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After
lunch we went back to Ginnie to do our 400m swim in the Devils Spring
run (from the entrance to Little Devil and a buoy marking the entry
to Devils Ear), followed by the 20m dive on one breath.. on a full stomach..
we then did two dives into Devil's Ear.
The Devils System has three entrances along a short (300 ft) channel
(run) leading to the Santa Fe River. The map below show a good layout
of the Devils system and has the main line marked up.
Maps of the system can be found here:
http://home.tampabay.rr.com/mblitch/cave/devilcave.JPG
A simpler view can be seen here: http://home.tampabay.rr.com/mblitch/cave/devilseyespring.JPG
The first cave at the top of the channel is for side mount diving only
and is only very short. It is called Little Devil and does not connect
to the main system.
The second entrance is called Devils Eye. This is a funnel shaped opening
in the bottom of the channel leading at an angle to a rocky overhang.
The cave entrance is via a triangular shaped hole between rocky ledges
leading down to a small cavern and then on via a meandering tunnel in
a loop to the main cave. It hits the main line from the left, a little
way down from the Devils Ear Cavern.
The flow through the entrance is not as strong as in the Ear, but the
entrance restriction is lower and I was scraping tanks and chest along
the rocks in places.
Devils Ear is a narrow gap in the ground with a ledge at 8m and an incline
to the cave entrance. There are a couple of tree trunks conveniently
chained into place in all the cave entrances at 6m and 3m. The gap is
around 3-4m wide at the top and then narrows to around a metre down
the slope to the cave entrance. A good picture can be found on the GUE
site: http://gue.com/sites/srb/ginnie/features.html
There is a strong current coming out of the Spring and the entrance
felt quite steep to me going down head first. It proved to cause me
trouble all week - I just couldn't get myself to just sink to the bottom
and crawl under the current until the last dive of the second week.
I was always fighting my way in and was out of breath by the time I
got into the cave - especially if I had to lay the line too.
Once through the entrance a cavern opens up with an area sheltered from
the current on the left where we usually stopped to catch our breath.
The main line started a bit further back along the right hand side of
the cave wall - away from the cavern area.
We would lay our line up to the main line and then tie our reel to the
main line - some days there was quite a collection of reels waiting
for the return of their owners.
To start with, the cave tunnel is fairly high with the lowest flow near
the roof and meanders about a bit until it opens to a room in front
of a restriction called 'The Lips'. I made the mistake on the first
dive to stay in the middle of the tunnel and had to swim hard to get
against the current. Steve was a couple of metres above me and had a
much easier time. The Lips are about a metre high, 2-3m wide and 4m
long. ( see http://gue.com/sites/srb/ginnie/features.html)
Its about 250 feet into the cave. This is as far as we got on the first
dive.
The current picks up a bit here and you have to pull and glide your
way through the restriction - my finger tips were raw by the end of
the two weeks. The rocks are really white from all the handling by divers.
Higher up in the cave and away from the main line where divers touch
less often the rock is covered by a dark iron based deposit called Geothite.
Once through this, the cave meanders on through a lower tunnel which
opens up a bit later on to end at another restriction - a fissure crack
called 'The Keyhole' (400 feet in). Our second dive ended here.
Again the current is getting stronger here as the water gets pushed
through the restriction and we had to swim hard to get through. It was
easiest to stay low to the ground here to avoid the current. The Keyhole
is a narrow tunnel about 1.5m wide, but 2-3m high that meanders about
a bit to the right - maybe 6-8m, then there is a table like rock at
21m depth on the right and another room opens to the left. We got to
this point on the first dive of day five during the Cave 1 class. The
floor is covered in small bolders called the 'Cornflakes' - because
of their yellow colour. The tunnel widens out again ('Junction Room')
and the ground is then coverd by silty deposits - 'The mudflats'. Our
last Cave 1 dive ended here.
During our Tech 2 class we managed to get beyond this point as we were
working on 1/3 of available gas for our turn point. The cave slowly
meanders about as a lowish (5-6m), but wide tunnel and deepens to 29m
then ascends a bit over sandy deposit that has ripples like the sea
floor - and area called the 'Sandbank' - which again leads to a low
but very wide room. The cave then slopes upwards and the sand form like
a hill like a sand dune, then carries on as before in a low but wide
tunnel.
This is about 1400 feet in and as far as we got on our last dive in
the second week. We swam mostly close to the ground here, being careful
not to stir up the silt. There are a number of side tunnels leading
off from the main cave, but we weren't allowed to do any of them (that
is part of Cave 2).
During the Cave 1 class we did not have to carry stages and turned the
dive after using 1/6th of our initial tank pressure (35 BAR or 400 PSI).
Tamara let us enjoy our way into the cave and then sprang drills on
us on the way back out.
The
next two days were spent at Manatee Springs. Manatee Springs is a State
Park near the Gulf coast - approx one hour drive west from High Springs.
The head spring feeds into the Swannee River and is known to be visited
by Manatees - unfortunately there weren't any when we visited. Entrance
fee is $5 per diver per day. Only three dive teams are allowed in each
day. There are also good facilities, though its a longer walk from the
car park to the Spring. Some nice maps of the cave can be found at http://home.tampabay.rr.com/mblitch/cave/manatee.htm
We did three dives in Catfish Hotel on Wednesday 11th April. I lead
the first dive and it was the first time I relaxed a bit and actually
enjoyed the diving. The Spring pool is max 12m deep, covered by duckweed
and water lilies, but the water is very clear. The cavern is at the
back of the pool and has two tunnels leading from it - one heading with
the current left to the Head Spring, the other leading right against
the current, away from the Head Spring. We saw a couple of rec divers
with single valves on single cylinders using the left tunnel as a drift
dive - Tamara wasn't best pleased as the tunnels are supposed to be
off limit to non-cave trained divers.
The entrance to the cave on the right is via another restriction similar
to Devil's Eye, however the rock is all covered in Geothite - so makes
for a much darker tunnel. To my great relief, there was hardly any flow.
I had a HID 10 W which gave a very nice light. Steve had a HID 18W,
but the difference seemded marginal inside the cave. There was a much
more noticible difference in the light output on the sea dives, where
we had more ambient light and the 10W bulb struggled to make an impression.
More
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