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What a beautiful morning! We’ve just recently had a “chilly” spell here in North Florida lately, Jerry and I had talked on the phone yesterday and we were both thinking it might not be a good river diving day, but no worries. The sky was blue, not much wind and the air was a comfortable 70 degrees. As usual, we met at CEE to get fills, had our usual joshing session before heading down to the boat ramp and I managed to talk Jerry into showing the world what the essentials of river diving are! As you can see from the picture, everyone had a cheery kind of autumn glow going on and it just seemed to be one of those awesome dive days. As we pulled out of the shop and headed off, little did we know that the adventures ahead of us that day would be interesting to say the least…..

Last week on our Rock Bluff outing, Jerry and I had espied a beautiful little potential lead, so our mission today was to go have a look see. We have some knotted line, but mainly we just want to see if it “goes”! We unload the canoe and my bud suddenly realizes that he’s spaced a dive computer, no big deal we have extras so we continue on packing the boat. I have a moment of “I know I’m forgetting something”, but it passes so we hop in and start heading up the river. As we paddle up the Suwannee, there’s a little cove that looks interesting so we head over to check it out, but we can’t see a boil so we continue on upstream on our adventure. Sooner rather than later, we arrive at the hole we’d seen the previous week so we anchor the canoe, get geared up and head over. I’d stuck my head in it last week and while tight, it looked like we could get in there, and it was such a pretty location. I try and take a photo of the entrance, but as you can see we stirred it up a little too much while donning tanks, but hopefully it’ll give you some idea of what it looked like. I tie off a primary and start wiggling down into the hole. Darn, I make it through the first restriction, but then it corkscrews down to the right and looks impassable. I push back out to let the more experienced guy make the call and tell him my thoughts. He grins, says “I’ll be back” and drops into the hole, I try to see what’s going on, but of course there are twigs, branches and all kinds of sediment pouring out of it, so I just surface and wait. Jerry pops back up and echoes my concerns; we “might” be able to make it through the second restriction upon closer inspection, but neither of us feel that there’s a place to turn around if we can’t, so we decide to bail on it and head elsewhere. There’s a moment of disappointment, but what the hell, “you don’t know, if you don’t go”….

We decide to head to Rock Bluff again since its close by and we still have plenty of gas and I don’t think either of us will ever get bored of that high flow hellhole! Sure enough, there’s a good boil on the surface and I volunteer to go first and do “shovel duty” and run the line etc. We exchange a brief dive plan and down we go. It’s funny there, you don’t really notice the flow until you drop down under the overhang and all of a sudden, there’s fire hose strength water hitting you in the face and if you’re really lucky it’ll have shells and rocks in it. I knuckle down and start shoveling, I suck in a piece of shell, but cough it out and it’s gone. Finally, I’ve cleared enough of a hole and head in, there’s a neat trick to this entrance and soon enough I’m inside and out of the flow. I pull out a reel and go to tie off, when suddenly my reg starts free flowing like crazy, I cuss, switch regs and start shutting the offender down and then the other one starts to flow like some kind of crazy thing, so I just deal, letting gas blow out of my mouth and finally I get the other one cleaned out and back in my mouth. Ah, a moment of relief as I can actually get a real breath now, so I start shutting the other one down to get it cleaned out. Success! Finally I get all the crap out of there, give Jerry the okay, turn the tank back on and go to grab the reel again, but suddenly there’s an audible pop and my gauge starts to bubble like crazy from the spindle. AARRGGGHHH! I scream my frustrations through the reg, turn around, indicate to Jerry that I’m done and does he want to go on? He politely declines and we both turn to head out, we’re up in no time and I’m seriously pissed off, but it’s not that big of a deal until, if you can believe it, we realize that my spare sidemount reg is in my van and Jerry’s o-ring kit is in his truck. After we realize this, the day kind of takes a funny turn and we both start chuckling like some goofy idiots, I mean we kind of went diving…

We decided to take a picture of the offending gauge and as you can see, it was really putting out a lot of gas! After a while of the usual storytelling, we take off the suits, reload the gear and start paddling back down the Suwannee. We run into a couple of fishermen who bemoan the lack of mullet, so we tell them to head up into the inlet as we’d just seen a ton. They thank us and we continue on and even though it’s been an interesting sort of day, it’s just good to be out on the water having a good time. We load the canoe up, go grab some burgers and over lunch start making plans for next week, which of course include having an extra reg, computers and an o-ring kit….

It’s finally cooled off a little bit and after a beautiful paddle up the Suwannee, Jerry and I finally pull up to the spring. We can see the boil at Shotgun like a crazy thing and I wonder how hard it’ll be blowing out down below. Throwing the tanks in the water and getting dressed, we josh back and forth about the usual stuff, letting the cave bubble away silently behind us.

Finally we’ve said all there is to say and it’s time to go adjust some attitudes, so we grin, drop down and Jerry grabs the shovel and starts getting the worst of the rocks out of the way. I’m staying back just a bit, whack, obviously not far enough as a good size chunk of rock tags me so I decide to retreat a foot or so. My buddy slithers in like he’s done dozens of dives here, which of course he has and I grit my teeth and head into the tiny slit. My reg starts gushing so I wrap my lips around it trying to get a handhold and I’m wedged, finally! I take a moment to try and get my breathing under control and continue to push in. I wedge a fin up in the ceiling behind me, my elbow edges in, I get some leverage and sweet, I pop up and out of the flow. I look over and Jerry’s grinning at me having tied off the primary, but I need a second to recover, holy smokes I’m getting old! Finally we head off, I decide to switch regs, wham, and a free flow just starts kicking. Angrily I flash my buddy, take the offending reg apart, clean it out and hesitantly take a breath, cool we’re off….

Rock Bluff is a beautiful cave varying from gorgeous domes to wicked restrictions with two spring tunnels converging approximately 40 feet from the entrance. The North route, the bigger and siltier of the two, will be the second part of our dive today but first we’re off to explore the South route which is definitely the tighter of the two.

I drop into the steady rhythm of breathing and start to enjoy the small sidemount cave. Jerry’s doing the beautiful kick up in front of me and even though there’s silt, it’s acting relatively benign. I’m keeping a good eye on features and line positioning as we head in, since it seems like it’d be good knowledge to have on the exit! While things are small, it’s not uncomfortable by any means and the groove starts to find a nice rhythym. We turn a corner and finally I’m confronted by the first major restriction. Jerry negotiates it nicely, so while thinking to myself “oh, how bad could it be”, I flip onto my side and start wiggling. Luckily, it’s not too silty and after a couple of contortions, I pop through. Jerry glances at me, I give him the hang loose sign, he grins through the reg and we continue on.

Due to my antics at the entrance I hit turn pressure a tad prematurely, reluctantly flash Jerry and we flip around. The ride out is uneventful, although having the flow behind me while wiggling back through the restrictions, made me understand the whole cork in the champagne bottle thing.

We hit the primary reel, wait for a moment for the silt to go by, recalculate gas and confirm our line to the North route. This is almost a different cave, billowing silt piles instead of tight rock squeezes, but still gorgeous to behold. We head up and down, following the twisting tunnel through the confines of the rock and life is good, another kickass day of diving. All too soon, Jerry gives me the turnaround and we slowly work our way back through the puffy clouds of nebulous silt that flutter everywhere. My hand idly traces the line in case we lose vis, but it’s all good as I look down, see rock, look up and see our reel.

Finally I head back to the entrance with Jerry behind me and scoot out through the small entrance hole in a cloud of sand and shells. As we pop out of the fissure crack I’m laughing through my reg as I head up to the daylight and yes, another day has been exemplified by a great cave dive. I start babbling away at Jerry and don’t even notice the elderly gentleman and his wife behind us on their boat. He asks “y’all were in that cave?” We reply “yes sir” and he just shakes his head……

I pull into Bill’s shop, Cave Excursions in Luraville and head on in to chat with Linda. My buddy, Brian shows up a couple of minutes later and starts getting his tanks filled. We mill around and talk about the usual sort of things, eventually we grab some directions from Bill and head in the general direction of Morgan. After driving through some woods and dirt roads, we finally arrive at Don’s property where Morgan spring is located, just off the Suwannee.

The first thing that you notice is the elaborate two story deck that crosses over the big sinkhole, then you notice the dark hole on the right and the pulse starts to quicken! Sweet, this is my first time here and Brian has kindly offered to be my escort as he’s been here before.

I ask him what to expect and he just sort of laughs and says “You’ll see”. We haul our deco bottles down to the water and hang them off the looped lines attached to the steps, Morgan’s a deeper dive and we decided to use a couple of deco gases. Finally, we’re all geared up, in the water and ready to drop.

We head down to a hole in about 20ft of water, covered by dead tree limbs and other assorted debris. Gingerly picking our way through, we come upon a crack that drops straight down into the bowels of the earth. Descending down headfirst, we try to keep from touching the walls as thick piles of silt lay on the rocks, just waiting for an errant fin kick. The crack finally bottoms out and I find myself looking at some extremely pretty ongoing tunnel. There seems to be no downstream here and after adjusting buoyancy and getting settled, Brian and I kick off into the mild flow. It’s so nice to be in a cave where everything seems to be untouched and the only sign of divers before us is the #24 line snaking off into the distance. Morgan reminds me of parts of Peacock or some of the further reaches of Telford, with really pretty high ceilings above us and dome rooms stretching out off of the sides of the mainline. I’m looking around and cackling through my reg in glee as we traverse the fairly silty passage. The vis is not spectacular but definitely good enough for the two of us! This would be a good place to run a scooter due to the depth, but you would definitely need to know what you were doing. Unfortunately, we hit our turn pressures all too soon and have to start our exit. I start swimming through some of the rooms off to the side on the way out, playing my light off the pristine formations that surround me and just marveling at it all. I glance over at Brian and he has the same look on his face that I do, how cool is this cave!

After a while, we arrive back at the up line and start the first of our deep stops on our journey back to the surface. I love shielding my light and watching the water shine down from above and this, along with other creative experiments, helps pass our deco time. We surface to the crystalline sun shining down through the trees surrounding the sink and I can’t help but think how wonderful cave diving is and how lucky we all are to have friends to share it with. Brian’s grinning from ear to ear, when we reach the steps and of course we discuss how we’re going to have to come back here again soon. We head up the steps, back to the vehicles and continue to chat about our cave dive, but eventually the afternoon just fades into a richness of life that’s hard to describe to those who have not ventured into our underground labyrinths…

I pull into Cave Excursions East and meet up with Jerry, who’s getting some fills for our dives today. Jerry’s the head guide at Hart Springs, a beautiful cave system located in Gilchrist County and he’s asked me to come along and help him see if the visibility has improved enough to up the guide ratio from 1:1 and also install some line arrows marking the distance from the entrance on the gold line that starts at Little Hart.

There are now two entrances to the Hart Springs cave system, Black Lagoon (the traditional entrance) and Little Hart, which was unusable until a couple of years ago when some serious flooding moved the sand that had been blocking the entrance. Due to the pristine nature of the system, this is a guided dive with guests required to have at least one hundred dives after Full Cave certification. It’s also one of the prettiest cave dives around and if you have the chance to come here and meet the prerequisites, I’d highly recommend it!

After jawing with Jim, the tank monkey of the day at Cave East, Jerry grabs his tanks and we drive on down to Hart Springs. Our first dive is going to be in Black Lagoon, so we get dressed and make the long walk down the dirt track. This is where the LP85’s are really nice! The mosquitoes aren’t nearly as bad as usual, so we take our time in the water before we drop, after making sure there are no gators nearby!

Normally the drop down to the cave system is through black water, but today we can actually see something and I marvel at the way this pristine crack into the earth looks, after all these years of negotiating it by feel. We drop onto the gold and immediately jump left into a pristine, but silty tunnel. The visibility is fantastic and the mounds of wobbling silt almost dare you to mess up a kick. Jerry’s modifying like a maniac in front of me and I appreciate the nice technique as I have an opportunity to look around and really study the cave. We hit a T and veer right, head through a beautiful duckunder and right again at another T. Pretty soon, we’re back on the gold line and heading deeper into the cave. There’s particulate in the water from the flow and it’s not as clear as the side passage, but it’s still better than a month or so ago. We head on for a while and then knowing we have a second dive to do, we turn and head back, riding the gold braid back to the entrance and start our ascent.

We sit on the surface a while and talk about the dive, we’re both just loving the remoteness of the dive, the quiet atmosphere, the anticipation of a second dive this afternoon and almost regretfully we start the walk back to the vehicles.

We’ve decided to sidemount for the second dive, since we’ll be working with tape, lines and arrows and the possibility of separation, so after switching out gear and tanks we head over to Little Hart. No one’s been in here for a while, so the first part of the dive is spent pulling the line up out of the sand, removing tree limbs, checking tieoffs and making sure the gold braid is still intact. We kick up a storm while doing this but luckily the flow is high and it all sails out behind us. Finally things are where they need to be, and we start our task of installing line arrows.

So, guess who gets to be the dummy? That’s right; it’s me, kind of appropriate huh! For those who’ve never done any surveying, the “dummy” is the person who gets to hold the end of the tape and if they get bored, hold onto the end of the tape tighter… Meanwhile the dive buddy takes measurements, azimuth headings etc. In this case, Jerry’s going to run out with the tape and measure 100ft lengths off the gold line and install the arrows, while I get to be the dummy, hence the use of the sidemount tanks. In hardly any time, we’ve got a bunch of new arrows installed (and they’re even facing the right way!) and move onto our next project.

Jerry’s heard about a line that’s off to our right somewhere that he feels might be suitable for guests, so off we head with a reel in search of it. We tie into a line and start following it, the silt is coming off the ceiling and the floor and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. We hit a T, Jerry marks it and we continue off to the right, Jerry has stellar technique but due to the nature of the tunnel I’m zeroed within a couple of kicks, but no biggie, I have the line and all is good. I enter a horizontal fracture and I can’t seem to fit up high so I’m feeling my way around since I can’t see and it seems a little bigger down low so I start to wiggle through. Of course, just at that moment I see the glow of Jerry’s light heading towards me and I’m thinking to myself, oh sure, make me turn around here why don’t you. I verify with Jerry that we are turning around, an interesting thing to do when neither of us can see more than an inch or two, but we get it worked out and somehow I managed to get flipped around and we head on out, albeit slowly. We return to the T and the vis has improved to at least six inches now, so I relax a little bit and start moving a bit faster. Soon enough, we’re back at the reel, I grab the tape I clipped off (a good idea in hindsight) and we exit the system with just a minimal decompression obligation. It’s good to see the daylight again, but we both break the surface with those big grins going and start babbling on about how cool the dive was, as cave divers are inclined to do in moments like this.

Wearily we exit, remove our gear, hop into the vehicles and head up to that wonderful BBQ place in Bell (that shall remain nameless for it’s own protection) to trade stories, lies, innuendos and all that other stuff that goes on after some kick ass cave diving.…

As I’m leaving the house around 6am, I’m thinking to myself, this had better be worth it! After a number of hours on the turnpike, numerous cups of coffee and silly updates to Facebook via the iPhone, I finally pull into the dock. The first person I see is Mike Barnette and of course he looks at me and asks “what are you doing here?” I laugh, we shake hands and I have to go through the friendly banter of what is a cave diver doing diving in the ocean, you know there’s salt in the water, right and all the good natured ribbing that goes along with technical diving!

It all started when I met a couple of wreck divers a few years ago, they decided to take my Cave DPV course earlier this year and they managed to talk me into heading down to Wreckfest in Key Largo earlier in the year. I went along with it and as you probably noticed from previous blog entries, I had a great time and now have a new thing to do as well as cave dive!

I look up and David’s pulling in, so I flag him down and we start prepping our gear for the dive. The Ande sits in 190 ft of water so we’ve decided on 18/45 for the dive and we’re carrying 50% and O2 for deco. We’re using standard gases since both of us prefer using ratio deco in the ocean. David’s also brought his Gavin and I’ve got my SS ‘cause of the currents here. We’re humping all this gear onto the boat and I’m already missing my North Florida picnic tables!

We’re heading out today with Emerald charters and I like the size of the boat, plenty of room for divers with scooters and tech gear and it doesn’t seem crowded at all. We have a few divers on rebreathers and a few on open circuit which I’d imagine is fairly typical for the tech boats. It’s definitely a far cry from the cattle boats of the islands that I used to work on back in the 90’s!

Heading out to the wreck, the typical South Florida squall breaks out, but the captain assures us it’ll blow over and after a few anxious moments we relax and get ready to go. This is my first “hot drop”, so I jump off the back of the slowly moving boat to the sounds of “dive, dive, dive” with my deco bottles attached and scooter under my arm, how cool is that! I quickly orient myself and catch a glimpse of David powering down to the bottom so I head off to join him.

We can’t see the boat yet, but my wonderful buddy remembered to bring his compass (yes, you can read that as I didn’t!) so I follow him North to where we think the wreck is. We’re scootering along and suddenly this huge behemoth appears out of the gloom ahead of us. I start hollering and whooping through my reg, it just looks so cool, this massive, intact wreck just sitting in the bottom inviting us to play….

We decide to circumnavigate the wreck once first, but like a typical cave diver, I see a huge hole on the stern and that’s that. We clip off our scooters, tie off a reel and start heading in. We’re almost immediately engulfed in huge clouds of silt, you can tell that nobody’s been on here in a while and hoping David can see something behind me. Like an idiot, I take a wrong turn and end up in a dead end passageway, so we flip around and start heading out. Of course on the way out, I see where we should have gone, but our precious bottom time is coming to a close and it’s time to start thinking about the ascent. As we’re heading back to the scooters I notice Mike pointing out the light holders which still have light bulbs in them and it’s all just so cool!

Finally we grab the scooters, clip them off, swim slowly up to about 130’ or so and David blows a bag since we decided I’d take care of the deco and he’d take care of the bag. Holy smoke, the bag’s almost going horizontal! There is a screaming current and I grab a hold of David so we don’t get separated and watch 400’ of line let out in about 20 seconds! I feel kind of bad for David since I know he’s going to have to reel it all back in, but I’m concentrating on our time and stops as we drift at a crazy pace through the depths of the ocean. We see other divers from our boat from time to time, but David’s busy with the bag and I’m busy with the deco schedule so we just focus on our team. After an uneventful and fun ride, we break the surface, start laughing and signal okay to the boat. We get picked up and everyone starts going on about the dive, the 100’+ vis and life is good!

We make plans to all go to “Bru’s” in Pompano, take the long ride out there and reminisce over some of the best wings I’ve ever had, and I think to myself I like this wreck diving stuff! Many thanks to David for being a great buddy, to Tim, who was kind enough to let me crash at his place after a cool day of diving and socializing and to Emerald charters for running a great operation…

Ah, what a gorgeous day as we pull into Madison, the sky is blue, it’s not too hot yet and it looks like we’re going to have the cave to ourselves! This is extremely cool as we’re planning on hitting the Courtyard and were really hoping that no one else had beaten us to it!

I’m with my friend Hitoshi from Japan, who’s spent a couple of weeks every summer for the last four years with me, diving the caves in North Florida. He’s an excellent diver and today, we’re going to try a three stage push out into the nether regions of the Courtyard. For those of you who are not familiar with Madison, to reach the Courtyard one has to swim over a thousand feet down the mainline into the flow, jump right into the Mount offshoot, then work your way through a couple of hundred feet of narrow, extremely silty passage called Potter’s Delight (due to the white clay everywhere) and then negotiate another couple hundred feet of extremely small body tube aptly named Rocky Horror. After it opens up again (not much!) you swim another couple hundred feet to where the passage opens into a huge room that drops off into an upstream and a downstream tunnel. The upstream is known as the Courtyard and just goes and goes…

Unfortunately, one is currently not allowed to use scooters at Madison, hence our planning the big swim dive. A couple of the bottles we’re carrying are filled with 30/30 which gives the stages superior buoyancy characteristics (gotta love helium!) and this’ll decrease our drag through the water and hopefully extend our penetration.

As we’re carrying bottles down to the water, I glance at Hitoshi and he just looks happy as a clam, echoing my own thoughts. After we each put our three stages and O2 bottles in the water, we take a moment and start discussing our dive plan. Normally, I’d be scootering this type of dive and using a leash for the stages but this time I decide to clip my nitrox bottle on normally, but nose clip my two 30/30 bottles to the rear d ring where they’ll lay out nicely behind me and not catch on anything. Hitoshi likes this idea and decides to do the same thing. We don our exposure suits and head down to the water. It takes a few minutes to get everything clipped on but soon we’re heading down to the Rabbit Hole, where I tie off a primary, hang my O2 bottle on it, get an okay from Hitoshi and we’re off!

The minute we enter the cavern zone and head across it, I know we’ve made the right call with the stages. It feels just like a normal stage dive (gotta love helium!), so I tie into the gold braid, exchange okays and settle into the groove for the long swim ahead of us. Being first in has its advantages and today is no exception. The cave is crystal clear and as we pass the jump to the Godzilla room, I check gas and we’re kicking ass, awesome, this is going to be a sweet dive! As per our plan, we drop the first stage on the downstream side of the Half Hitch restriction, switch to our second and continue on, the cave is opening up before us and this is one of those dives where everything is just starting to click. After some really pretty passage, I tie in the jump to the Mount offshoot and we continue on our journey. After some more swimming we reach the slate, where we drop our second stage and thankfully it’s marked “out.

Due to the restrictive nature of Potters Delight and Rocky Horror, there is only one team allowed in at a time, that way no one has to back out three hundred feet! I change the slate to read “in” and per our plan, hop on the last stage and “superman” it. By this I mean undoing the bottom clip while leaving the top one on and pushing the bottle ahead of you as we figure this is the best way to pass through these tight passages without disturbing the silt or banging up the cave. Potters Delight is gloriously white and I look back between my legs to make sure I’m not silting it up for Hitoshi. Water’s clear behind me and I see Hitoshi grinning at me through his reg. This is where the 30/30 starts kicking ass, as the bottle lays out almost perfectly neutral in front of me. We wiggle through the entrance to Rocky Horror and start working our way through this twisty, winding body tube. I thought this would be a big deal but with the neutral bottle in front of me, it’s not half bad! I almost laugh out loud as we pass Wayne’s “happy face” as it describes my mood perfectly and then we’re through Rocky Horror, pass a line on the right (David’s Fork?) and soon enough we pop out into the Courtyard.

Even though I’ve been here numerous times, it never fails to take my breath away! Imagine peeking out of a small hole high up on a wall and looking down into a huge boulder strewn room filled with crystal clear water, and you will maybe have an idea of what this beautiful area of cave looks like. For those of you who have been there, it looks like a mini version of Diepolder 3! We leave our last stages on the line, floating by the window at the top of the room, get on back gas finally and we’re out of here!

Unfortunately, the cave will now stay between 100’ and 130’ for the rest of the way and our deco will start racking up from here on out. Such is the price we pay I guess, but I’m toasty in my drysuit and not concerned about deco in the least, the passage is to breathtaking to think of anything else! As we swim over huge boulders and pass gorgeous, jagged formations on the wall I roll over onto my back and shine my HID up into the huge domes that appear above us. There are jump lines popping up all over the place, but unfortunately we’ll have to leave those temptations for another day. This is truly cave diving at its finest, I can hear Hitoshi’s camera and see his flash going off behind me and a sense of awe fills me as we continue on with the ups and downs that characterize the first part of the Courtyard. A little further on, the passage settles down into huge bore tunnel that reminds me of Peacock except much bigger! There are tantalizing, untouched formations of goethite everywhere and much as I’m tempted to pull and glide against the flow, I cannot in good conscience touch anything back here, so we settle into a nice froggy groove and continue. 

After about twenty minutes, I pass my previous best in here and now I’m in uncharted territory, at least for me! Hitoshi’s light is steady behind me and I know that this is exactly where I want to be, thousands of feet back in a achingly beautiful cave with a good friend having the time of my life! A little bit further on we hit our turn pressures, so we place cookies, take a reluctant last look at the going tunnel ahead of us and reluctantly spin around to head back the way we came…… 

The ride out is uneventful, more of the same visual overload and we really take our time poking around in various holes, since we have the flow at our backs. I make a mental note of which jump lines look promising for our next time back here and let the flow sweep me along. Far too soon, we’re back at the stage bottles and heading out of the Courtyard and I actually take a moment to wave goodbye; who’s a silly cave diver… 

As we squeeze back out of the Rabbit Hole and pick up our O2 bottles, I look around and the basin is ours, then suddenly a bikini clad woman flies into the water above me from the diving platform. Back to business as usual I guess, so we complete our long decompression picking up glass from the bottom and watching the locals swim around in what is to me, one of my all time favorite caves, the stunning Madison Blue…

I’m wakened in the morning by this rude German banging on my door, yelling “Stop having sex, it’s time to go diving!” I open up the door groggily and find David grinning at me. I kiss Cheryl goodbye and we head out to the dock for another wonderful day of wreck diving with Silent World. I’m hoping I’ll have a chance to redeem myself today after my “silly cave diver” antics from the previous day. Today, we’ve decided to dive a wreck that’s dove fairly infrequently called the Northern Light that sits in about 190’ of water.

Having had a strict diet of no shellfish the night before supplanted with a couple of happy drinks, I’m feeling great and ready to try this wreck diving thing again. We meet up with Les at the dock, as we’ll be diving as a loose team of four on this dive and pack all the scooters, deco bottles and doubles onto the dive boat, which over the ten years that I’ve spent away from it, has turned into some kind of cave diver hating machine! We’ve got a pretty full boat today, but as usual there’s plenty of room for all. We motor out to the site, while I enjoy some spectacular views of the Keys. We go through our predive checks before we hop in and finally we’re descending down into the gorgeous blue of the open ocean. The current is howling and I’m glad that we have the scooters, as are a couple of swimmers that we end up “helping” to the wreck and what a spectacular one it is. It’s sort of folded in half with one half lying on top of the other, and it’s nice to drop into the “shade” of the wreck and get out of the current.

Immediately I notice a couple of big bull sharks swimming around and for a second I think of the shark free overhead I’m used to at home, but then I start getting this kick ass diving buzz. The bulls continue dozily on their way and I start noticing the soft corals everywhere, the little feather dusters and all the small stuff you don’t normally pay attention to and I marvel about how a little wreck like this in the middle of a barren ocean floor can harbor so much life. We do a little bit of penetration, but not too much, as the gas goes quick at these depths, swim once around the wreck and all too quickly decide to head back to the boat.

I pair off with Ron for the deco, David goes with Les and we start drifting at the whim of the current. Once in a while, AJ runs the boat close by so we know he’s watching the bag and just a little while later we’re climbing into the back of the boat, removing gear and starting the story telling. We’re going to dive the Vandenburg tomorrow and my buddy Dave is giving a presentation tonight on it at the official Wreckfest party so we start coming up with crazy dive plans and ideas. Eventually we make it back to the dock, and while we’re unloading gear I suddenly realize that I’m really starting to like this crazy, boat diving stuff…

As I steady myself before hitting the water, I wonder how on earth I found myself lurching around on a boat in full tech gear with two deco bottles and a scooter. Well, it all starts with a couple of wreck diving buddies of mine whom I’d know for a while, that decided to take a DPV cave course from me earlier in the year. As we went through the course, they kept telling me that I had to come down south and do some “real diving” as David so aptly puts it with his German accent!

I was informed that Silent World in Key Largo puts on what they call “Wreckfest” every year and while my buddies David and Ron have been going since it started, they decided to drag me along on their tomfoolery this time. After talking to my wife Cheryl, we decided to sort of turn the week into a family/wreck diving vacation, so I booked us and Kaley into a romantic little place on the beach just done the road from Silent World. Little did I know that “the Germans” were staying there also, so the romantic thing immediately flew out the window…

Ah well, one thing led to another and I find myself stumbling around this boat with all this gear on feeling like an inebriated, neoprene clad buffoon. Finally I giant stride off the back of the boat, (what the heck, this water’s salty!) and find myself scootering down to this magnificent looking wreck, the USCG Duane, which sits upright in about 130 ft of water off Key Largo. After leaving that weird thing they call a dive boat, I felt much better and dropped back into my usual diving groove. The first thing I notice is that I forgot to add weight to my scooter for the salt water, so I’m trying to go down and my UV-18’s trying to go up, not the best of combinations I must say!

We’ve cruised around the wreck a couple of times and I look at David as if to say, well, now what? And, aha, he pulls out a reel; finally it’s a piece of equipment I know how to use! We drop the scooters, he ties off and all three of us head inside this gorgeous steel cave. I’m trying to keep the line tight and well-placed behind him, but instead of these little knobs of rock, we have to use these sharp, corroded old pieces of metal, but I’m still enjoying myself, even in this sodium chloride infested water.

We continue on, turn a couple of corners, head down a deck or two and all of a sudden I see light pouring in another hole. Cool, this is like a little mini cave and I’m really starting to get my groove on now. We play around on this gorgeous wreck for just over an hour, pick up the scooters and starting heading up to finish our deco obligation. After the switch at 20’, I suddenly find myself throwing up through my reg, the fish like it and swarm avidly around me, but I’m definitely not digging it! After the dive, I found out a very valuable piece of information, apparently one should never eat shellfish in a month that doesn’t have an “r” in it. It would have been nicer if I’d found this out the night before but it’s too late now!

I finish out my deco, and am suddenly confronted by the thought of how the heck am I going to get all this gear back on the boat? Luckily, Silent World has some great crews who made life really easy on this wayward cave diver and getting back on the boat was much easier than I thought it would be.

Of course, on the way back to the dock, I’m hurling off the downwind side of the boat (hey, I did learn something!) and having to endure the regular’s comments of silly cave diver, miss your drive up sites now and all that other rubbish. I try to protest but to no avail, they’re having way too much fun with me so I just suck it up and think back to how cool that wreck was. After some more friendly jawing at the dock, I leave all pumped up and ready to do it again tomorrow…

What a fantastic looking cave, the slime dripping off the walls and the reduced visibility give the system a very eerie, but cool feeling. A side passage looms ahead and I decide just to have a quick look, so I head on down the twisting tunnel. The silt in here is just unreal, vapid looking strands hanging from the ceiling and an extremely thick looking layer on the floor. As I gaze around in amazement, I think what a truly majestic place this is. The cave looks like it’s pinching off just ahead, so I decide to retrace my steps. I flip around; accidentally drop a fin and all of a sudden the passage is zeroed out. No biggie, I’ll just get on the line. Wait, where is the line? I’m feeling around in this silt soup and can’t find it anywhere, I make a mad dash into what I think is the right direction, smack my head straight into the wall and start thrashing around in my confusion. Was it this way, was it that way? Where’s the line, how do I find it again? Crap, I can’t remember, why am I here? I can’t see anything in this muddy hellhole, I just want out. I knew I shouldn’t have dived this cave, but I never thought this would happen to me! I’m breathing like a madman and can’t seem to get a handle on my breathing rate; I’m not trained for this…..HELP!

 I flail around for what seems like hours and I desperately try to see how much gas I have left. I can’t see anything in this goop and to make matters worse, if that’s possible, my regulator’s starting to get really hard to breathe! Deep down, in that ancient primeval part of us that never really goes away, the dragon awakens in my breast, kicking in the ancient fight or flight syndrome. The end comes quickly now as I start to hyperventilate and descend into full blown panic! Just before I take my first inhalation of water, visions flash before my eyes; my cave instructor telling me not to dive above my training, my kid sitting at home with my wife and I realize there’s so much left for me to do in life. This isn’t how I wanted to die, please God, just let me outta here, I’ll never be so stupid again and I don’t want to die! But the timeless cave doesn’t ever hear desperate pleas for mercy and after a while my struggling ceases and the cold, dark water lays all my hopes, dreams and fears to rest.

What causes this? I would think that most of us whether we admit it or not, cringe at the thought of drowning in a cave, taking that last breath and knowing you’re toast. Do you want to know what thoughts go through one’s head at a time like this, the certainty of death in a watery, dark tomb and no time to say or do anything that you wanted to do, let alone have a chance to say goodbye. I’ve come close once or twice, as some of you know, mostly due to some serious stupidity on my part! Luckily I’d had a decent amount of training and experience at the time and was able to work my way out of these situations by staying calm and working through the problems. Obviously, I changed my habits after these dives and they became learning experiences, rather than fatality reports.

Unfortunately, it’s those times that we have a fatality within our community that brings out both the best and the worst in people. On the one hand, we have folks involved in the recovery effort, who in most cases know the victims fairly well, and go do their job to the best of their ability. On the other hand, we have people finger pointing saying they died because of this or that and it was so and so’s fault etc. We get the usual blanket statements, we need to ban cave diving, more safety rules are needed, we need to start policing ourselves better etc whereas it simply comes down to a lack of personal responsibility. You and your buddy are the ones that make the decision to dive and only the both of you will know whether this particular dive you’re doing is over your head. Responsibility starts with knowing your limitations and not letting anyone talk you out of them, don’t give in to the peer pressure of doing a dive that you’re not ready for, the repercussions of your decisions may have far reaching effects that you may not realize at the time.

Every time I’m teaching a cavern class, I spend so much time on Accident Analysis, emphasizing safety guideline #1 which states that lack of training or exceeding one’s training is the number one reason why untrained divers die in caves. Why is this so hard to understand, do people think that the rules don’t apply to them? That they’re invincible, charmed, that these thirty or so years of gathering data on cave fatalities doesn’t count because they’re different from the others? People are telling you don’t do these dives for a reason, not because they dislike you! We’re your friends, we’re trying to look out for you, so please do us all a favor and ignore whatever other silly reason you’re going to come up with, just so you can justify blowing our well meaning advice off.

You have to understand that while you may be okay diving above your limitations and drowning in a cave, the rest of us are not! We don’t want to attend your funeral; we want to dive with you for a long time to come. A recovery team will have to put their lives on the line to get your body back, a family will be overwhelmed with grief, you run the possibility of getting a cave system closed, plus you’re just asking the government to get involved so they can protect us from ourselves…. This is why when we offer advice to you, please listen! We’re doing it not only for your sake, but for the rest of the community as well. So if you happen to read this article and think we’re talking about you, please don’t be so selfish and so caught up in your own little world, that you ignore our advice and tell us that we’re holding your back or other such nonsense. We’re doing it for you and also the good of the community as a whole!

Even if we don’t ignore our safety guidelines and act like we should, if you do this sport long enough, you will probably have a “come to Jesus” dive. What you do when that happens is what will define you as a cave diver. Some will sell all the gear and quit the sport, others will knuckle down and learn from the experience and become better cave divers because of it. You think I’m kidding you? Ask some of the people who’ve been doing this for a while, and they’ll confirm what I’ve said!

Anyways, I really want to hammer home a point here, we’ve had a number of senseless deaths this past year and if we don’t get a hold of ourselves, someone else will do it for us. We need to start talking to people who are known for unsafe diving practices and if they refuse to listen, maybe shunning from the community is called for. Whenever my student’s call me up and ask if so and so would be a good dive buddy, I tell them the truth and explain why. If they choose to ignore my advice so be it, but I can definitely sleep better at night knowing that I made an effort.

Well, as always, thanks for taking the time to read my viewpoint, please have fun, be safe out there and please stay away from dives that are above your ability and comfort level when diving in the overhead. Listen to what others advise you about diving, try to slow down and think a little bit before you act, keep your cave diving safe and please take good care of our underwater cathedrals.

The hand reaches back, takes mine and puts it on the line. I can’t see anything in the pitch black, although I’m able to feel the constant flow of the water, but I know what he wants me to do. I adjust my buoyancy slightly and cross over the line, continuing on down the tunnel. I love this, a senseless, black abyss with only our breathing echoing in the still silence, feeling a line arrow slide through my hand, the void closing around us as we pursue our quest for the daylight. I grasp a primary, give it a quick feel to make sure it’s ours and we start ascending towards the cave entrance. The darkness gives way to a dusky gloom and then the ambient light comes into view. As always, a myriad of emotions plays on my mind, I hate to leave this all encompassing liquid world, but the sunlight beckons irresistibly, creating beautiful glimmers and reflections through the holes in the duckweed.

We complete our decompression uneventfully and I look over at my buddy and watch him knock out some valve drills, his trim is good, shutdowns are economical and thorough and I’m very happy with it all. After he finishes the manipulation, he looks over and realizes I have no gas. He gives me the long hose, sticks his backup in his mouth, and after eyeing me sternly, reaches back and rolls his left post back on, weird how that happens, huh! I return the long hose and take some line off a safety reel to tie his manifold up, then back fin quickly to observe. Reaching back, he unhooks himself from the man made entanglement and slowly we ascend together, breaking the surface on a beautifully calm summer afternoon. I congratulate him and watch relief cloud his eyes briefly, before he breaks out with an ear to ear grin.

After debriefing we head over to the local BBQ joint to grab a late lunch, finish up paperwork and talk about the wonderful world of cave diving! We chat all through lunch and eventually get down to the nitty gritty of it all. Looking across the table at this young man, who has the potential to be a world class cave diver, I sign off on his Full Cave certification and have this moment of wanting to reach across the table and tell him to be very careful out there! Of course I don’t and simply offer him some words of praise, warning and advice.

I’m often asked for my opinion about paths of progression in cave diving, should I take …., am I ready for …. I usually just offer simple words such as don’t dive above your head and to me this is the crux of it all. How comfortable are you? Are you having fun? Everyone’s comfort level is a little bit different and you should know yours! I think that the more comfortable you are in the water, when you decide to take an additional step in your training or mentoring, the more you will benefit from it since time will not have to be spent on what should already be known.

We’ve had a number of accidents lately and maybe that is why I’m thinking more about new cave divers and invincibility hats, I’m not sure. We have the toys and equipment to get us into a lot of trouble very quickly, but they are just tools for us to enjoy our beautiful caves. What causes people to go “too far, too fast”? Is it the instruction or lack of it? Is it a reflection of our society’s “want it now” syndrome? More and more these days, I hear stories of cave instructors failing or holding back a student. Unfortunately, with the new found proliferation of “cave instructors”, instead of going and working on their skills to become a better diver and then completing their course, they choose to go to one of the “giveaway” instructors who’ll pass them because they want everybody to be friends with them, get more students, increase their profits etc. Would you want to dive with someone who did that? Unless their was a serious personality conflict or a gear configuration disagreement, if I was failed by an instructor I’d want to go out and work on whatever it was that caused me to fail and then go back to the same person, rather than seeking the easy way to get a “cave card”. Does nobody want to be challenged anymore?

I just had a wonderful ten days of diving with my friend from Japan who comes over every year. He took an informal scooter course from me while he was here and of course this really opened up some new cave for him. He’s been diving a long time and is extremely comfortable in the water, so to him a scooter was just a tool to go and see some new cave and I was able to challenge him on the scooter during class as he as really rock solid on the basic skills. Who doesn’t want to do a graduation dive to 2900’ and then swim to the end of Mainland! Plus as a bonus, it was an absolute pleasure to teach him! Far different from attempting to teach those divers who barely meet the prerequisites, are just interested in going to the Hinkel because their friends are, cannot perform a simple S drill and are simply not ready for scooter instruction.

Anyways, enough of these dark thoughts already! To all the newer cave divers out there, take your time and have fun and just go diving. Don’t be in a hurry, you can’t purchase experience and in water time. If you cave dive frequently and work on making yourself a better diver, the cards will come. If you are in pursuit of a card and don’t care about your cave diving, I’d recommend taking up golf, since hooking a shot into the woods ‘cause you haven’t worked on your swing lately isn’t going to kill either you or your golf partner!

Well, thanks for taking the time to read my viewpoint and have a great time out there in our glorious aquifer. Just dive your heart out and enjoy the experience, it’ll pay off in the future as you start pushing further into the blue holes we love so much. As always, try to slow down and think a little bit before you act, keep your cave diving safe and please take good care of our underwater cathedrals.