Arrival

The day has finally arrived.  I am sitting in a house in High Springs Florida about to start the cave diving adventure of a lifetime!  3 months of diving kilometres of many different cave systems await.  Sometimes dreams really do come true! 

We are both Hammerhead rebreather divers and got all our cave, trimix and ccr certifications in South Africa.  Diving in South Africa is pretty limited to the coast line and there aren't many cave systems.  With us living in Johannesburg, we have only really had one cave system that we could train and learn in.  It's not actually a cave system, but a flooded mine, called Komati Springs or as we fondly call it "The Gat".  The Komati Springs mine has at least 7 horizontal levels each of which can have about 100m+ of corridors.  The 7th level is at 108m and there are still passages that go in and down further from here, one to at least 180m depth.  So the system is not small or easy, but it is still only one system, and somehow in just that one system we have racked up 72 cave dives and 88 hours of cave diving.  So it's not hard to imagine how excited and amazed we are to get the opportunity to dive probably more than 30 cave systems which stretch for miles and miles under northern Florida. 

Kevin and I flew out from Johannesburg, South Africa on 3 Jul 2012.  We took all our diving gear (rebreathers, backplates, regulators, bcs, drysuits, wetsuits, cave reels, cave torches and batteries, camera equipment, etc, etc).  Our total weight .. 158kg!  And we made it to Orlando airport with no incidents.   

Granted, for 3 months of travel we each only have a smattering of clothes, but we did it!

Now to find some cylinders, kit them up and then go hunt down some caves to dive.   

There is one sad piece of luck in the tale so far:  Tropical Storm Debbie came right over north Florida from the Gulf last week.  It was a slow moving almost hurricane and it dumped inches and inches of water over the panhandle.  This means that most of the caves and springs we were going to be diving have been shut because of flooding.  The flooding is still peaking in some areas, but the main worry is that the high water levels can cause some of the springs to blow out.  What this means is instead of water flowing up and out of the spring (all clean and clear and fresh), it sucks into the spring (all muddy and dirty and river water).  If this happens then the caves can be un-divable for weeks or even months.  What we've read on the forums that it's pretty bad so far, but now that we're here we can find out exactly what's happening and which if any caves can still be dived.