theskull
November 5th, 2006, 03:35 PM
This weekend's dives at Cannonball Cave in Lake Wapapello were a constantly changing set of plans.
First, the personnel diving the cave kept changing due to expected divers (3) coming down with sudden cases of sinus conditions and a hurt back. Also a welcome late addition to the lineup when Steve2281 lost his usual cave buddy to sickness and asked to join us for a couple dives.
Second, Crawford and Skip were to have dived Mine LaMotte on Friday, get fills and camp at Wapapello to meet us first thing Saturday morning -- but their trailer got stuck in the mud at LaMotte and after getting loose Saturday morn and driving down to Poplar Bluff for their fills they didn't make it to Cannonball until about Noon on Saturday to join in the second dive.
Then, our plans as to what would occur during both dives got modified (simplified) when we got in and discovered that the poor visibility of the day (10-15 ft.) hampered the ability and potential enjoyment of making some of the jumps and circuits we had planned.
In any case, a couple nice cave dives did get enjoyed. The lake water was app. 50 F with about 1 ft. of vis until you bullied through the submerged trees (my primary reel route from the dive float to the cave mainline was not my most successful effort to date) which rendered vis of only inches. The flow at the entrance to the cave was strong enough to make you work a little to get into the cave, but once in it was fairly mild and the water temp in the cave was a welcome 57 F. At 10-15 ft. visibility in the cave it was enough to enjoy the dive but not enough to really appreciate the natural beauty of this wonderful site--and made it a little difficult to keep track of the 4-man team on our second dive.
Steve & I made our first dive of the day breathing a stage bottle to preserve our backgas for the second dive. We abandoned our plan of diving one of the circuits to stay on the mainline back to the funnel partly due to the poor visibility and partly due to the amount of air we both sucked down making the entry--me in struggling to get the guideline through the trees and finding the entrance, having started a little bit off from the ideal point of descent, and Steve from having a bit of trouble getting in through the entrance against the flow.
We were joined on our second dive by Crawford and Skip (first time for them in Cannonball) and planned to dive up the mainline to the vertical descent and go down to app. 100 ft. before ascending and making the circuit around the top of the funnel. Well, 4-man cave teams always complicate the dive a bit, and even more so when the visibility prevents the leader and rear team members from being able to see all team members' lights during the dive. Some initial confusion saw 3 of us in the cave wondering where #4 was, and the 4th light just entered the cave as we were calling the dive to exit and find him. At our max depth of 90 ft. I called the dive since we didn't have enough vis to see the walls around us and were just descending on a line for no real reason, and didn't want to deal with the logistics of keeping 4 divers together on a circuit dive when it was so difficult to keep everyone within sight.
Despite the difficulties (difficulties are a typical part of cave dives anyway) all 4 of us enjoyed our time in Cannonball and eagerly anticipate another opportunity to dive there.
Dive #1 was for 47 minutes with a max depth of 55.
Dive #2 was for 54 minutes with a max depth of 90.
theskull
First, the personnel diving the cave kept changing due to expected divers (3) coming down with sudden cases of sinus conditions and a hurt back. Also a welcome late addition to the lineup when Steve2281 lost his usual cave buddy to sickness and asked to join us for a couple dives.
Second, Crawford and Skip were to have dived Mine LaMotte on Friday, get fills and camp at Wapapello to meet us first thing Saturday morning -- but their trailer got stuck in the mud at LaMotte and after getting loose Saturday morn and driving down to Poplar Bluff for their fills they didn't make it to Cannonball until about Noon on Saturday to join in the second dive.
Then, our plans as to what would occur during both dives got modified (simplified) when we got in and discovered that the poor visibility of the day (10-15 ft.) hampered the ability and potential enjoyment of making some of the jumps and circuits we had planned.
In any case, a couple nice cave dives did get enjoyed. The lake water was app. 50 F with about 1 ft. of vis until you bullied through the submerged trees (my primary reel route from the dive float to the cave mainline was not my most successful effort to date) which rendered vis of only inches. The flow at the entrance to the cave was strong enough to make you work a little to get into the cave, but once in it was fairly mild and the water temp in the cave was a welcome 57 F. At 10-15 ft. visibility in the cave it was enough to enjoy the dive but not enough to really appreciate the natural beauty of this wonderful site--and made it a little difficult to keep track of the 4-man team on our second dive.
Steve & I made our first dive of the day breathing a stage bottle to preserve our backgas for the second dive. We abandoned our plan of diving one of the circuits to stay on the mainline back to the funnel partly due to the poor visibility and partly due to the amount of air we both sucked down making the entry--me in struggling to get the guideline through the trees and finding the entrance, having started a little bit off from the ideal point of descent, and Steve from having a bit of trouble getting in through the entrance against the flow.
We were joined on our second dive by Crawford and Skip (first time for them in Cannonball) and planned to dive up the mainline to the vertical descent and go down to app. 100 ft. before ascending and making the circuit around the top of the funnel. Well, 4-man cave teams always complicate the dive a bit, and even more so when the visibility prevents the leader and rear team members from being able to see all team members' lights during the dive. Some initial confusion saw 3 of us in the cave wondering where #4 was, and the 4th light just entered the cave as we were calling the dive to exit and find him. At our max depth of 90 ft. I called the dive since we didn't have enough vis to see the walls around us and were just descending on a line for no real reason, and didn't want to deal with the logistics of keeping 4 divers together on a circuit dive when it was so difficult to keep everyone within sight.
Despite the difficulties (difficulties are a typical part of cave dives anyway) all 4 of us enjoyed our time in Cannonball and eagerly anticipate another opportunity to dive there.
Dive #1 was for 47 minutes with a max depth of 55.
Dive #2 was for 54 minutes with a max depth of 90.
theskull