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Conditions are perfect for this weekend's attempted "swimthrough" from Big D to Cheryl. According to Rat, it is the "best I have ever seen" ( and "Don't ask me why" ). JJ and I , or Ted and I, will set up the Cheryl side Friday night at the Bitter End with the help of Billy Baxter and Jody Everett, and whoever else can help, we will all meet at Leon Sinks Geological at 8:00 Saturday, and send the teams to Cheryl and Big D. Dawn will be running the Cheryl Side, I believe Hunsucker will be running the Big D side. Bring your cell phones. I'll have the cops down to keep an eye on things . While Gavin suspected this connection fifteen years ago, and Dr. Osmond's radioisotope studies predicted it, it was not until seven years ago that Gavin found the tunnel as we were about to give up on the place on our third dive to the "Bitter End" , so named by Parker for that reason. Three dives later we had it out 9,000 feet , and killed one diver doing it. Gavin stepped back, asked me to run it and to get us proper access to all of these places so that we would not have to do risky dives. Gavin and Exley ( who had joined the WKPP that year) had been turned down by the Forest Service. I got us access to it all through my usual persistent obnoxious persuasion and the meeting of every demand they made, culminating with a guarantee by me that contains the "standards" of the WKPP as you mostly know them today right down to the nitty gritty of DIR . However, I also changed the "risky" part by mere enforcement of the priciples in place all along, an outspoken position for which I have been continuously attacked by the personal preference crowd ( read strokes ), and which prevents me from being a well-liked guy . Too bad. JJ, Casey, Sankey ( whose wife should have had a baby today), Brent and I connected it on our first dive in Big D a few years back, a marvel of WKPP teamwork and execution. We then lost access to the Cheryl side, which I got back for WKPP in an agreement with St Joe last year. Weather has been a problem, but in a window this spring Brent and I went up from Cheryl and checked the connection to Gavin's line , finding the arrows left by us a few years ago. This may seem anitclimatic given some of the dives we do, and the obvious fact that now we could do it both ways from either side, but the fact is it is what we have developed that allows something like this that seems so hard to be so straight forward, and that is not even using our rebreathers. The fact that everyone expects we can do this easily is a statement about the WKPP. It is also a function of the fact that we have this natural wonder here to do it in: the World's record for a traverse of this type is now held by the WKPP from Sullivan to Cheryl and there are a few other caves in the world that may contain something of a traverse, but nothing like this one of 14,000+ feet at 220 that conducts giant quantities of ground water and surface water from the top of the Appalachicola National Forest in Leon County to Wakulla County down by Indian Springs and still going in the longest underwater cave in the United States, and the third longest in the World. By the way, I did dives in both the number one and number two caves two weeks ago. As it stands , this will be a new record for the WKPP, breaking its own record, and a good kickoff to a big season of exploration in Leon Sinks and Wakulla. Ladies and Gentlemen, keep in mind that now nobody can ever say that the strokes did not get their chance at all of this with every possible tool money could buy ( actually a bad joke ) , including unlimited access to Wakulla under the best conditions ever recorded, and were hopeless faliures , leaving it all for the WKPP, as always has been the case. Let's kick some ass this year, we've already taken the names. We have access to absolutely everything and it is clear. See you this weekend.
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