Hello my friends!

Yes! Another Week-End full of cave diving. What a change!

I got off work at 3 pm. At 7 pm I was at Ginnie, and super Nanci was waiting for me! What a great start! Friday night was a scooter practice dive with one stage.We spent 60 minutes bottom time at 100 feet depth on a Nitrox 32% mix. We scootered to 1400 feet where the main line makes a right angle in front of the end of the Roller Coaster. Dropped the stage there and double jumped into the Hillier tunnel. We did not see the end of it as one of us reached 2600 psi of back gas and we wanted to be out with 2000psi left. The ride back was fun. I kept bumping into Nanci. purely by accident of course! Deco was 10 minutes on 100% O2 in the Devil's eye.

Saturday was Madison Blue day. And what a day! Nanci and I did 2 stage dives, one on 32% Nitrox and the next one on 38%. The flow was moderate. The viz at least 70 feet. The depth stays mostly around 70 feet. Our objective of the day was to get to the courtyard. That's about 2000 feet away from the entrance of the cave. On the first dive we missed the jump (the second one after the half hitch). We did see the jump but we did not know whether or not it was the right one. So we carried on the main line and when we hit the T, we turned back and took the fricking jump! From there on both of us were in unknown territory. It goes for about 200 feet, easy size tunnel. There's a jump on the right. I'm told that goes for 1500 feet or so and pinches into side mount. We carried on and got to Potters' Delight. It's a passage that is 3 feet high and 3 feet wide with beautiful white clay. I realize that it was much more beautiful when it was pristine, but for me it was the first time
I saw white clay so I was impressed. That goes for 100 feet or so and we knew that we'd better not touch anything otherwise we'd "white" that tunnel out in no time. Then the clay shades away and Rocky Horror starts with a little restriction in the shape of a sharp right hand side turn where one can fit horizontally although I heard that some people prefer it sideways. From there for the next 200 feet or so, the tunnel is higher (4 feet in places) and 2 to 4 feet wide and twists and turns non stop.
It's really very neat and mostly bare white rock all around. Then it open up into silt land again. We turned the first dive 50 feet after the end of Rocky Horror. On the second dive we went roughly 200 feet further to find the Courtyard. This is basically a nice large vertical drop to 95 feet. There is a T that makes a right hand side turn. We poked on the left hand side of the T but our mix was too high for that stuff so we turned there, happy enough for the day. Both dives took us more than 90 minutes of bottom time with no decompression. We only went 2000+ feet though. I hear there is another 7000 feet of line there!

Sunday was more relax. We did only one dive at Ginnie Springs. Objective: a 2000 foot penetration at 100 feet of depth on a Nitrox 30% Mix. We used one stage tank for this one. We had 90 minutes of bottom time and what a great bottom time we had! No scooter -- just swim. We followed the main line, jumped left into the roller coaster, came out on the main line. We dropped our stage there, double jumped on to the Hillier Tunnel line. This was the first time I swam the whole of the Hillier Tunnel. It's about 4 feet high and 4 feet wide in most places and about 400 feet long. It comes out on the Dome Room line that starts from the main line at 1800 feet and goes to the Dome room, 300 feet away from the main line. So we jumped left and hit the dome room after a 47 minute swim.Now, the attentive reader may wonder what we did next to make a total bottom time of 90 minutes. Well, first we spent the best part of 10 minutes in the Dome Room with Nanci and as nobody was looking ... oh! I can't tell you or she would kill me! Then we had a really good time swimming back following the left hand side wall. No prints, just nice silt. We then crossed the main line and followed the left wall again. There are all kinds of nice little rooms there! Then we picked up the stages and came back through the Big Room and the Bone Room, staying on the left hand side again, opposite to the line. After 30 minutes of deco, we were out and home.

Then I spent some time doing my first Trimix blending. We have our own Helium and O2 now. 19/37 in one set. 24/21 in another. I hope that the end result is acceptable. I used advice from my buddy Bob Sherwood and the great Tyler Moon. Decom helped too. We'll see if I am a good student. BTW, how do you tumble
doubles? I can't exactly roll them on the floor! Do I need to by the shaker device they mentioned on cavers? As Americans say: JUST KIDDING! :-)))

I hope your WE was cool too.

Take care.

Herve.