Your BEST DIVE!!!!

[patpicos]

a few dives stand out for me...mind you every trip provides bigger memories....

first dive in Ginnie Mainland. Went to EOL. It was truly special swimming from the jump to EOL, navigating a few restrictions and dealing with the last restriction at around 4000' with the line on the ceiling and not wanting to swim under the line.

first dive in Madison Courtyard... despite only doing a few 100 feet into the courtyard, that was pretty sweet of a dive. Navigating Rocky Horror was fun.

3rd JB dive and swimming through King's Canyon. Was really looking forward to that dive and it really delivered. Awesome location. Made it to the traffic light swimming.

from an OW perspective, diving on a submarine in Malta was very cool just for the fact of diving a submarine. I topped that dive twice over the next few days diving the Polynesian (french liner) and HMS southwold (british destroyer)

[gschaut]

My first dive up the Ginnie mainline, thru the lips. Many more dives may be awesome. But you never forget your first!

[patpicos]

^^ I'll always remember my graduation dive for cavern going to the lips as a treat. It was the equivalent of hanging a carrot in front of me. When it got turned, it was such a tease moment, aka no happy ending.

Had to come back. The rest is history

[FW]

^^ I'll always remember my graduation dive for cavern going to the lips as a treat. It was the equivalent of hanging a carrot in front of me. When it got turned, it was such a tease moment, aka no happy ending.

Had to come back. The rest is history

I guess you would call that dive "Intro to Intro"

[diveconjeff]

One of my favorite dives, and one of my all time favorite reports about the dive from another poster:

http://www.cavediver.net/forum/showt...?highlight=cow

[erdcphotoman]

One of my best Cave Dives was at Peacock One as an Intro-Cave Diver it was the weekend of REACT. We were waiting for the gate to open, talked to Rick for a few minutes when he opened. From Peacock One we started up the Olson Line and made it pasted the opposing arrows and hit 1/6th’s around the hole in the wall that the line goes through (it reminds me of a window in Fred Flintstones house). Turned and headed back and spent a little time looking at Pothole. When we arrived back at the entrance we recalculated 1/4th’s (Now don’t anyone get Bent over this but my Instructor in Mexico trained use to make 2 dives with one set of doubles by using 1/6 on dive one and ¼ on dive two. The distance of penetration works out to be the same.) We headed down the Peanut Line for a great Part Two. Only bad part of the dive was when we got back near P1 the Mob had silted it all up. All in All it was a Great Dive.

[wingman]

Like others, the ginnie gallery was awesome and enticed me to continue cave diving. Another good dive was in saltwater at the Molokini Crater just off the coast of Maui...swam to the edge of the abyss and listened to whale song coming from the depths for an hour. My next favorite was penetrating the Chester Poling off Gloucester,MA and finding the brass general alarm in the ON position...I never tire of visiting the "Berman Room." I wrote this after one of my favorites but never posted it anywhere:

A final bubble check and four divers slipped beneath the surface of the murky water filled sink hole. I watched James start towards the log that sloped down into the moss carpeted basin. I love this moment when all effective communication with the outside world is severed and you are alone in the moment with your thoughts. Only the slow hiss of the regulator delivering gas as I inhale and the friendly burbling of exhaust bubbles beginning their ascent to the surface as I exhale. Today I notice the unique difference in sound that the regulator makes when it is delivering a gas mix laced heavily with helium as opposed to the typical enhanced oxygen mixture that is breathed on a “normal” dive, this dive is different. Today we are descending into a truly unique Florida feature. Relatively speaking, few have had the chance to enter this realm and I think quickly about how lucky I am to be one of the few participating in this extreme activity. My thoughts can’t wander long as what we are engaging in is a dangerous and exacting technical adventure. We are descending into an enormous water filled cave. As I slow motion freefall into the system I scan my vicinity and note the location of all the team members. Johnny, our guide for the dive is about ten feet away and watching us all unclip our oxygen deco bottles and reclip them to loops in cave line about 30 feet below the surface attached to the branch of a large tree that had long ago fallen into the sink. James who we selected to lead the dive was descending below me and Vince was not far above. We all located the entrance shaft and continued our descent into the abyss. At about 130 feet and approaching the bottom of the chimney we all clip our second deep decompression gas tank to the line. I notice that the line is all brand new goldline and once rid of our deco bottles we all are left with our backmounted doubles that carry our bottom gas mix that we are using for the dive. Just below where we clipped our second deco bottle to the line the vertical descent line ends in a split and the two segments go off at angles to one another still heading deeper. The thought hits me that the lines are like a 3-d coordinate system and that we can all be plotted as vectors traveling in that space as I turn slightly to watch Vince place a strobe on the line. I focus my thoughts back on the dive and note James descending and following the line to the left. These lines that branch off are actually a large loop that goes around the inside perimeter of a gigantic room. We will end back up at the same spot and are taking a clockwise journey around the room I see the line going under a wall in front of me and follow it down and as I move underneath the wall I am greeted with a spectacular vista. I am just ducking under the ceiling of a huge room, like a basketball arena or ten super walmarts stacked on top of one another. I am carrying two primary lights on this dive a 10w hid mounted on the backside of my left hand and a 21w hid in the other hand. Both lights shoot huge beams of light out into the darkness and provide some small illumination into the dark void. The other diver’s lights also pierce into the darkness creating piercing light sabers that seem to move randomly as we swim along the line descending deeper into the darkness. My lights move identifying the line and shining down they fail to penetrate to the floor of the room and when pointed ahead are not yet able to identify the back of the room; we are suspended in an inky black space. I point the 21w up and scan the ceiling looking for a fossilized whale bone that I have been told is there; I have yet to see it and it remains illusive on this dive as well. We are going ever deeper and I glance at my depth gauge and it reads 220 and I remember back a year ago when I was hiking in death valley standing 220 below sea level and think about where I am at the moment at that same altitude only now suspended in a cold liquid darkness as opposed to the oppressive heat of the sunburned desert. I also think about the andrea doria and this is the depth of that dive as well. We continue our descent to the back of the room. I look to the right and in the distance catch a horizontal linear shape and notice the return line on the other side of the room. We arrive at the back of the room and I hover looking around and notice a small lens shaped alcove and wonder if the cave continues in a new shaft (it doesn’t). I look at my depth gauge and it reads 280 feet, our planned max depth. I reach around and unclip my pressure gauge to check the volume of gas left in my 104s. It reads 2600psi, 200 pounds above “thirds” my turning point. James has already started up the gentle slope of the return line, I locate Vince off to the side and notice him moving towards the line as well, so I start the slow ascent up the other side of the room. The line arrows now point in our direction of travel indicating we are heading towards the exit. On the other side of the room when looking down there is nothing below you. This side of the room contains large slab like boulders that have been fractured and appear to have broken off and tumbled to the floor of the cave. Large is a relative word and for reference most of the boulders are the size of houses. We skim the top of these large outcrops and I notice the layer of grey silt that covers the slabs like a blanket. We continue our ascent and I notice the tiny strobe light blinking in the distance. The dive is close to ending and I light up the wall to the left and notice the layers of whites, off-whites, browns, and yellows. The limestone cross section is beautiful as the lights bring out the delicate colors. I glance at my dive computer and it says I’m at 160 feet and it’s giving me a 2 minute 90 foot deco stop. I continue my slow ascent thinking about the nitrogen and helium off gassing at different rates from my tissues. I pick up my deco bottle with 36% nitrox and clip it to my harness. I’m at 110 feet so I switch from back gas to the 36% and switch the gas I’m breathing on my computer as well. I now have a series of stops at 10 feet intervals all the way to the surface. The entrance shaft visibility has deteriorated and large globs of mossy filamenty green material floats around us suspended in the water. I continue my steady ascent, at 30 feet I pick up my O2 bottle and I hit 20 feet and switch from 36% to 100% O2, I have a 15 minute hang at 20 and a 25 minute hang at 10 feet; a long 40 minutes to ponder. Finally, my computer clears and I follow the slope of the log up to the surface, reluctantly rejoining the world. What a dive!

[divingabe]

Nice description of a dive, sounds like diepolder3.
Gabe

[Pavão]

The very first dive, first one of my intro class, at Jackson Blue. My instructor was a friend, we had been doing some dives together and he would stay at my house when visiting Pompano to do some tech dives, so we knew each other and he wasn't about selling me any classes and there was no need to sugar coat anything, we drove up together and had a chance to talk about this wet rock activity quite a bit, he said it several times, "it's not for everyone, not everyone likes it, and it's fine", being that I grew up freediving spearfishing and ocean diving since 7, I think he wasn't sure I would like it, and I kinda sensed he was worried about it, not from a safety perspective, he knew I had the skills for it, so it was only a matter of seeing enjoyment in it, he loved it so much and just wished I'd get the same enjoyment as he does, a true case of sharing passion.

Being a diver from the salty stuff, we do appreciate some clear water, and I think that's what draws me to caves the most, that super clear water, and that day, we lucked out, there was very little flow in JB, almost none, and the vis was unbelievable, idk, 150', 200', it was as far as I could see, like floating on air, beautiful blue water. And the cave, well, it was the only one I had ever seen, no other to compare, but I didn't need it either, it only took me one glance at it to be able to appreciate it's beauty, now a full cave diver and seen others, it is still my favorite, and sadly, I'm yet to be back since then.

Back at the cavern, sitting motionless at 20' doing our deco, quietly just watching all the fish there, my mind was still inside the cave, wandering through it and having thoughts of when are we going back in, I broke the "silence" and reached into my pocket and pulled out my wet notes, I see my instructor is now attentively watching me, I open it up, pull out my pencil and start writing, I can see in the corner of my eye he is anxiously waiting to see whats up, he is ready to aid me and assist in my concerns, I finish writing and turn it to him...

He bursts out laughing and screaming through his reg, yelling all kinds of god-knows-WTH-he-is-saying, it's underwater, I can't understand, he just plain and simple goes disco on the cavern and starts celebrating, he knew I was hooked!

[w ripley]

Guess my best dive was doing the circuit at Madison. We - Jeff Hewlett & me - spent over 22 hours setting up/proofing the up-stream and down-stream sides. We had put together what we thought was the "Aquaduct" map, which proved to be spot on.

When we finally did the circuit I missed my buddy acknowledging we had made it to our upstream proof cookie, so was getting a little shaky on our gas reserves (we were diving OC then). Can you imagine how good it felt seeing our stage bottles waiting downstream at the Crossover tunnel jump? It made my heart start pounding. We exited with no issues, kinda of a let down after all of that preparation, but still we made the circuit. Put in a couple of "Ts" on the way down. One of those days you probably will never forget. I know it was a big dive for me.