Monday, 9 July 2012

Our Introduction to Jackson Blue




It's about a 2.5 hour drive north-west from High Springs to Marianna, and you change a time zone into Central Time, so we gained an hour, nice :) We headed straight for Cave Adventurers so that we could find out anything we needed to know about the DPV course, and check in to dive Jackson Blue that afternoon. Kev also wanted to find out if they had any stock of Minnus Scooters to buy. As luck would have it (maybe not for the cash balance, but definitely for the happy-factor), they had one Minnus and one Minnus 1.5 in stock. We bought them on the spot :) 

The Minnus underwater DPVs

Then we headed to Blue Hole Springs Park, which is the recreational park around the opening of Jackson Blue Spring. Jackson Blue is the most commonly dived cave in the area, partially because you don't need a boat to access the entrance, and partly because the system is so large and the main passages are high and wide and forgiving.  There is also quite a bit of flow, so although there is silt, it disperses quite quickly. The underwater system is massive, and the maps say it stretches 11,000 feet which is about 3.3km, and there are about 16,000' (4.8km) of mapped passages.  The map I have below only shows 4,000' (1.2km), which is plenty enough for Kev and me, at Komati Springs I think our max distance penetration was about 200-300m.  But in Jackson Blue the max depth is about 30m, so at least there is no real decompression to worry about.



The Blue Hole Springs Park is a beautiful park at the top of Merrit's Mill Pond. It has a wooden platform that separates the spring (and swimming area) from the swampy pond. There are bathrooms and lots of pavilions with picnic tables. During the day it fills up with families and children swimming and playing in the spring. The entrance to the cave is right underneath a diving board, so divers go underneath where kids are jumping in above. 

Blue Hole Springs Park with barrier to Mill Pond
Blue Hole Springs Park with Diving Board

Jackson Blue Hole Beneath the Diving Board

The entire diving pavilion was busy, so Kev and I kitted up in one of the normal pavilions. I felt more comfortable than I had at Catfish Hotel at least knowing that other people were diving here. Also there is nothing covering the spring, so you can see straight away how clear and beautiful the water is (just look at that pic above of the hole!). 

We decided our first dive would be into the entrance and up to the main line. We dived in, and down beneath the bombing children to the opening. The entrance is quite wide and slopes gently down to about 7m. There is plenty of space to tie your reel off before descending into the cave itself. The opening to the cavern is wide enough to fit two divers side by side and about 2-3m high. As you enter the cavern there is a large dome of limestone rock in the center that stretches in about 30m, with deeper passages along both sides. We saw one line tied off going immediately from the entrance down to the left, but we knew this was not the way to the main line, so we swam along another diver's line along the right side of the dome until we saw the gold main line and the STOP sign.

STOP sign sitting on the large limestone dome in the entrance cavern at Jackson Blue (this is underwater)




The cavern is wide and high, there is plenty of space and plenty of light. You can easily see the light from the entrance at the STOP sign. The water is brilliant blue, apparently because of magnesium in the water, which obviously gives the spring it's name. The cave walls are limestone and white, so all the light reflects off them making everything brighter. At the top of the cavern, lots of bubbles collect from all the open circuit divers, so there's a large pool of air and it forms a mirror for your torchlight, reflecting streams of blue shimmering light from the ceiling and down over everything below. It is breath-taking. I can't wait for Kev to get his camera down there. The cavern floor is at about 11m. After looking around we headed out to prepare for a proper cave dive. 


After a quick break and some hurried lunch we jumped in again. The plan was to follow the main line for about 10min penetration. We want to take it easy and get familiar with the cave since our experience is limited to Komati Springs back home which isn't nearly as convoluted or busy as Jackson Blue. Kev laid line to the main line, and then we were off. Just passed the start of the main line it heads down a narrow rock face (chimney) to the right. The crevice is about 14m deep going from 12m to 26m. At the bottom it opens up into a very wide passage, but it's not that high, probably only 1.5-2m most of the time. There are passages leading off left and right all the time. We passed one marked jump before hitting a broken down section where you go up a few meters over some rock fall. Just on top of the rock fall I spotted another marked jump. We continued on the next flat section to 600' where we turned the dive. The flow on that last section was quite strong, so we floated back easily. On the way back I had a good look for the lines that the jumps must lead to and found both not far from the main line. What a dive. This is what we can expect from the caves here and it's amazing, and so exciting ... all those passages to explore, I can't wait!

Everyone had packed up and left by the time we got out of the water. It was about 6pm. Still very light, but drizzling. We packed up and headed back to Cave Adventurers to meet Edd. He gave us a quick introductory lecture on how to use our scooters and care for them. Then we did some quick shopping for dinner and went to check in at the Comfort Inn. The room was huge and clean, and most importantly on the bottom floor, which is necessary when you're lugging around all this equipment. After cleaning out machines and hanging everything ready for an early start, we crashed.
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Location: 3084 Mill Pond Cir, Marianna, FL 32446, USA

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