 20mins then dropped down into the main cavern which is about 35ft. We proceeded to do our OOA drill and thats when stuff headed south. She must have exhaled as she was taking her reg. out and trying to use my octo. Her eyes got big and she dropped my octo. then started swimming for the surface. I grabbed her but she was adding air to her bc and swimming hard for the surface! I tried to put the reg. back in her mouth but she just looked at me then spit it out and kept swimming. I managed to grab onto the rope and slowed us both down.
She broke the surface and made a big gasp for air and that got everybodys attention! I asked if she was ok and she just said no get me out of here then complained about it being hard to breath! I swam her to the nearest dock which happened to have a few people about to splash and they helped take her gear off and make sure she was ok. After I made sure she was breathing fine and didn't show any major signs of sickness I got her to take a hot shower then laid down and took a nap while I kept an eye on her. She woke up then started saying she couldn't take a deep breath without it hurting. I started getting worried at that point and we finally figured out that between the 7mm wetsuit being on the small side and wearing a hood and having the bc over inflated made it hard to breath. We are pretty sure she had a few bruised ribs because it was her ribs that were sore not the breathing.
After talking to her about what happened I think between the cold water and cavern walls she was already on edge but never let me know about it. (we never went into any overhead just dropped down into the main cavern) When we did the OOA drill she just freaked and didn't think about what she was doing. Later that after noon she decided to get back in that water and that we would stay shallow. We only made a 15 min dive but she got back into the water after what happened earlier that day which surprized me! I'm not sure I would have been able to do that!
Saturday we decided to take the day off from diving and headed to Destin. We ended up stopping by scubatech and found out they had a boat running sunday morning.
She didn't think she would be up to diving but talked to the folks at scubatech about what happened and they recemended to hire a divemaster. So we hired a dive master for her and he talked to her about what happened and went over a few things.
Our first dive was the liberty ship (thomas hayward I think) and the vis sucked! 10ft at the most! She was able to make it to the wreck but thumbed the dive when she got uncomfortable and headed back up. I had a good dive max depth of 89ft. and a dive time of 27mins. After about an hour surface interval we were brought to browns barge and she decided not to dive but she did get in the water and mess with her mask which was the problem from her first dive. The DM was very understanding and very helpful with her issues and did everything he could to help. My 2nd dive was 80ft and 29mins because we passed up the line anchor then got into deco time on my computer so I had to do a deep stop but had plenty of gas left.
It was a really nice weekend, the seas were calm and a little surface current. I learned alot over this past weekend as did my girlfriend! She decided she wants to get some pool time to go over skills(purge clear) and to communicate when she has any type of issue with anything underwater. I know now I do not have a cave buddy
Sorry about being long winded
My g/f and I drove over to vortex thursday and got there around 3pm and set up camp and got to bed early. Friday morning we rented her gear and geared up. There was one class that made it into the spring before we did so that water was nice! We checked over each others gear and decided after we looked around we would do an OOA drill. We looked around for about 20mins then dropped down into the main cavern which is about 35ft. We proceeded to do our OOA drill and thats when stuff headed south. She must have exhaled as she was taking her reg. out and trying to use my octo. Her eyes got big and she dropped my octo. then started swimming for the surface. I grabbed her but she was adding air to her bc and swimming hard for the surface! I tried to put the reg. back in her mouth but she just looked at me then spit it out and kept swimming. I managed to grab onto the rope and slowed us both down.
She broke the surface and made a big gasp for air and that got everybodys attention! I asked if she was ok and she just said no get me out of here then complained about it being hard to breath! I swam her to the nearest dock which happened to have a few people about to splash and they helped take her gear off and make sure she was ok. After I made sure she was breathing fine and didn't show any major signs of sickness I got her to take a hot shower then laid down and took a nap while I kept an eye on her. She woke up then started saying she couldn't take a deep breath without it hurting. I started getting worried at that point and we finally figured out that between the 7mm wetsuit being on the small side and wearing a hood and having the bc over inflated made it hard to breath. We are pretty sure she had a few bruised ribs because it was her ribs that were sore not the breathing.
After talking to her about what happened I think between the cold water and cavern walls she was already on edge but never let me know about it. (we never went into any overhead just dropped down into the main cavern) When we did the OOA drill she just freaked and didn't think about what she was doing. Later that after noon she decided to get back in that water and that we would stay shallow. We only made a 15 min dive but she got back into the water after what happened earlier that day which surprized me! I'm not sure I would have been able to do that!
Saturday we decided to take the day off from diving and headed to Destin. We ended up stopping by scubatech and found out they had a boat running sunday morning.
She didn't think she would be up to diving but talked to the folks at scubatech about what happened and they recemended to hire a divemaster. So we hired a dive master for her and he talked to her about what happened and went over a few things.
Our first dive was the liberty ship (thomas hayward I think) and the vis sucked! 10ft at the most! She was able to make it to the wreck but thumbed the dive when she got uncomfortable and headed back up. I had a good dive max depth of 89ft. and a dive time of 27mins. After about an hour surface interval we were brought to browns barge and she decided not to dive but she did get in the water and mess with her mask which was the problem from her first dive. The DM was very understanding and very helpful with her issues and did everything he could to help. My 2nd dive was 80ft and 29mins because we passed up the line anchor then got into deco time on my computer so I had to do a deep stop but had plenty of gas left.
It was a really nice weekend, the seas were calm and a little surface current. I learned alot over this past weekend as did my girlfriend! She decided she wants to get some pool time to go over skills(purge clear) and to communicate when she has any type of issue with anything underwater. I know now I do not have a cave buddy
Sorry about being long winded
