Hello my friends!

Another email about my last crazy WE.

On Friday I managed to escape from work at 3:00pm. I made it to Cave country at 6:30pm: I met Nanci at Tyler's place and we went filling her tanks and diving!

We went up in July Springs (Ginnie). The syphon was kicking. When we turned back after having seen the end of the line, it was a job to go through that section
where the flow is at its highest. It was fun! Before getting back to the Hill 400 line from which we had jumped to go to July Springs, we jumped left into the section that is parallel to the Hill 400 line. Swam a couple of hundred feet and turned on thirds. We did 50 minutes of bottom time and according to Nanci's computer we had no deco time to do. That section of the cave is more shallow than the usual square profile at 100 feet I guess. It was a very cool dive. We left Ginnie just before midnight.

We drove to Tallahassee that very night and were in bed at 3am! So much for sleep, having to wake up at 7am the next morning to meet the other WKPP guys at 8am at Big Dismal for another tough day!

That day (saturday) was a neat day for me. I was doing in-water support with my Baby (Gavin Scooter with short body) and buddied up with Sue Harvey to run
6 stage bottles 600 feet inside the cave, after that horrible restriction. After we finished that, we spent several more hours in the water, waiting for gas divers to come out of the cave. When they came, we made sure they were OK, stayed with them during their deco and shuttled the tanks they did not need to the surface platform. Doing this kind of work is really good for stage handling practice. When me help was no longer really required underwater, I came up and helped the guys on the surface to haul things up. This is the toughest part of the day. There were too few support dives, so it took us until 5pm to wrap things up and some gas divers helped out.

There was no air available at Vinnie's shop and the others were closed, so Nanci and I went back to Central Florida on Sunday morning. We picked up her new Gavin Scooter and went to Manatee.

The viz in Manatee was low: lots of particles thrown at us so we could not see more than 10 feet ahead, which is not cool while scootering! Adding to that, Nanci's
scooter was a bit too positive and it was her first time on a Gavin. So the dive was a bit stressful. We turned just before Friedman. Nanci did half of the dive with
her scooter and then we exchanged and she had a better time with mine (same scooter). It was a good practice. There was one place where the flow was so high that I had to kick to help Nanci's scooter (which was on 9!).

We went back to Tyler's and I spent the night there. Woke up at 5am, drove to St Petersburg (3.5 hours), shower, etc. and made it to work at 9:30, completely
exhausted -- lack of sleep ;-) I guess.

All in all, that was by best WE in FL! Wonder why? The buddy makes all the difference ;-)

I hope your WE was excellent too.

Take care.

Herve.