My first dive in Alachua Sink
I dove Alachua for the first time on 10/29 in Alachua Sink with Rick Crawford as the guide. I had been wanting to do this dive for a year now. And finally, I got around to securing a trip. Although the duckweed covered the basin, just below the basin was probably 30 ft of vis. And in the cave (especially past the downstream tunnel) vis was 50+ ft. The sinkhole itself was steep. I am SO glad they put steps in. I can not imagine descending that steep slippery slope in doubles without steps.
The week before, MSwicord and myself did some garage filling of trimix to prep me for this dive. I had an empty set of double 130's that we put the correct PSI of helium into and then added 100% aviator's breathing oxygen. MSwicord then took my tanks with him to the REACT party and had topped them off with air. This left me with a trimix fill analyzed at 20/28.
Rick and I were the first team in the water for the day. (Another team came in as we finished our dive.) We began our descent. We dropped O2 around 30 ft. The vis was a bit hazy, but divable. When we hit 80 ft, we dropped our 50% bottles on a log. We proceeded further into the cavern. I do not recall exactly when we reached the T which leads either right to downstream or straight to upstream. But anyway . . we reached a depth of 150 ft where we went under a ledge and immediately ascended a 25 ft tall clay bank. You could see the layers in it. We went over this bank and back down the backside of it. The interesting thing about this is that this bank was underground which means you have to have a room large enough to house this bank.
We proceeded through very pristine and pretty cave. It was a lot of ups and downs. I was concerned that I'd have ear trouble, but I never did. 20 or so minutes into the dive we reached a verticle rock fissure that descended to 180 ft. We went to the bottom of it and went forward. I then turned us, having reached thirds. I did not realize it, but we were only feet from the spot that it dropped to 200+ feet. I wish I had at least looked at it.
We then made our way back. Although flow was not strong, it was noticable. By 45 minutes, we were already at our first deco stop at 70 ft and we had been swimming slow. We spent another 42 minutes in staged decompression switching from 50% to 100% O2 before surfacing.
Rick had poked around in another tunnel at the basin that supposedly connects to another sinkhole nearby, but he said it got murky and cold as he went a little further, so he came back.
We surfaced, and began the task of hauling everything back up the steep steps. All in all, a great dive. I want to go back sometime and dive downstream.
PS - I do have a funny story I could tell about Rick that happened that day (topside), but I won't. I promised. hehehehehehe. I want to dive Alachua again sometime, so I won't divulge.
