Waynes World (School Sink) - The unexpected siphon
There have been several requests for more information regarding an incident that took place at School Sink (Waynes World), so I figure it's easier to type it once. Plus, it may save someone's life, now that there is the possibility of reduced restrictions for diving at this location.
Some stuff in here may be slightly off due to my memory, but for the most part it should be pretty accurate.
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A fellow dive buddy called me up one evening in the summer months of the year to tell me that he thinks there is some passage that needs to be explored int the "back forty" of the Mainstreet Tunnel at "The World". We discussed the dive plan, logistics, stages, gas choices, and possible dive times. We had grown to realize that this cave was very temperamental when it came to recent rainfall, tide changes, and even temperature swings when it comes to the conditions inside the main tunnels of the cave. Mainstreet is especially temperamental towards the local tide changes, and we were "kind of good" as our estimations. Tha'ts all that can be done for this cave, estimation. There is no real direct link to changes in the cave and tide times that has been found to be 100% predictable, although we have found a system to get us slightly more accurate than a coin toss.
As per usual, this dive was scheduled on a lazy Saturday around 9-10amish (I forget exactly). We rigged the sidemount tanks, stages, and deco bottles. This trip was going to be a longer one, so we were at 6 bottles each. We then suited up, got the gear in order, made sure the reels were set, and my buddy looked at me and said... "Well. let's hop to it, Tegg." We kitted up, and did the thumbs down. Dive start.
We hung our O2 bottles in the nice tight entrance shaft in the customary spot and continued our single file decent. I headed in the entrance duck under first, and gave a couple of quick short fin kicks to get out of the way for him. We dropped the 50/50 bottles a little past the T and down the hill. This was back when you could take the "shortcut" tunnel (before the collapse recently). This cave is covered in fine black organic silt. This is the kind of stuff that once stirred up or disturbed by your bubbles, you'd swear it is possessed and wants to kill your light head.... We continued gingerly through this breakdown room and descended the breakdown pile to get to the "shortcut" restriction. This restriction was a bedding plane that was maybe about 3-4ft in height. The floor was covered in a super fine dark gray silt that when disturbed would destroy the vis in the restriction for some time, sometimes it would still be zero for your return visit when coming home, that was always enjoyable. I told myself that even with two stages, I should be able to "slip" through here without to much "damage". I ducked under the ledge and was immediately greeted by our WW friend, "Cline". Cline is a nice fellow when he is behaving, but when you mess with him he gets all mean and screws up the vis... That was the case for my buddy while going through the restriction, oh well... that's par for being second in this cave.
Once through the restriction, we realized that our friend "Cline" was going to be present for us the whole trip down Mainstreet. This was fine with us, as it produced some great effects while swimming and gave us something to take our mind off of the black silt and organic matter our bubbles were raining down on us. We noticed there was a slight flow towards Deep Salt, which was expected, and things were looking "good" according to WW standards. We snapped in the bolt snap and started swimming.
Time came for us to drop the first stage, and we did. Things seemed to be going ok, line was in decent shape, and the cave seemed to be "nice" today... I should have known that something was up... This place is not normally "nice". We were strolling along through some canyons a ways back into Mainstreet when I paused for a moment and noticed that the flow had stopped. That concerned me since I knew this part of the cave was heavily influenced by the tide turns. According to the tide charts, we were still 3-4hrs from a tide change... So I said, it must just be some residual slackness in this part of the cave. Waynes World is "swiss chesse", it always has been. Flow of water shifts in and out of passage tunnles and just because the line is going down one of them does not mean there are not 3-4 parrallel tunnels you can't see, right next to you. I figured the line had made one of these transitions, as it does several times on this line. I signaled to my dive buddy to let him know the concern and we both figured it was just better for us and our gas supply.
A few minutes later, he signaled me to drop our second stage. I tried to stop to sit on a rock but realized that there was now a siphon. "Whoa, this is not good." My buddy noticed too, and we didn't even need to signal to each other, we shoved the stage regs back in our mouths and immediately turned the dive. At this point, the siphon was not that bad, but we knew that it "had changed", meaning there could be something stronger coming...
We had kicked to within sight of our first stages. Kicking wasn't easy, and I was working up some CO2 and pulling on whatever rocks we could find to help move along without laboring so much. My stage was empty and I was on backgas when I got to my 1st stage bottle.we tried to be "nice" when picking up the stages, but there was no way. You had to hang onto a rock just to stay still long enough to pick up the bottle. Stage on, we stated again towards the entrance. I forgot to mention one nice point about all of this. Our friend "Cline" was pretty pissed about the siphon messing with his day and he decided to destroy the visibility so it looks like you took your mask off and were swimming in turbid dark water. Nice, huh?
We got to a part of the passage within about 100ft of the "snap gap", and vis got a little better. I could now make out the dark stained line on the floor about 4ft below me and I did not have to trace it with my hand from time to time to make sure we were still "ok". The flow had really taken it's toll. Both of us are really tired at this point and we get to the big rock where the snap gap is and decide to swing over by the bedding plane restriction to catch our breath. We knew that the flow would calm after the restriction, but we had to catch our breath. We sat there a good few minutes in the dark. Our lights were on, but you really couldn't tell much because of the rain from the ceiling and the stuff already in the water from the current stirring it up in the cave. My buddy looked at me and gave me the thumbs up, and I returned the same. I also decided that Cline deserved the one finger salute, so I shared that with him too, I told him he could split it with Wayne. (WW)
My buddy didn't care about the vis in the restriction, well, at least from what I could tell... That's ok, there was no flow here, and I was almost home. It could be complete zero from here, and I wouldn't care... The vis cleared in the next room to a great 20ft and I could now calm down and enjoy our slow exit. We rode up the breakdown, and made our way to the 50/50 bottles. We wrote on a slate about the dive, I would post it here but it would be useless to read once I "blurred out the expressive words". The rest of the long deco was uneventful, except for the rocks falling on our head, but diving here, you get used to that... well, as used to it as you can.
We did our deco in the entrance shaft, and swam over to the edge of the sink. We took the gear off and loaded it all up. Then he looked at me and said... "Well, that was an experience. Let's go eat". well said... Well said.
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Originally Posted by Richard Pyle
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