Cave Weekend

So, after the North Carolina trip, I drove 5 hours west to Winston-Salem as I began to re-realize the "seasons" we just don't experience down in South Florida. Fortunately I have a virtual office job, so I camped out at a client office with some friends for the week, burned up a few Marriott points, and enjoyed some southern hospitality. This sidestep also helped break up the tedious 13 hour drive back home, as I was meeting up w/ Lesley, Chris and Erin for some cave diving on the return trip.

We rented one of the mobile homes Cave Excursions has available, well hidden off the beaten path just north of Lauraville. Compared to previous trips - this was care-free no stress diving. I mean - we were downright lazy, we managed to squeeze in two dives a day...

Saturday we dove at Madison Blue. Since the summer is officially over, there were no swimmers, occasionally another dive team would show up, or a family doing some sight-seeing - nothing compared to labor day...!

Erin is cavern certified, so Lesley and Chris alternated buddying up for cavern dives

Lesley and I teamed up first and followed the main line out past the half-hitch restriction (864'), I don't recall exaclty how far we got, but I want to say 12-1300' and 40 minutes, definately before the Mount Offshoot @ 1347'. On the return trip through the cavern zone Lesley decided to slow down and take a scenic tour and check things out. Unfortuately for me, I had a few cups of coffe w/ breakfast and a liter of soda on the drive out, so nature had been calling since shortly after we turned - I've been lazy and don't have a p-valve in my drysuit, nor do I go the diaper route. I gave her the signal for 'I gotta pee!' and we high-tailed it out. With these larger tanks, we've been seeing 70-80' dive times easily - this was a scene repeated often during the weekend.

For the next dive, Chris and I headed down the main line and turned just past the half-hitch restriction, probably ~900'. I had two sets of doubles for the trip, however Chris was using the same set he did the cavern dive w/, so thats why it was somewhat shorter...

Lesley and I made the drive back to CE for fills while Erin and Chris went on an expedition to locate a birthday cake for Lesley. We had intentions to do a night dive, Cow or Telford, but after a big dinner at Two Sisters BBQ and cake, we settled in for watching "The Cave" on my laptop - I made it about 20 minutes then crashed.

We woke around 8am, and SLOWLY got moving. I think we made it to Peacock around 10am for our first dives. The brown muck from our previous trip was gone as Chris and I explored the mainline in an attempt to get to Olsen sink, we were a few hundred feet short as we called thirds.

Headed back to CE for fills, and this time we talked Chris into shooting HD video..., the plan was to head down the pothole line, make a jump off to the Nicholson tunnel, then jump onto the line heading to Cisteen sink. Chris had the camera, so I got to model and do all the work - nice huh? We managed to get back in there, and despite having plenty of gas - we got to that point in the back of your head where you start saying "man - we are WAY back in here"... I don't believe we got to the wishbone, so we were a few hundred feet from Cisteen before we turned.

Hopefully the video comes out nice... I'll post a link here when available...