I woke up much more refreshed after getting to bed early and having a reasonably good night’s sleep. It was Sunday September 30th 2018, the last day of DPV Cave with Dan Patterson. We were to meet him at 7:30 in front of Manatee Springs State park, which is located about 40 minutes Southwest of High Springs, near the town… Read more »
I took GUE DPV 1 May 2018, which certified me to use a scooter in open water but not in an overhead environment. That being said, I have less interest in scootering in open water than I have in caves for now. So the real goal even back in May, was to get cave DPV certified in the near future…. Read more »
We’ve been wanting to dive Peacock III or P3 as it’s called for quite some time. This cave system is adjacent to Peacock I or P1, in Peacock springs state park in North Florida. It’s considered a more advanced cave dive because of a number of factors. First, the system often siphons, which means it gently sucks you into the… Read more »
Technical and cave diving has always seemed to be such a distant goal for us. I can remember the feeling I had when starting to discover Global Underwater Explorers back in 2013 while living in Houston. I was in awe of the divers that I would watch in videos. They just made it look so easy and fun. They had… Read more »
It’s been just about 6 months since Cave 2 and we have been busy diving as much as we can. Tina and I have spent a fair amount of time exploring a little bit of Madison, a lot of Peacock, and a lot of Ginnie springs. We pretty much try a different dive or try to see something new every… Read more »
Cave 2 has been a different class compared to other GUE classes we have taken. The challenges were there, the struggle with new skills were there, but the learning was different. Mark and Mer gave us the tools to make good decisions underwater; in a positive and controlled way. Of course there are a number of ways to deal with… Read more »
It’s the 4th day of Cave 2 training. We are sore and tired. Our fingers are chewed up more than normal. I suppose it’s because of trying to mess with gear in the cold and dragging extra equipment that we aren’t used to in the caves. So far class is going ok. It’s certainly challenging and fun. But at the… Read more »
December 28, 2017 It’s day 3 and we finally got some sleep last night. However the weather doesn’t seem to be cooperating with us. It was really cold this morning, and analyzing tanks with cold fingers was not fun. Now have even more tanks to analyze, ( 4 sets of doubles, 2 AL40 deco bottles and 2 AL 80’s) it… Read more »
We’ve been really busy cave diving, averaging about 10 cave dives per month, since completing our GUE Cave 1 class almost exactly a year ago. We have learned a lot this year, and are lucky to have such beautiful dive sites in our back yard. Now we are on the cusp of taking GUE Cave 2, and we are… Read more »
Tina and I have been wanting to get some professional pictures taken of us in the water for quite some time. We always seem to be taking pictures or video of each other, and never have any of both she and I in the shot. So I contacted Lauren and Jon Kieren to see if they would be interested in… Read more »
Tina and I had been working hard all week and Mer was gracious to give us an open ended schedule. We pretty much agreed that it would take what it took to do the class and at this point we were just happy to be learning and growing as divers. As with fundies, we grew so much in just a short amount… Read more »
It was day 6 and we arrived at the front office of Ginnie Springs just before 8am. We waited a few minutes for the staff to open up but we were the only ones in the parking lot. We quickly checked in and everyone there was very nice. They gave us our “Cave 1” arm bands and we headed over the the… Read more »
Class started on Sunday the 18th at EE, with Meredith Tanguay as our instructor. We did the normal morning lectures followed by some gear inspection. There are some slight gear changes for cave diving that we hadn’t done prior to class, but Mer got us all fixed up. Really not much changes but you will see once you take the… Read more »
If you asked me two years ago if we would be getting ready to do a cave diving class, I’d have said “no way that’s happening!” In fact I remember when we first met Mer, she asked us what our goals were in diving. The subject of cave diving seemed pretty ridiculous to even think about. But I guess life tends… Read more »