Exploration Continues at Cathedral
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On Friday, November 4, 2016, Karst Underwater Research divers Jonathan Bernot and Charlie Roberson established a new world record of 26,930' penetration from air in an underwater cave at Cathedral Canyon. Cathe4dral is the most upstream karst window in the Falmouth-Cathedral cave system, which is located in Suwannee County, Florida. This dive surpasses the previous record of 25,776' set in 2008 by Jarrod Jablonski and Casey McKinlay at Wakulla Springs.
Two days prior, Jon and Ken Sallot staged four Suex xk1s at 8,000’ to minimize the need to tow three scooters each from the entrance. Earlier in the year, we had taken four new safteies out to 10,500’ and had been pleasantly surprised that all the existing safeties were still good and holding gas. Leaving safeties in the cave for long periods subjects them to corrosion and it’s unpredictable as to how long they will last. We’ve seen some last only weeks, while others continue to hold gas for years. In fact, several of the prior team’s safeties we encountered last year were over ten years old and still full of gas.
Jon and I got underway at 10:02 on Friday morning towing one xk1 each. This allowed us to move quickly to the 8,000’ scooter drop where we dropped the one we were riding and picked up two each. Jon is convinced that the visibility was worse than last year but I think he’s just forgotten how crappy 15-20’ of visibility can seem.
When we arrived at 10,500’ we discovered that two of the five safeties were almost empty and floating. This is exactly why we insisted on having so many safeties in the system - sixteen in all - because we didn’t want to be forced to call a dive if we were to lose a few. Between conditions and work schedules, it was hard enough to schedule and execute a dive of this magnitude.
At 16,000’ we dropped our second xk1 and switched to our third while towing our fourth. The plan was to ride #3 to end of the line at 21,536’ and explore on a fresh scooter towing #3. This worked out well as we maintained significant reserves in both scooters and redundancy in case of a failure. The last thing we want is to be in a tow situation that far back so we always have enough scooters and reserve power that we can each get back to our previous scooter drop in case of a failure.
We arrived at our previous eol tie-off, which was on the ceiling in a tall canyon like rift in 165 minutes, exactly as planned. We swapped scooters and took a minute to eat a GU pack to maintain our energy reserves. Jon pulled out his new 3,500’ reel and tied in. He was able to maintain a fairly quick pace in the tall canyon passage only pausing a few times to determine the direction of the going passage. Now it was my turn. I pulled out my 1,200’ reel that was packed with ~1,500’ of knotted #18 line. A few hundred feet into my reel the passage changed shape as we encountered a series of low but wide bedding plane sections that slowed our pace. Every time it seemed like the cave was shutting down, it would open back up into more tall canyon shaped passage. About halfway into our third reel we came into a large room, which wasn’t unusual, but in this one there was no apparent exit. On the far side of the room we spotted a 5’ x 10’ hole that dropped straight down about ten or fifteen feet to a sub-basement passage that for a few minutes looked a lot like the smaller rocky passage in Manatee. This didn’t last though as it wen’t back to the smooth featureless passage to which we have become accustomed.
We ended our exploration at approximately 240 minutes and started what we knew was going to be a long survey out. The survey went fairly smoothly as Jon and I are a practiced survey team at this point. However, the low bedding plane sections were a bit frustrating to survey while towing scooters in the increased flow that comes from the size and shape of the passage.
We arrived back at Cathedral in 485 minutes after towing three scooters each the last 8,000’ leg. Like the dive, deco was uneventful with five hours in the water and three and a half in the habitat. We emerged from the habitat around 02:00 on Saturday morning after clearing deco and did a slow twenty-minute ascent to the surface.
Jon and I both dove our Fathom CCRs, which performed flawlessly. The Fathom is an mCCR which utilizes a needle valve and blocked first-stage to regulate oxygen addition. Both CCRs were configured with on board 45cf oxygen and inflation bottles with double sidemount 120s for diluent/bailout. The backmounted counterlungs and 8lb radial scrubbers provided excellent work of breathing and plenty of duration for the dive.
Thanks to Kristi Bernot, Ken Sallott, Ted McCoy, Teppo Lallukka, Kyle Moschell, Meredith Tanguay, Adam Hughes, Chris Hartmann, and Chad Minter, for their setup and support this weekend.
Thanks to Howard Smith for all his hard work on the Cathedral property.
Thanks to Andy Pitkin, Ken Sallot, and Ted McCoy for their support with scooters and extra heater packs.
Thanks to Faith Ortins at DUI, Steve Gamble at Gamble Scuba, Lamar Hires at Dive Rite, and the Bernots at Cave Country Dive Shop for their materiel support.
Charlie Roberson
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Originally Posted by Jay
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