Date: Thu, 11 Sep 1997 18:22:16 -0400 From: Doug Chapman  Subject: Re:Mystery Sink Wawscuba@aol.com wrote: >I keep reading about mystery sink in a few books.Has it been renamed or >closed whats its history and whats it like some of you vets ought to know Mystery Sink is located Orlando, FL area not too far from I-4 in Winter Park. It was closed by the owner (I think in the seventies) after two divers were killed. It is supposed to be about 400-425ft deep. One wall was surveyed by the Navy down to about 200ft using a side-mounted fathometer in the early sixties because they were considering using it as an acoustic test facility, which they ultimately located at Buggs Spring (apx. 150ft) near Leesburg, FL because the access to Mystery was too steep (about 50 to 75 ft down) and would require alot of infrastructure to accommodate large transducers. The sinkhole has a characteristic hourglass shape. The opening at water level I estimate to be about 150-200ft across. The sinkhole was named Emerald Sink prior to the more recent Mystery Sink, which was probably coined by Hal Watts when he leased the site for a training facility. The STORY goes (as it has been told to me) that on a relatively shallow (apx. 100ft) dive with Hal, a young diver apparently decided to break Hal's deep air record without his knowledge and ended up on the bottom. When Hal turned around to check on him at around 100 ft., he saw the kid's light very deep and went down to try to effect a rescue. Hal blacked out and awoke under a ledge at about 30'. A few days later Hal and members of the 40 Fathom club attempted a body recovery. This time Hal and his partner were diving heliox. They did not locate the body and when they came up to 300ft on the up line, the the safety diver on air on the line was tangled in the line?? and quite narked (obviously not a member of the 50 fathom club). They cut the diver loose and he shot up to the surface apparently colliding with the bottom of the support skiff, and he too ended up on the bottom. Apparently Hal rocketed after him and got the crap bent out of himself. Hal recalls seeing trees during his failed rescue attempt before blacking out; on the heliox dives he noted the trees were at 425ft. From this the claim for the 425ft deep air cave record materializes. The site was closed after this; the two bodies are still on the bottom. Mystery Sink (Emerald Sink) would be a fantastic karst window to explore. It will still be some time before the site is legally accessible. Doug Chapman Note: The story above is just that. Since I was not there I can not substantiate any fact or fiction. Take it for what its worth.