Blue Springs - Orange City

** Link to the Blue Springs pictures: http://cavediver.net/pictures/chipbs/ **

I woke up early on Halloween to head up to Blue Springs for a nice morning dive and breakfast with some dive buddies. On the way, I turned on the radio and tuned into a flash back Halloween show on a local station. I was enjoying the music, while I was driving down I-4, and my mind flashed back to the Hurricanes which hit this area in 2004 and the damage they left behind. My house was hit with 110 mile per hour sustained winds and the eye passed over us during hurricane Charlie. That was the first time, of three times, that I got to experience being in a disaster area within a period of about two months.

While driving down I-4 you can still notice the impact of these storms on the Central Florida area. Some of the signs on I-4 are blown down; you can see trees that are bent, and trees which were snapped in half like broken toothpicks. Once you arrive at the spring you notice very high water levels, which affect many of our favorite dive locations.

I arrived at Blue Springs at about 7:40 AM and I was greeted by my dive buddy Ray. A little later our other buddies Norm and John showed up. When the Park gates opened we were greeted by a Park Ranger who was wearing a Halloween mask. We got out of our vehicles, to sign in, and I heard one of the other divers ask her what she was doing after work. We proceeded to sign in as a cavern diver group and then we headed to the parking area.

As we prepared our gear for the day, Ray stated his dive computer wasn’t working. Shortly after that I found my Hammerhead primary wouldn’t power up. I tried three more fresh AA batteries to see if it would work, but it didn’t work. I checked the battery contacts and the switch contacts and everything looked good. We were now dealing with two electronic problems and John mentioned we were on a streak of bad luck! My VR3, with a fourth oxygen sensor, was working great and my secondary was providing the readings from three other sensors.

We all finished getting ready and we headed towards the long boardwalk, which brings us to the diver entrance. John and Norm mentioned it was a good thing we brought our official depth checker Ray with us. They usually have him go in first to see how deep the water is. If he can’t stand, we use our regulators!

When you turn left, to go down to the water, the bottom horizontal section of the walkway is about 6 inches underwater. The water level off the end of the steps was over Ray’s head, so we put our masks on there and we entered the water with our regulators. After getting in the water, we had to swim up to the spring head. When you start getting close, you notice a tree, which is now part of the way across the spring run. We all stopped at the tree and got ready for the dive.

We entered the head spring and all of us were cavern and / or cave certified, so we were carrying lights. As we dropped to the bottom, we saw a pair of divers exiting the bottom cavern section, so we stopped and let them pass us. We then swam to the bottom. My dive watch read 122’ at the bottom, while my VR3 read 119’. These depths are about 5’ deeper than the same readings prior to the Hurricanes. It was strange to see a lot of small catfish swimming around the bottom of the lower cavern.

We all got situated and Ray started trying to taking pictures with his Olympus camera, which is in an Ikelite housing. I watched him as he struggled with his external strobe, which wasn’t flashing. I also noticed John was using one of his backup light. His HID wasn’t working. John and Norm were exploring, while I was trying to shine my light for Ray, so he could try to fix his strobe. We stayed in the bottom room of Blue Springs for about 20 minutes and then we started to head up.

On the way up my HID quit working and my Hammerhead secondary quit working. The VR3 was still giving good cell readings, but the diva was vibrating my teeth. I rotated the diva down on my mouth piece, so I didn’t have to see a solid read light. We went up to about 60’ where Ray started to take some more pictures. His strobe was still acting up, but it occasionally flashed for us. Ray took pictures of all of us and I took some of him. We also explored the cavern section on the West side at about 60’.

After about another 15 minutes, we headed up to about 30’ and Ray took more pictures and we did some more exploration. We then headed up to the 20’ cavern and explored. Next, we exited the cavern and Ray took some more pictures of Norm in the ambient light. At about 59 minutes into the dive we surfaced. We talked about the dive and the Halloween gremlins, which haunted our electronics.

After spending about 5 minutes on the surface, we dropped down and floated towards the upper steps to exit the water (the lower steps were closed). Once we got to the steps, the plan was to take some pictures of the high water level, but the entrance way was full of divers waiting to enter the water, so we choose to go back to the vehicles.

In the parking lot we saw lots of divers. It was strange to see so many of them in doubles. This is unusual at Blue Springs, because of the long walk and most people dive single 80s at Blue Springs. It reminded me of TJ's “Got to get wet” picture post last week. Hopefully, the water levels will keep receding and some of our favorite cave sites will reopen.

We packed up and left for the Ranger station to pickup our dive cards. While exiting the park one of the Rangers was waving goodbye and telling everyone to have a Happy Halloween. Our next stop was the Cow, to get one of their home cooked breakfast specials. While we were eating, Sharon Collins - the Author of “A Gringo In Guanaja” stopped by to talk to us. We all talked about the dive and current events (Hurricanes, Blue Springs, Politics and Books).

After we finished breakfast, I followed Ray back to his house, so we could look at the pictures. Ray burned his pictures onto a CD, so I could post them with this trip report. The land pictures of Blue Springs were taken before the high water levels caused by the hurricanes. Ray was reluctant to give me any of the pictures, which we took during our dive, because the quality wasn’t up to his standards (flash problems). I finally twisted his arm enough to get them from him.