Manatee Dive Report

Karstic Gator and I made it out to Manatee this morning (8/13/11) at 9:30, so we were the first team into Manatee for the day. And, as it turned out, we were the ONLY team out there at all.

After purchasing my 'new' AUL scooter from Lee Gibson a few weeks back, I had made some modifications to balance and trim it more to my liking so Manatee looked like an ideal place to test it. KG has a short body Gavin (hasn't used the long tube yet) so we decided to put in at Friedman's and leave my Mako along with our deco bottles attached to the line there.

First things first: we brought a small hand truck to ferry all the gear from the parking area to the sink. On other trips we had suited up in the parking area and humped all the way to the sink (600+ feet by my pacing) with our gear on. Not this time, though. We made 5 separate trips with all the gear, so we effectively hiked a total of 6000' before we even got into the water. Seeing as how it was hotter than a Baptist hell outside, this turned out to be the better decision. We placed all three scooters in the mudhole along with 2 stages and 2 oxygen bottles then suited up.

I was first in the water and decided that it would be easier for me to just daisy chain all the tanks and DPVs together and lower them below me before I descended. I attached KG's steel 40 and my steel 72 at the bottom and then added the 2 AL80s followed by the Mako and then the long body AUL. As I kept adding items, I blindly pushed them below me while I inflated my BC at the surface right above the entrance shaft. Once each item cleared the side walls, I could feel its weight and felt there would be no hang-ups on the way down. I had no way of knowing, of course, but it seemed the most logical solution to getting all that stuff down the hole.

The water was low at the sink (maybe a foot or slightly more) so any disturbance there left us with complete loss of visibility upon descending. So, now having a line of gear about 20' long hanging from my crotch d-ring, I deflated my wings slightly and began the descent. I couldn't see anything until the water cleared when I noticed that the steel 40 was just about to reach the floor of the cave where Friedman's line intersects the main line (about 50-55 feet depp). When it settled on the bottom, I slowly descended and finned my way upstream, allowing all the gear below me to slowly pile up in a line on the floor of the cave. I then began systematically unclipping the tanks and DPVs from myself and each other and attached them all to the line. KG had made his descent at this time and he had pushed his Gavin below him upon entering.

After securing our stage bottles, we then went over the preset dive notes we had made noting turn times based on 30 minutes of scootering or 300 psi above thirds in our back gas. After OKing the plan, KG then led the dive on his short body Gavin while I trailed behind on the long body AUL. His scooter motor has a rewired armature so it was far faster then mine, and he occasionally would have to pause while I caught up. The flow was normal for Manatee but the vis was decidedly crappy. We both have 18w HID primary lights and couldn't see clearly for more than 25-30 feet.

We dropped stages at around 1000-1100' upstream and continued on using back gas (he has 104s, I have 120s). The modifications I had made to the AUL were paying off as the scooter was behaving more to my liking compared to my last dive at Ginnie where it was nose-diving and playing general havoc with my wrists.

Up and down (lot of that in this portion of the cave) and around we went until we passed the monitoring station around 2500' in. We hit the 30 minute mark (mainly due to my slower scooter) around 2800' and then we clipped them off to the line and continued on swimming. KG led here, as well, and I think he just had enough swimming for the day and we turned at around 3100-3200 feet penetration. We still had over 400 psi before hitting thirds, but he was going to get no argument from me, as I knew that the exit was going to be tougher for me.

It was a rather uneventful trip back to the line at Friedman's. Having burned his Gavin for an hour, KG then handed it off to me while he rigged up the Mako for his exit. We then attached our deco bottles and I towed his Gavin behind me on my rear d-ring. I led the way onward but it took me a while to get used to towing the Gavin. The tow strap near the nose was positioned on one side of the tube as opposed to being centered on the nose cone like my AUL. At first, the Gavin wanted to rise on me and it wasn't until I managed to spin it axially around 180 degrees with my legs did it manage to nestle somewhat between my legs lower on the exit.

The visibility being as bad as it was, we saw nothing remarkable until arriving at Sue Sink, which we had hit at the perfect time. The sunlight was radiating down the shaft ideally and was the prettiest I had ever seen it.

Getting back to work and fighting a towed DPV, I cut the visit to Sue short and motored on downstream. We arrived at Catfish in what seemed like breakneck speed and then began our exit of the cave. Our bottom time was 1:47 and we had incurred a 4 minute stop at 20' followed by a 13 minute stop at 10 feet (all on 95% )2 deco). We surfaced and tried to fight off the creeping green duckweed, to no avail. We removed everything from the water and placed it on the deck at the top of the stairs. KG then made the trek in his drysuit back to the parking area at Friedman's while I started ferrying all the tanks and DPVs up to a picnic table closer to the parking lot. I think I may have lost 10 pounds in sweat from doing that, as it was now Holy Bejeezus hot outside now.

Thank God we brought the hand cart because it saved us some serious grief when we went to load the vehicle back up!

All in all, a very good dive and the nap I would take after getting home was well-earned.