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Cave diving at Blue Grotto in Williston, Fl back in the early 80s. Straight down from surface, bottom at 50ish feet, large cave opening at 30 feet, goes back 50 feet - just a massive room. Real cave system started in either corner - 2 tunnels made a Y, and where they intercepted each other (at 90 feet depth) there was a major restriction (can't pass w/o removing tanks) that opened into a room teh size of a football stadium. Anyway, with our basic cave certs, we could do the Y tunnel and *look* through the opening ot the big room, but couldn't attempt to enter it.
Anyway, there was a horse trough attached the ceiling in the big opening to the cavern part of the cave about 30 feet in from entrance (caverns have natural light to some degree), hooked to an air compressor at the surface. You could surface in it, remove regulator, talk to your partner to plan decompression stops, etc. Bottom was 30' below that...
Between dives we were free diving down into the cavern, and surfacing in the air chamber, getting a few breaths, and swimming back out.
I decided to go to the back wall instead. So surface to air chamber, get a breath, air chamber to back wall, down in deep. Fantastic view. Running out of breath. Start hauling ass for not the air chamber just 20 feet away but for the cavern exit.
Was running out of breath, exit seemed too far away, couldn't go back to air chamber.... moment of lucidity set in, and I flipped over and was swimming upside down, about 5 feet down from cavern ceiling, and as soon as I saw daylight above me I ditched my 20lb weight belt and let my very buoyant wet suit pop me to the surface...
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