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Cave Diving Weekend
Ginnie Springs, Peacock I, Peacock III
July 26-28th 2002
This was to be a quick
weekend up at the caves, I really should have stayed home and worked on my
house but given a cave diving invitation what would you
do? I left work at 3:00pm and after a long
drive arrived at Ginnie around 9:30pm. I had planned to meet up with
two of my friends and dive that night when I arrived, since this is what I
usually do and can't wait to get in the water. When I got
there my buddies were looking tired and sleepy and after kind of looking at each
other and allowing apathy to become infectious and set in we elected to hang out
for a while and talk about diving instead.
I had planned to camp at Ginnie that night but since we were
not diving there the next day I drove halfway to Peacock and camped in my
car. After my last tent flood I had deliberately left that
thing at home so I would not be tempted to even try it
:-). There were quite a few people driving around even
into the wee hours and I was quite glad that my buddy was also car camping not
too far away.
Saturday morning was great. We located the group getting their tanks
filled and off we all went to Peacock. I was quite amazed at how many cars
there were parked there. It was pretty busy already even before we
arrived. First dive was planned for Peacock
I. We had quite a few divers in our group (Seven in fact) so
we split up into three teams. Our first dive began into the
pothole tunnel. I was in the front of the second team,
but could see the other team of three in front of me.
After the gap at the Pothole, we jumped to the Nicholson tunnel and headed
towards Cisteen Sink. This was awesome because I had never been there
before. After a while the first team turned and exited,
but since our team seemed to have tons of spare gas we continued on all the way
to Cisteen. Although I had never been there before I
knew we were reaching it because of the telltale leaves on the floor and the
beginnings of gravel and slope, but I still couldn't see
it. I knew it was small but how
small? The line went up steeply and through quite a
small part. I followed it carefully and was rewarded by an
awesome view of the sink from below. It was quite long and narrow in
shape, and appeared beautifully green against the black
background. I saw my buddy signaling behind me and
wanting to turn and exit so we swam back the way we came and enjoyed the return
trip almost as much as the way in.
Due to the crowds at Peacock I and the arrival of another
dive buddy Eric, we elected to split off and dive Peacock three while the other
guys went back to Peacock 1. I was really excited since I had
never dived there before. One of the team had been several
times, and he was in the lead, then me, again in the middle. I wasn't much impressed with the globs of
algae allover everything, and spent a while picking it off my manifold as we
swam over to the cave entrance. Along the way the visibility
improved tremendously and once there we quickly tied off and headed towards our
new adventure. I had been warned ahead of time that this cave
was a siphon and very silty. Not Kidding, it was pretty
silty but big enough that you could stay well off the floor and it wasn't hard
to keep it clean. The dive plan was to make the jump to
Hendleys Castle and just drop down to 120 since we were not prepared for a deep
dive. Eric tied off and made the jump, and I was pretty
impressed with his bright orange line. There was no
mistaking that spool!! :-). Slowly we dropped down and as I hit 120
I could see the line disappear under a shelf which I was later told was a
bedding plane that led on to a very large room, I can't wait to go
and really see it one day. After hanging out for a short while
admiring the cave we turned and ascended back to the jump
line. With some discussion we decided to head out of the
cave rather than continue on past the jump. While
decoing at the entrance we found some other small passages with lines in them
and generally had fun mucking around in the goopy algae
clumps. I really enjoyed this dive, it is always
such an adventure to dive in a new cave.
We all met up at the Barbecue place for dinner, and I
of course had forgotten to get a hotel room again so I begged a quick shower off
one of the guys (thanks Jeff) and made myself at least reasonably
presentable for dinner. I mean at least I didn't look as
if I had been dragged through a hedge backwards :-).. Between us we ate all of
the chicken in the entire restaurant and then split for our respective sleeping
holes. I elected to drive back to Ginnie and car camp there so that
I could sleep in the next morning while the others drove over from Mayo.
I was so looking forward to the next mornings dive but right from the start
things were not working out really well for me. I had
noticed on the previous dive some small bubbles coming from my wing.. so I was
now using spare old dive rite wing, I only use my computer for
backup and to download later, but the darned thing seemed to want to die just at
that moment. It ran the boot sequence and then blanked out
:-(. We got into the water, and clipped off our oxygen
bottles and stuff, and checked lights then we swam to the eye to deposit our O2
bottles. As we entered the cavern I looked and my
primary light was off??? WHAT NOW??? I thought it might
have accidentally flipped off and put it back on again.. no
response. so I signaled the guys and waved my useless dead
light around and we all surfaced. I climbed back out of the
spring and proceeded to take it apart. Nope it wasn't flooded
and would not fire up for more than 2 seconds either :-(.
Reluctantly I told the guys to go on ahead and leave :-(...
Fortunately we were in a team of three so they could still go diving.
I hung out on the surface and watched the crowds while I
waited for everyone to return. Soon enough they were
back up, and looking for food on their surface
interval. While eating lunch we saw the strangest
sight, someone with a pickup truck dragging a line of about 5 of the
Ginnie rental tubes behind him on the ground in a string.. we
couldn't help but agree that this was a total disregard for someone else's
property. Eric then kindly loaned me his light for the afternoon
dive since he was off diving the ballroom with his girlfriend.. thanks a bunch
Eric (and it's a much better light than my own too <big
smile>). After discussing at least 5000
different dive plans we finally came up with one that everyone agreed on and we
set off for the afternoon dive.
This turned out to be the best dive of the weekend and I was
so grateful to have a light, and an 18watt to boot. We
had five divers but were split into teams of three and two. This
time I was in the back with my buddy in front of me.
This was probably great for him since he tells me that my fins squeak all the
time when I kick, but he is a gentleman enough to say it doesn't bother him
:-). This time we dropped our O2 bottles in the ear and then set off
at a pretty good speed and I had to work to keep up the pace, but I didn't
get left behind :-). It always
amazes me that you seem to see people that you know inside caves, and I
saw David Rhea coming out just as we were going back into the
keyhole. So I waved at him and believe it or not he
figured out it was me. It's amazing, these instructor types miss
nothing I assure you, he also even noticed that I had a "new"
light. We made a jump to the hill 400 and then continued on up
past the bats. I felt for sure I would reach my turn pressure
too soon due to keeping up the pace but amazingly I
didn't!!! We made a jump at the end of the line back to
the main line, and about this time I reached turn pressure. I
had never made it quite so far on 1/3 before. I was amazed and it
made me smile :-), especially since I was still keeping up the fast moving pace
of the team. I think it might be that on
previous occasions I had been here on the main line and the flow was less on the
route we had chosen. The dive was so pretty
because I could see the lights of the whole team in front of me lighting up the
cave. It looked blue with lots of light points and silhouettes of
divers swimming. I really wished I had my
camera. This was one of the most fun dives I
have ever had in this cave so far, mostly due to the spectacular view of the
team in front of me. We collected out O2 bottles in the
cavern, and then my buddy kindly flipped off my light (thanks) so that we
could look at how pretty the cavern is, and then exited and decoed at the
log. Since I have learned it's dangerous to turn your
back on people while you are decoing I kept a sharp eye on everyone :-) (well
you never know ;-)... ). I watched behind me for a minute
and then peeked at the other guys but they were already deeply buried in a
wetnotes conversation, and all I could read from a distance was
"Outback" in large letters and a smiley face :-). I
figured the safest thing was to keep my eye on the guy behind me after all ;-).
I had a truly fun weekend, and yes we did get to eat at
outback on the way home. Even after scouring the caves for
artefacts we found none. The part I always hate is
when after dinner we have to split up and return to our varied respective
parts of the state and our non-diving lives, with a promise to dive again
soon. I slept for an hour in Orlando and made it home by
2:00am, ready for my OW class the next day :-) (well you didn't think I
was going to go to work did you!.)
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