Finished Apprentice class this past week!
Well we are now home from our trip to FL for Apprentice cave. Itwas kind of a last minute deal for us. My buddy John called me up theweek before last and said that he had signed up to do apprentice on atrip he had planned with his wife to go to Crystal River to see theManatee's. My wife was also headed down to do some wedding planningwith our daughter in Jacksonville the same weekend the trip wasplanned for. So I decided to go along and do wedding stuff over theweekend with the wife and daughter then head to cave country Mondayand do some diving and take the apprentice class too.
Monday when I left Jacksonville it was 19 deg on the ride over. Iwas thinking I had left PA and was in FL? Well later that afternoonit did warm up to the 60's, so it was not to bad. Did some introdives at the ear and eye Monday. Then headed to Peacock Tuesday anddid the Olsen and Peanut lines. So after 6 dives we were back in tothings and ready for our apprentice class to start the next day.
We met up with our instructor (Rich Courtney) at CCDS and talkedover our plan. John had taken his intro with him a year ago, but thiswas the first time I had met him. So we headed off to Ginnie to startour class.
Once we arrived and signed in, we headed to turkey roost, but itwas pretty full so we ended up at the end of the run. Set up our gearwent over our dive plan and headed to the water. First dive was agreat dive and Rich took us on a tour.
Second dive did not start well, as we were going through ours-drill I noticed John's left post had a small leak around the knob,so we called the dive. John has a save a dive kit that is the size oflarge suitcase and had the parts to fix the problem. Once fixed, itwas starting to get dark and Rich said we could make up the diveanother day, because it had been a long day so far. We said we weregood to go. There was our first mistake. We should had just waited todo the dive another day.
Any way, I was to run the reel and do the first jump past keyhole. Well I had one heck of a time getting my primary tie off andsecondary tie off, but finally got them but had burned through a lotof gas, we dropped out deco gas and headed on. We were not highenough and were fighting the flow and were wearing out quick. Got tothe lips and a scooter team was coming out, but I thought it lookedlike they were kind of hanging out behind the lips, so I went on(sorry guys). After we were through the key hole I placed our jumpoff to the right and didn’t do the best jump due to not knowingwhere the other line was. Once tied on to the line we headed to theleft and hit 1/3rds and I called the dive. Turned and started pullingthe jump and then the drills started.
Pri light out, had no trouble get a back up but once that was outit was taken so went for the 3rd one and got that on. That one wastaken as soon as it fired then OOG with buddy’s lights going outtoo. Got on the line and headed out. After the dive we had learned alot. We should have called the dive before it even started with theproblem and being a long day. It was a great learning experience! Wetalked for a long time about how the dive went, what we did wrong andwhat we did right. Then we called it a night.
The next morning we met up with Rich again and headed to OrangeGrove. Set up our dive plan, did our S-Drill and started the dive.John was running the reel today. He did a great job and we got to themain line quickly. This was a awesome dive on the way in and then onthe way out, well you know the S#!t started to hit the fan as far asdrills. Everything went 100% better than the day before. We were bothhappy with how the dive went and again after it we talked a long timeabout what went well and not so well.
Our last dive we were headed to Little River. This was the firsttime at this spring for the both of us! Rich had asked a few divershow the flow was and they said it was kickin! when we got there thewater was high, hardly any flow and some of the best vis Rich said hehad ever seen there!
We made up our dive plan, and headed to the water. John again ranthe line and we both missed the re-bar tie off. Dropped our deco andheaded down. Did our jumps and turned on 1/3s. Now lost diver drills,lights failing and OOG on the way out. I was the OOG dive and feltvery comfortable on the way out. Took it nice and slow and made itout. Once again did our post dive debriefing and were congratulatedon our completion of the course! 2 more Apprentice Cave Diver areborn!
Thanks Rich for making our class fun but also a great learningexperience!
