Hole In The Wall – 5/30/10

James Garrett

Another early morning to Cave Adventurers, as this morning we had rented a boat.  We got there around 8am, got our stuff loaded, and then our buddy Allen met us there shortly after.  We planned to hit up all 3 Mill Pond caves, but Hole in the Wall is my favorite, so it would have to be first!

Phillip ran the reel ahead of time, as it would be a pain to deal with when we each had scooters.  Since Hole in the Wall is a no flow cave, the plan was to use 2 stages as travel gas, reserve back gas, and tow a scooter “just in case”.  Once I get more DPV experience, I’m sure I’ll not be that conservative, but for now more gas and more scooters are never a bad thing.  Scootering this cave is an experience that just cannot be described, you’re cruising through crystal clear water with huge dome ceilings that are as white as can be, with the exception of a few iron colored ceiling formations.  If you can’t make it to the Mill Pond, you owe it to yourself to at least purchase Liquid Productions Mill Pond Experience DVD.

Jackson Blue – 5/29/10

James Garrett

After our morning adventure, we went back to Cave Adventurers for tank fills and to check into Jackson Blue.  A group of Texas A&M cavern divers were there packing up, but due to the rain, the park was fairly empty, a pleasant surprise!  We each placed our stage bottle, deco bottle, and scooter in the water and then proceeded to gear up.  Our plan was to take mainline past Court’s Squeeze, Hall of the Mountain King, Mystery Shaft, and then the Sweet Passage.  We turned around p3200ft at the 3rd “T”.

Click here for a map overlay of our dive.

Bozel Spring – 5/29/10

James Garrett

After waking up early the morning after our 5 hour drive from Orlando, we arrived at Cave Adventurers around 8am to get tank fills.  We were going to meet Matt Bull and Kevin Carlisle at Florida Caverns State Park since they only have 6 canoes, and we wanted to ensure we could get one with it being memorial day weekend.  We arrived at the park, where it’s $5 per vehicle to enter, and $15 for 1/2 day canoe rental.  The spring is located on your left after a little over 1 mile of upriver paddling, which was a semi difficult canoe trip compared to what I’ve experienced on the Wekiva and Ichetucknee Rivers.

Upon arriving at the spring, Matt showed us that we can enter at the main spring, swim to a karst window, surface in a pool, and then swim over about 50ft to an easy back mount entry to avoid beating the crap out of the cave and trespassing.  Tips like this are why it’s always a good idea to go with someone local if you can manage it.  We swam to just about the second T before turning the dive  to avoid having  much deco since we were on back gas (limited space in the canoe).  I’ve attached the dive profile to the gallery just for reference.  This dive is best done with 21/35 or 25/25 to limit o2 exposure and narcosis, as it reaches depths of 120ft quickly.  The cave has incredible white walls which have been preserved by the long canoe trip that it takes to access the cave and relatively few divers who come there.  I was told that the white walls are due to the fact that this spring almost never floods, which was good to know for when everything else is flooded.  Another nice feature of this cave is it’s large size.  After a restricted entry way, the cave seems to open up, and stay big enough for an easy back mount trip (larger than most of Peacock) at least until the second T, and I hear it keeps getting bigger and bigger.

Photos courtesy of Matt Bull.

Orlando Wetlands Park

James Garrett

Today Sam and I decided to head out to Orlando Wetlands Park in Christmas, FL.  Sam had recently gone there with a friend, and despite how close it is to UCF, I hadn’t been there in my 4 years here because I had never heard of this place.  It’s actually a clever system designed to treat waste water by the city of Orlando, by using natural plants to absorb the pollutants.  While wildlife isn’t terribly abundant, you can find several gators as well as a variety of birds.  In the next few days, I’ll try to post the brochure map and highlight the route we took.

If you’d like more information on the wetlands park, click here to see 2 informational videos produced by the city of Orlando.

Little River…Wakulla award at last…

James Garrett

Well, those of you that know me, know that I absolutely hate Little River.  About once a year, someone fools me into thinking maybe another dive will make it better…It never does.  Today was no exception.  The Orlando Magic played at 5pm, so we were in a hurry to get back to watch the game, and our cave scouting earlier in the day fell through.  We swam just beyond the FL room to about p1200ft.  My drysuit had a huge flood, so it’s going to Steve Gambles place on the way out of town tomorrow.  The one really cool thing about this dive is that it marks my 100th hour underwater since full cave, so I’m up to receive my Wakulla award!

Breathing Gas– 32% Backgas / 100% Deco
Max Depth– 108ft
Avg Depth– 100ft
Visibility– 20ft or so..
Water Temp– 72F
Dive Time: 63min

Installing Decoplanner on a Mac using Crossover (10.6.3)

James Garrett

OK, for a while now I’ve heard several people state that they won’t switch to a mac because deco planner isn’t compatible…here’s how.

First, download crossover.  You can get this here.  Now, install crossover.

Next, place the DecoPlanner install file somewhere you can easily find.  You can purchase and download it from gue’s website here.  After installing crossover, setup.exe will have a crossover icon, like this-

Double click the setup.exe and you’ll be greeted by the following screen. The default settings work, so leave them and press “install”-

You’ll see the progress bar for several minutes…never fear, it WILL eventually finish, but you’ll think it’s hung up because it takes so long.

Finally, you’ll see the DecoPlanner setup launch.

Run through the normal setup process leaving ALL OPTIONS DEFAULT, and you’ll be greeted with this-

Next, run and enjoy 🙂

Luray Caverns & The Garden Maze

James Garrett

After working all week from Whitney’s apartment I was getting antsy to get outdoors.  We found out that Hertz doesn’t charge a fee for drivers under 21 to rent a car, plus their weekend rates were very reasonable!  We took a scenic drive over to Luray Caverns from the Ballston area.  Luray Caverns has an interesting history, but it’s sad to see how the commercialization of such a precious natural resource has damaged the cave so badly.

After touring the caverns, there’s a garden maze on site.  While certainly overpriced at $5/person, I’ve never even seen one in real life, let alone gone through one, so we had to! 🙂

Devil’s – River Intrusion and Insulation Rooms

James Garrett

Met with Stacey after I got out of church to get a few photos for her graduate school presentation.  She has been doing research measuring pollutants in the Devil’s system for over 3 years, and is finally getting ready to present it!  The dive plan was to scooter to the insulation rooms, grab a few photos, then scooter back to the river intrusion rooms, take photos, and then exit.