On the 13th March our GUE cave team is heading for Mexico. Sergio, Peter and I are signed up for GUE C2 class with instructor Christophe Le Maillot at Zero Gravity at Xpu Ha, Q. Roo.

Needless to say we are really looking forward to the challenge of C2. I am also personally looking forward to getting into some “low flow” cave. To date all of my C1 level dives have been in the rather robust embrace of the flow of Ginnie Springs.

In Mexico all our dives will be conducted in the inland Cenotes of the Yucatan peninsula. There are plenty of great cave diving videos of these flooded cave systems on YouTube… but one of may favourites is...

As promised please see below the final cut version of our cave diving trip video to High Springs Florida. Warning: my video camera is not HD and I have no light rigging on it… the only light source during this video is our HID dive lights. Obviously in the end section when we emerge from the cave system the natural sunlight helps a lot :) I hope you enjoy it… we had great fun diving it… but yes I know the image quality is not exactly national Geographic!

Florida Cave Diving Trip 2010

On the 27th of January I finally got on the road for High Springs Florida to meet up with Peter and Sergio my GUE Cave 1 team for a week of cave diving. I flew from Dublin to Newark and then connect from Newark down to Orlando. Not the most efficient way of doing things – but in the absence of a direct flight to Orlando what was a poor Irish cave diver to do? Unfortunately it did result in many comatose episodes in the above mentioned airports. Excitement was however reliably provided at each and every security check point due to my “scary” Halcyon 21watt HID dive light… at every stage it received the focused attention of various security officials and was narko/explosive tested with gay abandon. On the plus side I quickly realised that...

Yes another –3.5c morning arrived today… and yes we just had to go diving. The journey down to hook Head was quite entertaining with the roads been covered in sheets of ice… my cars “active” control system was most definitely Active!!

The diving conditions were perfect for the Hook… there was hardly a breeze and the tide was well on its way out. Myself, Micko, P.J. Ronan, Davy and Colum got all our kit ready and took advantage of a fantastic solid rock bench just recently installed at the dive site overlooking the sea view. The memorial bench is a really great idea and it was greatly appreciated by our divers as it makes kitting up so much easier… while I can’t be 100% sure I have a funny idea that “Paul” the person who is commemorated on the bench was...

Well having had a very bad spell of winter weather some in our club were getting “itchy” to go for a dive. We scoured the land for a suitable “all weather” site and thanks to Gavin we heard tell of a lake that might be suitable for diving, located just outside the town of Mullingar in the Irish midlands.

As we were all really keen to go diving we decided to brave the –3.5c air temp and head up the icy country roads to Lough Owel on Sunday the 13th December. We arrived at the dive site at roughly 9am. The conditions were perfect; ironically no wind and a clear bright sky, but very frosty and very, very cold.

Myself, Colin, Micko, Ronan, Gavin and Przemek headed down to the jetty and hoped in… the lake is ideal for training dives...