Orange Grove 21 Encountering a Student and Instructor and Eventually Their Silt
Вставка
- Опубліковано 17 жов 2024
- 2/26/24. Orange Grove Sink Wes Skiles Peacock Springs State Park near Luraville FL. This was to have been a dive to Woody's Room. I had led a team of 3 divers there about 6 or 7 years ago. One of those divers who is still open circuit and I (I am now on CCR) decided to go back. I ended up turning the dive shortly before getting to Woody's Room partly because it seemed to be taking too long but mostly because I was wondering if I had really led a team of 3 in the passage. It seemed small enough that 2 divers would be better so I had doubts if I was on the correct line. It turns out, I think I was and likely only about 100ft from Woody's Room. Perhaps I can find another buddy who likes smaller passage to go back with me.
Cave Atlas has a very good map of this system under the resources tab for Peacock Springs. Cave Diving. Technical Diving. Sidemount Open Circuit. Closed Circuit Rebreather. mCCR rebreather.
As always videos are numbered for this dive in the order they were shot. Unedited. Videos will be added to the appropriate playlist (playlists are grouped by the cave so in the case Orange Grove Sink)
Amazing watching it go from crystal clear to hazy fog. did the silt not worry you? The last minute of this clip stressed me out lol
Honestly, no I was not worried. The vis was far from zero. Frankly we are trained to deal with zero visibility during our certification class and I have seen much worse vis than this over the past 26 years. Even true zero vis is quite workable if the passage is large enough to get through but not so large you are bouncing up and down. Frankly, only very small passage really go to zero. True zero vis and a broken line can be booger, but we have training and equipment for that also. After training it is good to progress your dives slowly and make sure you are not exceeding your comfort limit. We all have a limit though.
Yep, sounds like me in my cavediving student days. But Orange is a great dive. Haven't been th here in 20 years, sadly.
Always wondered if anyone was able to penetrate further into the Martz Offshoot.
They probably were. But places like require side mount and a desire to dive in zero vis for extended periods. I use the KISS Sidewinder but I don’t love extended periods of truly tiny scraping to get through cave. I don’t mind passing restrictions if it opens up a bit and I don’t mind zero visibility for periods of time. There are people willing to do things way beyond what I am willing to do though. I have been doing this for 23 years and have nearly 600 caved dives logged. I have a wife and my son is in 7th grade. I don’t like doing things that I feel are not quite reasonable and safe. There are a ton of videos on YT of diving. Very few are unedited like mine. Editing gets you views. But unedited gives you more of the feel I think. My playlists are just videos organized by location. Cheers!
@@cavediver74 Some restrictions bothered me, others didn't, but I could never figure out why. I even took a bunch of "tight day" tutorials back in the 1990s from an instructor whose name I can't remember (might have been Brent) and who may be cavediving in Heaven by now. I remember they called him "Dip 'em and rip 'em" at Ginnie Springs. He was an old Vietnam War "Spooky" pilot and he was the most critical instructor ever, just gave brutal briefings after every dive, totally unsparing. But he was a great teacher and always planned the best dives. I could do tight restriction training with him and keep my sanity, but never trusted myself to do it alone on anything seriously challenging.
Anyhow, I remember trying to get down the Martz Offshoot, it getting really tight but not being bothered at all, though I didn't get far. But Bonnet would creep me out.
I'm a somewhat apprehensive cavediver at best, but oddly zero viz calms me down and usually I just bumble along unconcernedy. Like putting a blanket over a parrot's cage, I quiet down.
This was before rebreathers, were common, but I certified sidemount and mixed gas. Have barely cavedived since ( been overseas and in West Coast), but still obsessed about it.
Lived in Melrose, near High Springs, for years, had frontage right on Little Lake Santa Fe. Karst experts say Lake Santa Fe is aquifer-fed but there is no open rock on the bottom or spring openings. I know they're wrong, under certain conditions the lake surface roils in places and the water gets really cold. There's a spot near the narrow channel between Little Santa Fe and Lake Santa Fe covered with grass and cypress knees and if you look down jussst right from a boat (it's hard to find the spot) the water is crystal clear way down but all around it's dark and tannic. Pretty sure only I know about it.
My hope is to get a sidescan radar and map the lake bottom when I finally get back to Florida.
Thanks for posting your stuff, checking your other videos out!
Good thing there's a guideline running along the right side of that tunnel....... for a minute I thought there wasn't any line at all.....
Vis got dodgy for sure. There is always a guideline or we run a reel. If it was not there or it was lost we would have been doing our lost line procedures. True zero vis and/or lost line/broken line in a passage this large (relatively speaking) would be far far less than enjoyable. In a passage so small you can reach out motionless and feel both walls, the floor, and ceiling it isn’t so bad. The line can’t be far if the passage is really really really small. Of course, the smaller the passage the more likely you are to encounter no vis (not to mention the lower the vis is to start). These are things we think about in every passage. Cheers!
I carry my stage underneath because of my shoulders and getting it on top but your buddy sure seemed to be struggling with it up there shouldn’t he clip the bottom down I have seen Edd do this but clip it down
Yes, and he used to a la Edd. Edd does not top mount them when using the Sidewinder though. He was trying not clipping it for a change after not caving diving for several months. Between that and having only one he was fighting it.
I will claim the silt unfortunately, but that was not me and my instructor you passed. We musta been out already. 1/6ths does not last long.
Just keep improving! Not being perfect at first is normal but that also really makes you learn faster.
Looks like ya’ll were going to a fire! Fast swim!
And it wasn’t even Otto, LOL. Seems like I have to swim faster when not leading.
@@cavediver74 I could tell it wasn’t him. If I lead anything next month we won’t be swimming that fast