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Bill Stone emerges from his dive in Wakulla Spring only to be confronted by a banded watersnake that sidewinded itself right toward him. Apparently after second thought it changed its mind and headed over in the direction of a pair of ducks [photo ©1999 Barbara Anne am Ende]. |
Dive Report For Sally Ward
February 7 and 8, 1999
by Jason Mallinson and Rick Stanton
Is it possible to get a dual rebreather into Sally Ward? This was the question I asked Rick when we were deciding what to do on our next dive. "With a little digging of the floor it may be possible" was his reply. So a plan was hatched!
We took some custom-made sand digging/dragging tools and whilst Rick dragged all the spoil back into the cave I dug and pushed down the material to him. After about 1/2 hour I made an attempt with the dual rig feet first but the equipment around my chest area stuck on the gravel floor. More digging was required and after another 1/2 hour I thought I could force my way in. This was done without the diluent sidemounts which were dragged through behind me and reattached inside. Once inside I had a quick dive down to the balcony and then returned to the restriction, where Rick had done some more digging, and this was passed quite easily. We were now set for a dive downstream with the dual rigs and scooters. Using the dual rigs meant we didn't have to stage any tanks for travel or deco but just used the two side- mount diluents we were carrying.
The next day we used a minimal support crew of two divers (Patty Mortara and Doug Arnberg) who took the scooters and the side mounts through the restriction. We passed the squeeze easily and spent some time beyond kitting up with the side-mounts and buoys. Once we were kitted up we set off into the cave slowly due to the bulky backpacks and did our gas switches at the balcony. The air diluent was left at 50 meters and we proceeded on the slow Thinman scooters down to the previous coil position. The coil was picked up and we set off for Chamber 4.
Once there the coil was activated for Brian to locate on the surface. This gave us a time period of 20 minutes before we had to return with the beacon as it was needed in B tunnel the next day in Wakulla Spring. While waiting for the beacon to be located, we followed all the lines in the vicinity: three terminated but one passage was noticed to be carrying the suspended silt in a downstream direction. The divers had to return to the coil before the end of the line had been reached here. Once back at the balcony our support crew arrived as planned, took the scooters and coil, then left us to our 3.5 hours of deco.
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During a tour of Wakulla 2, a group of kids from Holy Comforter school is fascinated by the computer display of the cave map, as Barbara am Ende points out the main features . [photo ©1999 William C. Stone]. |
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Mark Meadows, happy to take a break
from scooter motor repair, preps an MK5 rebreather with the
help of his wife Rose [photo ©1999 Barbara Anne am
Ende].
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David Stone unscrews a plate which holds the digital wall mapper together. The mapper is being opened in order to charge the batteries for the upcoming mission to map B-Tunnel tomorrow [photo ©1999 William C. Stone]. |
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Today we did not have a mission in the morning, so I helped my dad to prepare the 3D mapper for the mission to B-Tunnel on Tuesday. We took the system apart in prepartion for charging the batteries. We use a laptop computer to get the information from the mapper and a separate laptop computer to control the charging of the propulsion vehicle. I also helped Rick Stanton and Jason Mallinson prepare for their radio location mission into Sally Ward Spring later in the afternoon. While Rick and Jason were in the underwater cave the bubbles from the other support divers came up through holes in the top of the cave and we could see them from shore. It was really weird to see bubbles coming up through cracks in the underwater rock. At night we sat around a campfire and listened to expedition stories from around the world.
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Today's Humor Picture: Kevin Krug, producer of National Geographic Explorer TV, decided to spell Evon, the "Hydrilla Man," by chopping away at the evil weeds with a long-bladed axe in preparation for the front end loader scoop. How often does a person get to play with a large, sharp object. Barbara wasn't the only one who found the image humorous, as Ford Cochran with National Geographic On-Line also snapped some digital pix [photo ©1999 Barbara Anne am Ende]. |
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Copyright ©1999, U.S. Deep Caving Team, Inc. All rights reserved. No portion of these pages may be used for any reason without prior written authorization.
