Cave Diving in Florida January 2007

It had been a long time, too bloody long since I had been in a cave. Much has happened in my diving since I got my cave cert in December of 2004, most notably that I have given up open circuit for closed circuit diving. "What will it be like on a rebreather?" I wondered, as Ted McCoy, Greg Jackson and I chugged south on 95 in Ted's hunkin' chunkin' diesel pickup, loaded with everything from five rebreathers to untold stages to a booster, a scooter, my favorite cooking pot, and a big ole sack of Long Island potatoes. Think the Beverly Hillbillies, minus Grandma in her rocker. The plan was for the three of us to drive down a day early. Carl Bayer, Sunny Longordo and Gabe Lamarre were to join us later for a ccr cave course/normoxic trimix class with Martin Robeson, who was flying in from the UK to teach. Later in the week we would all be making the trek to Marianna, and the fabled caves of Merritts Mill Pond: Hole in the Wall, Twin Cave, and especially Jackson Blue.

The drive down wasn't bad, 17 hours from Boonton NJ to Dive Outpost in Luraville, including a quick dinner and some traffic. Cathy's rooms are neat, clean and spacious enough for us to unload all of our gear into, and by that afternoon we had made our way over to Peacock. Greg aka Double Meat had had a very unpleasant dive last year doing the Peanut Tunnel to Waterhole, so we retraced his steps and left him feeling much more positive about it. I have just a handful of dives in Peacock, so I was just ecstatic to be back there. Ted had warned me that handling buoyancy on a rebreather in a cave can be very challenging, what with all the ups and downs, but fortunately I didn't find it to be an issue. There was definitely a learning curve, but it was mercifully short and didn't involve any silt clouds. I learned to make sure I had plenty of diluent with me, as the depth changes eat that up, and to anticipate changes before they happen, but otherwise it was incredibly relaxing to be in a cave and not worry about how much gas I had left.

The very first cave I looked into was Telford Spring, back in '03. I had to wait at the mouth of it while some friends did a dive, as my class didn't start until the next day. What an incredible tease back then to see Adam and Ed tie off and disappear inside. Ted had to drive down to Tampa to pick up Martin, so it was just Greg and me, with Gabe offering kindly surface support. There are a couple of ups and downs at the sinks near the entrance, then it smoothes out into a long snug bedding plane with large cracked blocks interspersed over it. Its a good thing I have a cowling on my Prism, since I was still fine-tuning spatial awareness with the unit on my back (read: thunk!) I was glad I persuaded Greg to go just a little farther, since it turned into a tight twisty hurly-burly that was great fun to negotiate. It was with great anticipation that I entered, and great satisfaction that I exited.

Cow Spring Upstream was a very serious dive, one I probably shouldn't have been on. Let's just say there was a bit of a fudge factor on the requirements and leave it at that. Greg's black cloud made an appearance minutes before the dive, when his light failed him, but on the up side he got to go watch football. The entrance was about as tight as anything I will fit into, at least with the Prism. There are several switchbacks that involve full-on cramming yourself into a restriction, bailout removed, shallow breaths, face in the sand, in the dark, wiggling and scrabbling to find purchase to ease in a half inch at a time. Wow was that tight, but so worth it. The tunnels have these beautiful scalloped walls, then gorgeous open chambers. Part of why the cave is restricted is due to its delicate nature, so we were on our best behavior to be precise with our buoyancy and not touch anything. Towards that end they have a large rope tied off parallel to the mainline, to help through the higher flow areas. With care though we were able to not use that either, as it still unavoidably abrades the rock. About halfway back is a tight crack in the floor, snug but doable, that leads down below 100' to a more open, mazelike area. We turned with regrets at 1700' when it narrowed down to sidemount-only, hitting a jump on the return. I was not too excited at the prospect of doing an open circuit bailout, what with all those restrictions, but our rebreathers justified our faith in them and performed flawlessly. Later that day Ted and I did a reprise of Telford Spring, pushing much farther than Greg and I had the previous day. It is very obvious where the open circuit divers hit their thirds about 2000' back, as the cave gets dramatically darker and much siltier all of a sudden. No more limestone rubbed white, no handprints in the mud, just clear water and dark surfaces that sucked the light right out of our HIDs.

With Greg's light back online we headed over to Little River the next day. The flow was relatively low compared to how it sometimes blows there, but even so it took some doing. The spring heel on Ted's fin came loose but was field-repairable, so we continued on. We made a long loop through varied terrain, including a few jumps. Back a couple of thousand feet is a test well drilled through the ceiling, which was very strange to come across. Shortly thereafter we went over a rise, down a rise, then turned the dive as the passage got too narrow for back-mount. It was there that I had a reminder how quickly things can turn in a cave, as a couple of blips in the mud reduced visibility to zero. I grabbed onto the line, further reducing visibility as it was touching the silt, strained to see my buddies lights in the brown out, and kicked towards the exit and clear water. There was never any danger, but it got me to thinking how quickly a silt out can lead to a lost line, lost buddy emergency. It was a valuable lesson. On the drive back from Little River a wild boar crossed our path. It was enormous! Much bigger than any black bear I've seen, and I see those all the time. I have a new-found respect for the guy I met once who hunts them with a spear.

That night the lot of us packed our stuff and headed west to Marianna. Ted had rented a house there, pics of which can be seen at holeinthewallhouse.com. Billy Gambrel and Bill Graham, two Long Island divers, own it with a third partner, and have turned it into a diver sanctuary. I had half expected some sort of run-down guys' crash pad, but the house is nicely furnished, well landscaped, comfortable, and has lots of picnic tables for gear. It is right on the pond, so after renting pontoon boats we were able to just load up at the dock and tie in right at the caves mouth. My job on the trip was to cook, so I especially appreciated the knives, pots, and pans (I had brought my 8" french chef 1200 miles in vain, there was an identical one in the knife block.) Tim Robinson was going to join us but had a family thing come up at the last minute. The only meat he'll eat is game, so Ted bagged a deer and brought down a motherload of venison. Thus, venison stew, venison burgers, venison chops with a garlic/coriander rub, plus chicken francese and a catfish fry, roasted asparagus, butternut squash, etc.. Granted, hungry divers will eat the ugly off a warthog, but it was still pretty tasty if I do say so myself.

Our first day there Ted, Greg and I cruised (well, chugged) down to Jackson Blue. What an amazing cave, starting with a gorgeous cavern zone. The cave slopes down gently until about 200' back, then drops off a cliff from 30' down to 70'. Its all fairly open, wide and pretty. The first 2000' are perfect for scooters. Ah, next time. We turned the dive at about 2200' back, then sailed in the flow for a much faster exit. Greg's drysuit was compromised, plus he wasn't wearing a hood, so he froze his nethers off the entire dive. Credit where credits due though, he kept his head in the game and his skills sharp, which is not always easy when you are physically miserable. Our deco time was spent playing with the blue, black and yellow crayfish in the cavern, some of which are just enormous. It helped scratch my urge to be catching lobsters.

Greg, Ted and I returned the next day to Jackson Blue, but Greg aborted on the surface when his drysuit again flooded. Ted and I shadowed the class with our lights off, resisting the urge to grab the hindmost just to hear him squeak. This wound up being my favorite dive of the trip so far. Ted led, and at a very sensible pace. Too often I have the open-circuit mentality that I need to hurry up, so I can get as far as possible before turning on thirds. It was a real pleasure to just take our time in the cave, exploring different loops and enjoying the scenery. Ted had brought an extra bailout bottle, so we dropped that at our point of deepest penetration yesterday and kept on going. Around 3000' there was a crazy spiral pattern in the floor, which we later found out was due to a scooter with a jammed open trigger, leading the diver to slam it into the mud and then up against a wall until the battery died. It must have been quite a sight, or not considering how much silt would have been kicked up. At an hour and 45 minutes we turned the dive, 3700' into the cave.

Despite hearing that Twin Cave was blown out, Greg, Ted and I decided to find out for ourselves. Twin was indeed a messy silty dive, but after dropping down a fissure and swimming a ways we hit clear water. I stretched my dil a little thin on this dive, and wound up plugging in my offboard bailout. This was the first time I had done that, and it worked great. Its always nice to have yet another way to get home. Later in the afternoon we checked out Hole in the Wall, also purportedly not diveable. It was, but it took some doing. For the first thousand or so feet in the water was cold and silted out, with less than 10' of visibility. After that it opened up quite nicely, with enormous rooms with vaulted ceilings. You could tell the moment each person hit warmer water by the sighs, the temperature difference was well in excess of 15 degrees. There was by far the most life I had seen in a cave yet. Blind white crayfish scuttled about on the floor and dropped past us from the ceiling, leaving little tracks in the silt of the floor. White newts, startled by the light, swam about in confusion, sometimes swimming right into us. An enormous catfish tracked us briefly near the cave mouth. Later by the cave mouth we saw crayfish that could have held their own off NJ, their claws three, four and even five inches long. We followed what we thought was the gold line all the way to where it restricted down to almost nothing, then turned the dive.

That night Ted Green and Mark Nix came down from Maryland to join us. Ted runs the OC Diver out of Ocean City, Maryland, a boat I boat I would have been on last spring but for nasty weather. They had all of our appetites whetted with stories of diving the wrecks off Maryland. Mark took the same CCR Cave class last year with Martin, so he was able to empathize with (or was that snicker at?) the trials and tribulations of the students.

Saturday was the day we picked for the Journey to the Center of the Earth dive. The gold line runs a mile back into Jackson Blue, and we were determined to run it out to the very end, then check out some chambers off of it. Including staged bottles we had five aluminum 80's to get us out, plus an al40 of O2, and another of 70%. More than enough bailout. It was a long swim, but after a little more than two hours we hit the end of the mainline at 4450', which terminates with a taunt ("stroke!"). An exploration line continued a few hundred more feet back towards the source of the spring. Right near the end was a chamber called the Stratosphere. What an amazing place. The ceiling shot up 70' to a beautiful pure white dome, and the walls were terraced like an opera house. It's like nothing I've ever seen.

The way out got interesting. Greg was leading for the exit, and was apparently ready to get out. Ted and I were still enjoying the Stratosphere when he dropped down under a ledge and disappeared. We went after him, but he had left the gold line, taken another turn, and shot down a narrow silty tunnel. After a heated pow-wow Ted took off after him while I stayed back at the crossroads. A long ten minutes later they returned through a cloud of silt, and we reformed our group and exited without incident. Its not really the kind of thing you want to deal with 4200' back, but I guess the important thing is to be able to deal with it. My love for the RGBM algorithm was renewed when we got back to the mouth, and I found I had 18 minutes of deco compared to the hammerhead's 80 minutes. Our overall runtime was five hours, by far the longest dive I've done to date.

For this trip we had a number of rebreathers with us. There was my Prism, Greg's HammerMeg, Ted McCoy's HammerMeg, Gabe's stock Meg, Carl, Sunny, Ted Green and Martin on Classic Kisses, and Mark on his FrankenVisionInspiration (or was that FrankenHammerInspiration?). Billy Gambrel later showed up with his incredibly cool sidemount Prism, a very polished mod indeed, and did several dives with Tobias on his Inspiration. In addition Ted McCoy had Ron Benson's old Optima, which he dove for several days and enjoyed thoroughly. All these rebreathers gave me the opportunity to try something new, and for the last two days I played around on a HammerMeg. I really liked how it was weighted and balanced, and the Hammerhead heads-up display, with its PO2 monitor, was way cool. The unit was set to use the Juergensen algorithm for adding O2, which held an impressively solid setpoint. No matter how much up and down I did, within 30 seconds it had the setpoint nailed down tight. I liked it. I liked it a lot. The profile was much lower than my Prism, which helped when Ted and I were determined to force a passage in Jackson Blue. We eventually dug a channel through the sand and wiggled in, laughing like fools. For my last dive we went back to Hole in the Wall, and did several dark and silty jumps. The restrictions and switchbacks make it impossible not to silt out, and the low flow means it doesn't go anywhere for days. So, my apologies to anyone who followed us, but we had ourselves some fun.

When we returned to the dock we found Carl and Sunny looking bedraggled but proud, having successfully completed both their cave and trimix certs. Congratulations to them, and congratulations to me too, because more ccr-cave dive buddies = more cave diving for Rob = happy Rob.

Ghost Fleet November 2006

The Ghost Fleet of Key West conjures up images of Spanish galleons. In fact, it refers to a number of US WWII-vintage warships that were sunk for weapons testing. In early November a group of us visited it with Andrew Driver of Mad Dog Expeditions. Louis Barson, Tim Robinson, Fabrice Pilato, Chuck Wade and Andrew dove Megs, Simon Hutchins dove a Vision-equipped Classic Inspiration, Doug Rice dove an Evolution, and I had my Prism. Rounding out the bunch was Joe Zimmerman, OC Joe, who reminded us all why we dive rebreathers!

The RV Tiburon is an excellent platform for this kind of diving, with a fill station on board, plenty of space for 9 divers, and wireless internet access even when we were on the wrecks. Thanks to Jackie it also supplies the best food, hands down, I've ever had on a dive trip. A trained chef, each breakfast, lunch and dinner was a delight, with steak sandwiches, pork roasts with mango salsa, stuffed salmon, grilled chicken with yoghurt curry sauce, etc. Cracking good tucker. We all had our own rooms, so no one had to be offended by snoring (or worse - Jackie makes a killer bean salad), and with four outlets per room we were able to skip the musical-rechargers game.

For Day One we decided to make a shallower acclimation dive onto the USS Curb. Something was lost in translation though, and what several of us thought was going to be a 130' dive was actually 190' to the sand. No worries, we all had basically the same setup for the whole week, so with a little tweaking of the dive plan it was Game On. The Curb, a salvage vessel, is 214' long, intact and upright, with a history noteworthy to Northeast wreck divers: She was one of the first vessels to arrive when the Shalom struck the Stolt Dagali, and helped escort the Stolt's stricken bow portion back to port. Chuck, Joe and I were Team One, with Chuck splashing a couple of minutes early to secure the line. The seas were moderate when we rolled in, and it took a bit of work to pull down the line. A goliath grouper greeted us on the deck, and another visited me when I went down to the sand at the keel. I spent the week diving wet with no hood or gloves, though I had to re-learn not to touch things. I poked at one of the pink lichen-looking shells attached to the hull and got a nice slice in my finger. At that depth red colors were long since filtered out, so it looked like black ink spilling out of me. Kind of neat, I felt like a squid. There were plenty of places to penetrate, albeit with lots of monofilament, and it seemed like all of us were entangled at one point or another. The ascent got a little more exciting for me when my Prism went tits-up. I heard a {tink!} sound, then O2 started dumping out. Joe Z was right there, so he helped me unplug the line, then safeguarded a precious handful of manual-injector parts until I could get topside. First time I've had to do OC bailout, there's no drill like for real. For the rest of the dive I was running through calling SMI and having them overnight me parts, but when I got back onboard I found I could work it out. The circlip holding my injector snapped, but by lucky happenstance it matches exactly the one diverite uses for their reels, and better yet supplies in the kit for same.

Andrew Driver talks about how much he hates Day One on a trip, and I can see his point. Besides my cut finger, minor entanglement and exploding O2 injector, I also had a misfilled diluent bottle (66%!) and issues with my dive computer. After a midday nap I came onto the deck to see my Prism looking like an extra from a bondage porno film. While lurching from some wave action it had made a good-faith effort to slip under the bench and over the side! I can not even contemplate in the theoretical how I would respond if my rig had actually disappeared. Probably it would involve wailing, histrionics, maybe some smelling salts, the five stages of grief, sackcloth and ashes. You know, dignified stuff. Fortunately that was it for issues with me, and the rest of the week was smooth as silk.

It was a fun group on this trip. Some of the guys I had dived with before, others I knew by name, and a few were new to me. There was a nice vibe, and we had a good time kicking back on the Tiburon, telling stories and busting chops. We hadn't even left the dock before Fabrice's pale skin had him dubbed French Vanilla. By the end of day one I was GDR for Go Deep Rob, as I always like to see what is all the way down on the bottom. Not the worst thing I've been called, even if you use the more conventional take on the first two letters. Louis had a little flooding incident, but didn't seem too fond of it when I called him Louis Leakey. The black cowling on my Prism was too hard to see from above, so at Andrew's behest I put a large white X on it with duct tape. It made me feel like a target. I especially enjoyed Tim's tales of doing business in Japan, and Simon's stories about working on a billionaire's yacht were a window to a life I'd never thought about. Perhaps I should try this whole billionaire thing, it sounds like fun!

Dive Two was on the Wilkes Barre, the Lethal Lady. Built at the Philadelphia Navy Yard in ‘44, she received 4 battle stars for service in the Pacific during World War Two. Numerous airmen owed their lives to her rescue operations after being shot down, and she also came to the assistance of the Bunker Hill after it was crippled and set ablaze by kamikaze aircraft. Off Iwo Jima she served in a ground support role, pounding shore defenses, and later turned back a determined counterattack on the ground. It took 7 minutes to descend the 210’ to the deck, due to the current and scope on the line. Chuck again did the tie in, setting up a mooring so we could easily return throughout the week. The ship, originally 608’ long with a 63’ beam, was blown in half during weapons testing in 1972, with the stern intact and upright. We set off down the deck, pulling ourselves up each of the massive 6” turrets (that would be the bore size, not the actual height of the turret!) They were amazing, you pull over the top of one and are looking right down the muzzles of the ones behind it. Each one was like a Joseph Cornell box, its own little still life of fish, crabs, shrimp, yellow and red sponges, and red oysters. Returning to the stern, I dropped down to 257' looking for the props, but they had been removed. Ascending the starboard stern was incredible, a 50’ wall of steel and life. Barracudas swirled all about us, including a 7' beast, and kept us company through our hour of decompression. In the spirit of Key West we all engaged in some frantic man-on-man action, at least until we brought jon lines and were able to spread out on the deco stops.

For Tuesday we returned to the Wilkes Barre. A scooter team was formed so Joe, Chuck and Andrew could cut loose, and for the rest of the week I buddied up with Simon and Louis. Conditions were much finer than the day before, and descent was a breeze down the much-more-vertical anchor line. Dive One I led off down the deck to the cut, then curled up and over the superstructure for the return. High on the port side is a rope that leads to the bow section, which lies on its starboard side 250 away. Nice time to have a scooter! For Dive Two I brought my camera along, and took some shots of the long gun barrels as we weaved in and out of them. Things got a little squirrelly later when we surfaced, as one of the divers exhibited symptoms of a type 1 decompression hit in the shoulder. He stayed on O2 for a while, but when symptoms didn’t improve it was time to go to the next level. Fortunately we were eminently well equipped to help him. One of the beautiful things about going on a trip with Mad Dog Expeditions is that Andrew brings a portable decompression chamber (Greg Norman's old one, for you golf fans.) Within about 30 minutes we had it rolled out and inflating, with the diver inside. Simon has been training on the same type of chamber for the yacht, so it was a perfect opportunity for him to do some hands-on work under Andrew’s watchful eyes. Joe too has chamber training, so he stayed inside to assist as a tender. Louis and I made ourselves useful by keeping the two sets of doubles in rotation, since the chamber uses standard tanks to pressurize. It was fascinating to watch, and fortunately all symptoms disappeared after a few hours in the pot.

The following day we headed out to the USS Kendrick, with F-18's doing overflights as we left the harbor. Commissioned in 1942, the Kendrick spent World War II serving in the Mediterranean. In 1968 she was destroyed in weapons testing, and came to rest in 320’ of water, intact and upright. 348’ long with a 36’ beam, she is long, sleek and mean. Captain Tim dropped a shot bag, and the scooter team splashed 30 minutes before the rest of us to tie it in. It had fallen only 60 or so feet from the wreck, and by the time we descended they had it tied in beautifully right by the stack. There was no current whatsoever. Louis, Simon and I dropped like parachutists straight down the line. Simon clipped a strobe and I led off, eager to see the propellers. They did not disappoint, with 60' long prop shafts, and a wicked pitch befitting a 35 knot vessel. The ship is cracked in half just abaft the main superstructure, and came to rest about 15' back and inline, like a giant cross-section. We were moving with a purpose, and managed to circumswim the ship. The Kendrick struck bow first, buckling the deck upwards at a 25 degree angle. I slipped over the bow just to see that knife-like keel pointed at me.

The next day we decided to take it easy, which in the context of the trip meant only doing one dive to 250', again on the Wilkes Barre. The scooter boys took the opportunity to follow the line out to the bow, and were given a tour by a friendly 6' reef shark. My group did a little penetrating, but it was mighty silty (all the more so when Louis pulled an old phone from the muck), not to mention full of wires and line. The hangar in the stern was especially interesting, with rails for shuttling and launching the planes. The lovely weather held up, and deco was spent on a dead-vertical line, with the boat aimlessly pirouetting atop it.

Andrew had brought along his LAR V oxygen rebreather, which used to belong to Will Smithers. He was kind of enough to set it up, so Joe and I spent some time playing around with the crabs and juvenile fish at the dock. It felt very strange to be on a chest-mounted rebreather with no PO2 monitor, but it sat fairly nicely on the body and was fun for a change.

For the last day we elected to return to the Kendrick. The seas had kicked up a bit, but were still reasonable. Oddly, I found myself fairly narc'd at first, though it went away after a few minutes. An enormous Roughtail Stingray lay placidly in the sand, easily the size of my dining room table. On deco I was the farthest back on the stern line, and started to get concerned when I realized Joe was missing. Not good, not good at all. I finally decided that if his buddies didn't seem too upset then he must be ok, and put morbid thoughts aside. Then I looked next to me where Fabrice had been a moment ago. He was nowhere to be seen. I looked up, down, each side - Holy Shit! No Fabrice! Finally I looked behind me, to see him 20' back and chugging into the current - apparently he had used both hands to get his jon line out, and was swept back a bit. After that I decided to put my head down and mind my own damn business, this den mother stuff is not good for the nerves.

After a week of moderate to excellent weather Mother Nature showed us the back of her hand, but it still only cost us the last day. It had its upside too: what cooler way to leave Key West than in a convertible in the rain, flying over the bridges and still dry with the top down?