So You Want To Be A Cave Diver

So you want to be a cave diver? No? Me either. So what am I doing here? Long story.

I arrived in High Springs Florida on a chilly Sunday evening and proceeded to get lost. Nothing new for me, wreck reels are my friend. I am looking for my home away from home for the next week. Casa de trailer in the middle of nowhere. Smack in the middle of a couple of acres of nowhere. This will be an adventure.

I am suffering, but that is how it is in Florida. I knew that.

Day One is spent in the classroom. Me, Doug from Colorado and Tom from Oregon. Oregon is the only other state, besides New Jersey, that doesn’t pump gas. Tom and I enlightened the others.

Then we were enlightened with the rules of cavern and cave diving, formulas for SAC rate, tank volume, PSI, disproportionate tank sizes, MOD and other stuff. Calculators were pumping out answers left and right. Line arrows, cookies, navigation, cave and cavern sizes styles, parts and pieces. Let’s just say, the cookies aren’t chocolate chip.

Then out to run line drills among the trees. Tie in, following the line, reading the markers along the line and gripping the line tightly in the case of lost visibility are among these items.
And finally …….equipment set up. I truly believe that we reinvented the wheel with that one. Apparently wreck diving and cave diving are somewhat different. No compass, gear strap, fin holder, goody bag, jon line, mondo knife, shark puppet, strobe or weight pockets.

And apparently I have a strange drysuit also. Since I have no D ring inside my bellows pocket, I can’t secure anything there so it all must go on my harness. Five line arrows, four cookies, 3 flashlights, two regulators, one Z knife and a partridge in a pear tree.

This took a full day. But now…….Look out caverns here I come.

9 AM at Ginnie Springs is not early……unless you are directionally challenged…..arriving but 7 minutes late I am immediately befriended and assisted by Kathy of the Ginnie Springs staff. She is from Brooklyn and she knows her stuff. I love her…….

Gearing up and walking over to the stairs, I am on my way. The stairs…..hmmmmmm……I think there were about a dozen going down and I am positive there were 100 or more coming back up but that is another story.
Stepping into the clear warm water I put on my fins and stepped off of the rocks into the pool at the mouth of the cavern. 72 F and 100 feet of visibility. I can do this……..kinda.

You know all that hovering I did while Frnak had all the fun? Well apparently cavern water is different or something because I couldn’t hover worth crap. I bounced along like a ping pong ball and swore my rear dump valve was glued shut. I followed lines, shared air, did S drills and blackout line drills while bouncing off of and touching every rock, leaf, fish, piece of sand and diver in the water. I can donate my long hose…..while wearing a blackout mask…..while holding the line……and swimming completely upside down. Unfortunately that is not quite how the drill goes.

It does not get any better when I enter the cavern. I am like a bottom crawler and spider on the ceiling alternately, all the way to the grate at the back of the cavern. I am bumped to get off the bottom more times than I can count and have my hand permanently wrapped around my rear dump valve. Before today, I had never used my rear dump valve. Today I am “one with it”. There are 5 Rules of Cave Diving and I violated every one of them….with a vengeance. Very frustrating and time for a break. I only have to climb about 100 steps to end this[picture of stairs]…..and I do.

I dive double HP100’s and apparently my wing is too big for my tanks…..not lift wise but widthwise. Like batwings or a really cool cape, it flares out beyond my tanks and lovingly wraps itself around it in all directions, making use of my rear dump valve and fine tuning my buoyancy harder to manage than Rubik’s Cube. This is not so noticeable when ocean diving, but an absolute affront to the senses here.

After much speculation and adjustments I end up borrowing a Rec Wing and head back down to the water. If things don’t get better here, I am sure my instructor will be a candidate for detox, and I am sure that twitch will go away when I do………

Back down the stairs and into the water. While waiting for everyone to get organized I try out this new piece of equipment. Deflate and sink…check…..tap a little air and don’t imitate a pogo stick ….. check ….. pull the rear dump and empty wing …… check ….. hmmmmm …. this could work.

The right equipment makes all the difference in the world. Cost of a borrowed wing…. Eternal gratefulness….. not bouncing off of the floor and ceiling in the Ballroom at Ginnie….. priceless. I wasn’t perfect, but the difference was phenominal. Now my only problems were running a reel, air share, no viz exit, no viz exit while air sharing. More than enough. Other than a small issue of tangling can light cords and hoses while donating (not mine), and almost having to be rescued while trying to find my bungeed backup reg after donating (mine) we did quite well. Only took 184 minutes of dive time but we did good, good enough to earn a fun dive in the cavern AND our Cavern Certification.

Dropping down into the clear water, beneath a rock ledge in about 15 feet of water is a short wide opening , and here you enter. Not far inside the rocks drop off and you head over and down to about 45 feet, and the floor of the Ballroom at Ginnie Springs. What is in a cavern you ask? Well, dark for one. As you play your light around you, the white walls of the cavern come to life reflecting the light and formations of rocks rise up from the floor and smaller cutouts etch themselves into the walls. The bottom is coarse sand and at the far back is a grate. The flow here is quite strong and moving against it is difficult. The grate blocks access to a cave that is dangerous in nature with high flow, poor visibility and a silty bottom. Turning back to exit you spot small fish swimming about (oh yeah…..they be poked) and as you rise back up the rock wall you see the cavern entrance illuminated with the sunlight streaming through the water of the river just outside. Hmmmm. Maybe I do want to do this.

Basic cave starts tomorrow. 9AM. Have to be on time. I will run a reel.