Describe One of Your Favorite Dives

[CCRDIVER]

Rick, I cant compete with you, but here is my favorate dive.  For now anyway.  Hope this summer brings new and exiting things. 

My best dive would have to include, deep water, one shipwreck, and lots of time. 

The day began as any other day with the sun shining through the windows of an Aluminum boat where I had spent the last few nights with friends docked in a sheltered bay in Isle Royal National Park.  The weather couldn’t have been better, calm water and almost no wind gave the Lake a picture perfect view, and if I didn’t know better I would have leapt off the dock and taken a swim.  However, with water temperatures ranging from 40 to 55 degrees at the surface I couldn’t help but feel cold thinking about a quick dip.  After some much needed nourishment, and quick stroll to the funky smelling shack in the woods we motored out to the dive site and tied in to the mooring buoy. 

My dive partner and I studied the 250 foot wreck and contemplated where we would venture on this dive.  This wreck found its watery grave in 1927 as it slipped down an underwater cliff and came to rest on the starboard side with the bow driven deep into the mud at 260 feet. 

Deciding to cover the whole wreck in one dive, we geared up, complete with drysuits, Closed Circuit Rebreathers, a myriad of bailout bottles, and a host of other gear, then jumped into the water.  My partner and I descended to 20 feet and preformed a simple gear and bubble check, with everything a go we dumped all the air out of our dive wings, and started for the bottom.  We descend as fast as we can go only slowing up to add air to the wing and counter lungs or our rebreathers.  As we are diving a mix of Oxygen, Nitrogen and Helium, narcosis won’t play a factor in the dive, and quickly we pass 130 feet on our way to 180 where the ship starts. 

Arriving on the port side rail located in 180 feet of water and just forward of the engine room we moved methodically towards the bow and continued to descend.  Along the way the scattered remains of cargo litters the bottom.  A life raft comes into view along with booms for loading and unloading cargo.  These booms are horizontal in the water because, remember the ship in on its side making for a sometimes confusing view of things.  As the bow comes into view I see clearly that half the bow section is buried in mud, and unseen.  What is seen can only be described as cool.  An ax hanging on the wall, stairs, doors, and rails all leading to the captain’s quarters.  Looking inside the room, as I stand on my head, and all the air in my drysuit goes to my legs, I see the remains of captain’s personal effects and lots of silt.  I think for a moment that I could enter, but the silt and common sense restrains me and we continue our exploration of the bow. 

Changing directions we swim back to the stern inside the cargo holds.  The cargo hold area is actually a two deck system of hatches and rooms for storing cargo.  All the cargo, consisting of farm implements, lighting, tools, paint, seats, and all sorts of other items that are hard to identify, are sloped out the now open cargo hatches, leaving it easy to swim into these lower level cargo holds and see the bottom of the ship, even though it looks more like a wall now.  Bubbles, what the???  Oh, Ya, I forgot, we are ascending, and as you ascend on a rebreather you need to vent bubbles and add Oxygen.  Just kidding I didn’t forget I just added that part for the suspense.  My gauges are all looking good, and I have plenty of time left before I need to ascend. 

Working our way through the cargo holds, we come to the coal bunker, and take a look without going on to far.  The coal dust is really bad underwater and will hang in the water for longer that silt, because of this if you end up getting lost or turned around somewhere with coal dust you might never come out again.  Anyway we moved on to the engine room where we spent more time looking at the builder’s plack still on the wall.  If you’re lucky you might run into the engineer and have a nice little conversation about what he was doing the night his ship sank.  Of course you need to check your mix, because if an engineer who has spent the last 78 year underwater in the engine room starts talking you might end up spending more time on the wreck than you planned.  I check mine and sure enough everything is ok, and I can’t make the guy say anything.  The engine room it good size and looking from on top the triple expansion steam engine you can see the skylights that open up to let you in or out as the case may be.  My dive partner exits, and I follow him as he moves rear to the exposed emergency helm, that has some chains to keep would be thieves from extricating that beautiful wood helm from its final resting place. 

Time is pretty much gone so we head up swimming around the prop and rubber over the exposed hull and back to the line we descended on 47 minuets earlier.  With an average depth of 237 feet and as you might expect we have some long decompression ahead of us.  It’s always odd to me when I have to stop at a depth below recreational limits for my first decompression stop, and this time will be no different.  By the time I get to 170 feet I have to make a one minuet stop and these continue every ten feet until I exit the water.  Just over 2 hours or total dive time I climb onto the boat, and start shedding my gear. 
What a dive!!!  I can’t believe we were able to cover an entire wreck in one dive, at those depths, and see that we saw.  I love diving!

Deep Wreck
A dive to the Kamloops in 2005