Mailing List Archive Mailing List Archive
Wakulla Springs Cave is rapidly rising on the list of the longest
underwater caves in the World, and certainly is getting right up there
with Leon Sinks as one of the longest deep underwater caves. After this
last dive by the WKPP, Wakulla now has 39,000 feet of surveyed and
mapped passage.
There are now two tunnels that extent over 14,000 feet from the
entrance. Diving the Halcyon rebreather and tripple Gavin scooters,
George Irvine, Jarrod Jablonski, and Brent Scarabin again travelled
undeground down(town) to the intersection at Cherokee Sink and took the
westbound tunnel this time. Last time it was the southbound tunnel that
produced the 14,230 foot dive. This time , the tunnel went around
Cherokee the other way, and then headed west , jogging north and west ,
back towards Leon Sinks. It was outflowing dark water in giant bore
tunnel varying from 250 feet deep to 295 feet deep. The team added 3340
feet of line trying to take the northern splits each time an
intersection appeared before finally making a wrong turn and hitting a
dead end at 14,040 feet. Marking leads on the way out and writing them
in the book, the group found four more large tunnels that could be the
Leon Sinks connection point. Right now the cave is syponing this water
to the south down the main passage, but one can now see where the dark
water is coming from when the cave is blowing.
The dive took 252 minutes of bottom time ( bottom time starting when
B Tunnel is passed ). B Tunnel is where the first deco bottle is left, a
trimix mixture, as are most of the WKPP deco gasses. The dive was
exectuted as follows. On Thursday night after 5:00 the WKPP met at
Wakulla and put the gear together. Barry Miller, Ted Cole, and Jules
Tomsits took the safety scooters and new safety bottles to 3500, John
Rose , Bill Mee and Chris Warner took the rebreather drive bottles and
large Gavins to 3500, and the rest of the deco gas was placed for all
teams. Each team then explored various tunnels on the way out. Early the
next morning, George , JJ and Brent went in and picked up this gear,
moving it forward to 6500 for the switch while a team of Landon, Head
and Werner conducted a simultaneous exploration dive in D Tunnel. All
gear was left in the cave until the Park closed and was then removed
Friday night.
Visibility was very poor all the way out. It had rained a couple of
days before, and already the dark water had moved back into the cave,
but was beginning to syphon back out again. Anyway, the trip was an
on-the-line drill, but good speed was maintained. On the way in every
lead was checked , so it took about 110 minutes until they reached the
first tunnel to be explored, with the plan being to do the others on the
way out if that one did not go. It turned out to be the motherlode of
new cave which will keep the WKPP busy in there for years to come.
The new section was spectacular Tallahassee Power Cave (TPC). It
would vary from Indian Spring sized tunnel to the black voids we have
have come to know and love. At several points Brent Scarabin reports
seeing no walls, no ceiling, and no floor while being at 285 suspended
in darkness, just heading for the darkest spot. On one shot George
reports stopping to clear his mask , thinking it was fogged, only to
find it was not, but that the floor was nowhere in sight with 295 on the
depth guage. Brent says at several points he stopped and tied off the
reel and let it hang until JJ and George got to him to decide which way
to go at major intersections.
The only problems reported on this dive were Brent hitting his head
on a stalactite, and George reporting running his rebreather into
stalactites that he could not see hanging down due to reading the
compass while scootering. These are not the Mexico syle calcite pencils,
these are the stop-you-dead-in-your-tracks version that are black and
can not be seen. These things are concentrated at certain locations in
the cave and appear unexpectedly.
A greet team met the exp team, and then went on to take photos in B
Tunnel. The cleanup team of Cole, Barry , Trout and Chris retrieved the
gear from 3500. The dive took about 100 cubic feet of bottom gas, which
comes out to an effective .025 SAC rate, or eigth times leverage on an
actual rate in the .27-.33 range, a fact of life which makes the 33
safety bottles in the cave about three times the gas required to get
out, not counting the on board supply assuming tripple rebreather
failure. The scooter logistics are such that at any point, any scooter
the team had with them could make it back to the last scooter, safety
scooters not being counted in that figure.
For deco, the team used the WKPP method for the deep part, and then
an accellerated Hamilton for the intermediate, with some experimentation
in the final stages done by George. Bill Mee has come up with supporting
physiological and hemodynamic arguments for the deco that George has
actually developed, so this was used as a basis to try something a
little faster. Here is the result: George was able to completely
decompress from this dive in 8 hours and 45 minutes ( this was a 252
bottom time at 285, 262 miinutes run to deco, first stop 250 feet on the
appropriate trimix). The interesting thing was that he did only 3 hours
of oxygen time ( actually 132 minutes of oxygen, the rest trimix ), and
got straight out from 30 feet with no stopping. The shape of the deeper
sections of the deco, and the choice of gases, allowed the shallower
parts to be stepped through faster. It is estimated that with the
current WKPP deco method, the oxygen may in fact not even need to be
more than an hour, but we need to see the bloodwork to be sure of that.
JJ and Brent now use trimix for all of the non-oxygen deco, a fact which
flies in the face of conventional deco theory. Bill Mee again has the
information to support this choice.
NOTE: Before you try this at home, be aware that these three do a good
bit of hard training, and have the cardiovascular efficiency as well as
lack or any dcs preconditions, and have the history to support this
activity.
George drove home after the dive, charged his scooters, refilled his
five partially used bottles and one oxygen bottle, vacuumed the
rebreather and charged the light and was ready for the next one.
WKPP will be back at Wakulla in a couple of weeks to work these
leads , and will be hitting all of Leon Sinks in a concentrated effort
in July and August. We need to take advantage of this drought and get
the hard stuff knocked out. If any of you can take time off to help ,
there is some great diving to be done. The Florida Geological Survey.
FSU, the Forest Service and St Joe Paper are all getting out the maps
and photos for WKPP to work all of the normally hard to dive and hard to
find sinks.
Thanks to the usual people for getting it done. Dawn will have the
rest of the reports.
--
Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'.
Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
Navigate by Author:
[Previous]
[Next]
[Author Search Index]
Navigate by Subject:
[Previous]
[Next]
[Subject Search Index]
[Send Reply] [Send Message with New Topic]
[Search Selection] [Mailing List Home] [Home]