Hello my friends!

A lot of diving things happened last WE. In fact the whole WE was devoted to diving. 5 dives: Ginnie, Sally Ward (2), Little River and Telford.

We met (Nanci, Bill Lais and me) at Ginnie on Friday night. I was taking my long scooter for the first time. What I did not know was that my BC was punctured, so... not a nice dive. I kept going for a while crashing here and there like on the sand dunes when my buddies stopped. Fridays are never good for me. It took me way too long to understand what was going on and use the dry suit more. I was last, behind Bill and Nanci. I was missing my short body scooter a lot... But with a bit more practice + a few adjustments I'll get there. The team communication being not very good on top of that I turned the dive at 2400 feet from cave entrance. We made it to the house just before midnight. Layson was not there.

Nanci and I had to wake up at 5 am, load the van and start to Sally Ward, which is near Wakulla. We made it there before all the others, at 8:10 am. Barry and Wayne were doing a dive upstream. We did support and 2 dives in the cube room. Not surprising that they call this cave 'Numero Uno'. It starts with a restriction that was very easy to pass after Greg dug it a bit. In fact we swam through it with 3 stages. Then we swam through a very pretty 5x5 tunnel that drops from 30 to 70, stay at 70-80 for 2-300 feet and drops to 120. After 200 more feet swim we entered the cube room. We played in there for a while. This room goes down to 300 feet and I managed to find 85 feet on the ceiling. It must have a good 100 feet of diameter. Small room hey...? I was breathing a light trimix so I went down to 190 feet.

On Sunday we had to make 2 dives because we wanted to do Nanci's 100th cave dive together.

The first dive of the day was in Little river. We scootered it for the first time. After we managed to overtake 3 divers who were wearing very strangely configured equipment and who were obstructing the way, we zoomed past the big arrow and followed the main line through the Florida room. We dropped our stage some way after that when the cave was getting smaller, i.e. 4-5 feet high. We scootered to the well pipe, played there for while and then went up the hill and left the scooter just after that. The cave was now only 3-4 feet high and silty. So we swam another 3-400 feet in there until Nanci turned the dive. I need to check a map to find how far we went. Does anybody know whether the cave opens up again after that. When we turned I thought it looked like it was getting bigger ahead. Our bottom time was only 70 minutes so after 20 minutes of deco we were out.

Last dive was a memorable dive. Nanci's 100th cave dive and my first time in Telford. This was a super cave, or should I say "caves"? We spent 2 hours of bottom
time in there with our topped off doubles + stage. No deco. Swam non-stop. The average depth must be about 50 feet. There are 2 little jumps to do and then the
main line goes for ever. It starts it Peacock style for a while, then we swam through a zone with huge (50 feet+) rocks. We were swimming through a very high vertical crack. Side passages were sculpted in the rock. Difficult to miss... We also went through low bedding planes. Then on to a roundly rock outcrop zone for a few hundreds feet. Then came the thick silt zone where everything felt darker. Then the black broccoli zone (can't think of another description). Then it went a bit sandy. This cave kept changing on us all the time! It was fantastic. We turned 75 minutes into the dive and made it out just before 120. I was very comfortable swimming in my dry suit. TLS350s are really nice.

On monday morning I did the usual drive back to work at 5 am and got there 30 minutes later than when I was using a rental car. I now have my van back! I put 1000 miles on it this WE.

I hope that your WE was great too!

Herve.