Today we planned to do two dives again. Dive 1, I would lead us back to 1200' on the scooters, and then on the way back I would make any jump I saw and we would explore the side passages. Dive. 2, Kev would lead and we'd try go passed the trash room and a bit further in up to the Sweet Passage at about 2600'.
As usual, we got there early, but today there was another diver there as well ... Jim. He was going to be scootering alone with side-mount all the way out to Middle Grounds and then making a circuit through about 4000'. He told us of places we could make jumps into large rooms at about 2600' and was very friendly.
It seems we can't get in to the water and dive immediately without having to get out at least once, and today was no different. Although I'd positived and negatived my machine, when I started to descend I heard a "glug, glug, glug" in the loop. That means the machine is taking in water, and for a rebreather diver that's one of the most dangerous failures because a flooded loop could mean water getting into the back where the sofnolime that scrubs the CO2 out of the air is, and this could cause you to breathe in and swallow a caustic cocktail. Imagine breathing in and swallowing a concentrated toxic alkaline solution and being 700m deep in a cave! Even bailing off at that point might not save you.
As I ascended again and tipped my head back I saw that bubbles were coming out of the BOV (bail-out valve). Again this should never happen and was probably the source of the leaking, so we took the regulator apart in-water and reseated an o-ring there. I tested it and it was fine, but I didn't want to dive without checking if any water had gotten passed the right lung into the back, so out we got to check. All good and re-positived and negatived, we set off again.
This dive was fantastic! I loved every minute of it. We flew all the way to 1200', and I mean flew. My scootering has improved so much that I was able to go up the first restriction at the first breakdown and down the second without stopping or slowing down. It is so much fun flying along down there and maneuvering through obstacles. It was brilliant. And exploring on the way back was also great fun. We tried one jump between the first and second T, but it was very narrow and pretty silty, and as I was laying line into the restriction pretty much hugging the roof but almost touching the floor I heard Kev say "Bean, Uh-uh" and I knew he was right. So I came out and headed on to the next jump.
On the way back as you go up the breakdown there is a jump that leads right. We looked along there but I decided to go back to the jump that I've been wanting to do just before you go down again. We did this jump. It was also quite narrow, but not as silty. There were loads of fossils in all the limestone walls and rocks along the passage. Most of them are shells, but we finally found a circular doughnut shaped one which Warren had told us about, but unfortunately I can't remember the name - it may be a sea biscuit?
By the time we got back to the main line it had been about an 80min dive and we were both freezing. Kev is wearing my heated wetsuit vest at the moment because his wetsuit pours water down the back whereas mine is pretty snug. So we used the scooters to race each other back to the chimney using gear 3 :) At least in a wetsuit you start warming up as soon as you get to the surface, so after a warm up session, some yoghurt, and some chatting to the other divers, we were ready for dive number two.
Everything went smoothly and I was enjoying following Kev in. There is much more light as diver number two, it's very relaxing and enjoyable. But about 50m after going down the chimney Kev turned in front of me and started heading up and out. Confused I went to find out what was wrong. We stopped at the ceiling and Kev showed me that his primary handset had frozen. This is another problem we've had with the Hammerheads, particularly Kevin's has frozen a few times and at least one if his handsets resets during every longish (> 1.5 hour) dive. We have kept diving them and watching them thinking maybe the batteries are faulty and continuing to try new types of batteries. At the ceiling Kev indicated that his solenoid (this automatically injects O2 into the loop for you) was still firing and he was happy to continue, but only to 1200' again. So we set off, motored there and back and then packed up to phone Juergensen Marine for the second time in two days!
Kev chatted to a technician at Juergensen Marine, and he said that we should send both machine heads to them because they shouldn't ever be resetting or freezing underwater, and we should be getting at least 5 hour dives with the batteries. We decided we would stay in Marianna until Monday, then send the heads to Pennsylvania for Juergensen Marine to fix while we headed to the coast for some beach holiday. Not ideal, but not too bad a compromise to get fixed machines.
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