Breathing Gas– 32% Backgas / 100% Deco
Max Depth– 106ft
Avg Depth– 85ft
Visibility– 150+ft
Water Temp– 72F
Dive Time:
Notes:
Met up with Jeff Marchand after he got off work and finally got to take the new Gavin Standard into a cave after spending several hours with it in open water. We had decided to go somewhere that was very open, and the mainline section of Ginnie fit the bill, with the added bonus that we had already swam this entire area of cave, most of it multiple times, so we had a solid idea on how much gas is needed to swim out from that far back. The first thing I noticed is how fast the cave comes at you on a scooter. It’s VERY task loading keeping up with a buddy, the scooter and the line….and also enjoy the cave. Getting through the lips on the throttle scared me, so I decided to swim it…WOW does the flow really catch a scooter in this area of the cave, and with the safety bottle on the other side of me, getting through the lips was no fun! Once through the lips, we established communication again and got back on the throttle. I found myself constantly on and off the throttle, as I’m paranoid of getting too high and hitting cave. We made it to the Heinkle in about 27 minutes, and turned the dive there, not wanting to stretch gas for the first cave/dpv dive. On exit, we stopped at Hill400 since we had built up reserves, recalculated our gas math, and tied in a spool. The cruise down Hill400 went quickly, and we were at the p1000ft arrow before we knew it. Since Whitney was waiting on the surface, we decided to turn here before deco got too long and left her bored out of her mind. Deco was < 10 minutes, which was awesome seeing as how we had just covered 3700ft of Ginnie, a dive that would have required about 40 minutes had we been swimming!