Peacock III & Peacock I (Crossunder)
After a long hiatus from cave diving (about 7 months), I was finally able to get back in the water this past weekend. On my second day Oliver (Nakatomi) was kind enough to drive out from Marianna dive with me. The plan was to meet at Dive Outpost at 9:30 AM, and head over to P3. At about 10 AM I decided to drive in to Mayo to find cell service and check in on Oliver. At about 10:20 AM I got a message from Oliver apologizing for forgetting about the time change! LOL. No worries, we still had plenty of time to get our dives in. He was right on time at 10:30, but we met at P3 as I had time to get fills while waiting.
We geared up at P3 in the on and off rain. We discussed the possible effects of the rain on the vis if P3 was in fact siphoning. Neither one of us expected it to be a problem. After everything was ready to go, I pulled my new video light/tray setup out to show off the printed parts. As I pull it out, the diffuser I had cut and hot glued to the glass fell off. Oliver had the unique idea to use use a trimmed condom catheter to hold the diffuser on. It worked perfect! We added one to the other light as well, just to ensure it's diffuser didn't fall off as well.
After a bit of chatting, we settled on the dive plan. We were to dive the main line to about 400' (IIRC), and take the jump to the main line bypass (not sure if it has a name). Jump back on to gold just before the jump to Hendley's, and gas permitting, swim down in to Hendley's. Our 32% would be the depth limit. Oliver would lead, while I filmed from behind.
Oliver laid the primary, and off we headed. The vis was pretty decent, but with lots of particulate in the water. The flow seemed to change direction. Neither entirely siphoning nor springing. The route we took was beautiful. The entire bypass route is backmountable, except one tighter silty spot that BM would take you out of reach of the main line. Just before jumping back to gold you could feel cold spring water coming likely from the spring tunnel. Vis started to clear, and improved to 50' or so as we got closer to Hendley's. It was all very dark, despite the 5k or so lumens I was carrying, plus Oliver primary and video light. We go to the Hendley's jump, and were still short of our 1/4th turn pressure. We swam through the room that contains the jump, down the slope, and in to the pit room that drops from 70' or so down to 130'. My max depth was 88', and Oliver's was likely similar. I found out later that the best part was after that bedding plane at 130', out the other side. I guess I'll have to get some mix training and come back later!
The trip back was smooth. I did my best to light the spools up for Oliver while he pulled them. Filming all the while. We got back to the glow of the cavern and shut all of our lights down. The green glow of the P3 cavern is always impressive. I had forgotten to switch my computer to 32% until about halfway back out. This gave me a calculated deco of about 3 minutes at 10'. I apparently also forgot to turn O2 off as an available gas, as that 3 minutes took about 10. UGH. I spent most of deco spinning around doing a headstand, as I was not well trimmed for this new 7mm semi dry with these tanks, at this pressure. Being a semi dry, there is a good chance by this point in the dive I had air around my legs, exacerbating the situation. Oh well, I was happy as hell just to be back in the water.
My video didn't turn out fantastic, as most of my lighting was too close to the camera. Too much particulate in the water. Oliver's video turned out excellent, and he even edited and posted it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbhKxK15sKo
After spending way too much time chatting and getting fills, we needed a shorter dive. We decided to check out the crossunder from the peanut side. After getting some great intel on the dive, we settled on a plan. I would lead, and go through the restriction first. The idea was that since I was the bigger of the two, If I got stuck, Oliver was free to assist from behind. Oliver ensured I knew the "stuck" leg signal, and we discussed contingencies. If I got stuck, I'd signal and he'd gently pull me out. If I made it through and he got stuck, I'd swim all the way around and assist (if he was still stuck by the time I got there). We both noted that we had literally hours of gas. If Oliver decided not to go through, I would wait for him at Pothole. Otherwise, he follow me through, and film as we went (helmet cam).
We finished gearing up, and headed to the water. We noted the time as we submerged. Our dive was to take no longer than an hour, so we were out by 5PM. We headed up the peanut line, pausing to let an exiting team pass. We got to the breakdown room, and I started looking for the line. I remember how I always missed it coming in, and saw it exiting. I headed off towards the bottom of the room, turned around, and found it right away. The first problem was line routing. I tied in to the gold line where it was the shortest distance. This put my jump line right through the middle of the entrance to the crossunder. That would not do, so I pulled back a bit and started looking for a better placement. Oliver suggested a routing further down the breakdown slope and back around along the floor. This worked out well. The line was secure, and out of the way or under me.
I OK'd Oliver, and headed in. I got about halfway through the restriction and came to a stop. I made another lunge forward, and made no progress. I reached up to vent my wing, but little came out. Holding down the deflator button, I pressed my back against the ceiling and dumped as much air as I could, and made another lunge forward. This got me clear, and in to much larger passage. I cleared the restriction, and turn to look back for Oliver. The entrance was entirely silted out. I hovered motionless for about a minute, with no sign of Oliver. I decided at this point he was either stuck, or not coming. Either way, I was of no use to him, and just being in that passage was stirring silt. I decided to head towards Pothole. I checked behind me a few times on my way out, but only saw silt. If he was following, he wasn't going to be moving very fast in that vis. I was hoping he didn't follow. I reduced the size of my fin strokes even further, hoping to disturb the silt a bit less, but it didn't seem to matter.
I found the end of the crossunder line, and attached my jump spool. I knew the general direction to look for the Olsen line, and found it easily. I tied in, and started to wait. I didn't know if he was stuck (and I needed to swim around to extract him) or he didn't go, and I was to wait for him at Pothole, or if he followed and was moving very slow because of the vis. What we hadn't discussed, was what if I don't know where he is. So I left the jump in, and clipped a backup light in next to my spool. My thought was he would recognise it as a symbol that I was looking for him. I had grabbed a couple extra backup lights. Cheap chinese lights that I had never had to depth. Left them butt clipped and hanging just to see if they leaked. I had a total of 5 lights, so leaving one was no issue at all. I left it on in strobe mode, well, because I could. I thought about the modes available, and wanted it to last longer. It was either low or strobe, and strobe would be more noticeable.
I started swimming at a brisk pace back towards P1. At about p.100', around the corner came Oliver. We exchanged OKs, and I gestured for him to follow me. We got back to my light and spool. I indicated for him to go up my jump line and look in the passage. He came back and indicated that there was silt. I left the light on the line flashing, and indicated for him to hold his position on the gold line. I pulled my spool, and started winding my way up to where I tied in. After removing my line, I turned and made sure I had a visual on Oliver and the blinking light, and made my way back across to the goldline. I pulled my light off the line, shut it down, and stowed it. We exchanged OKs again, and headed towards the exit.
We had discussed having to come back around to pull the jump on the peanut line (or posting about it if we couldn't). We had also discussed the line that parallels the goldline through the first few hundred feet of Olsen. Oliver referred to it as the old gold line. At about p.150' Oliver tied in to the gold line and jumped to our right. Found the line he was looking for, and away we went. This passage went for about 200', before it ended and Oliver indicated "line" and pointed off to the far right wall where there was the Olsen gold line. We turned, and headed out. At the bottom of the drop to the Olsen line, I indicated "reel" and in the general direction of the Peanut tunnel. Oliver showed me his computer, and a current run time of 58 minutes, meaning we had 2 minutes to be out of the water. Oh well. We did our stops in the basin, and slowly surfaced. We were not going to be those guys.
As we walked back to the car with some of our gear, we passed a pair of BM divers headed towards the water. The first I simply exchanged greetings with. Figured there could be some reason for walking towards the water at 5PM... The second I decided to clarify what time we were supposed to be out of the water. He was not concerned with the park rules, and told me the park doesn't close until sundown. :smt102
I want to thank Oliver for driving all the way from Marianna to meet me. I really enjoyed our two dives. Also Xenia and Bill R. for the dive intel, and Linda for always being so damn nice and hospitable.
Edit: Here is the video Oliver short of me going in to the Crossunder Tunnel, incase you missed it elsewhere. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukrATpTeNNw
