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Sunday we made our first dive of the year on the wreck of the Wisconsin. The Wisconsin is a 215 ft freighter that sank in a storm five and a half miles off of Kenosha in 1929. She lies, nearly intact in 130 feet of clear, fresh water. We left the Harbor in Waukegan around 8:00 AM and headed north northwest in beautiful weather. The sun was shining. A light breeze was blowing from the West and there was only about a one-foot chop. The lake had not begun to warm up yet, so the depth sounder was measuring a surface temp of about 36 deg F. WE had the heater on in the boat so we all stayed warm while we got into our drysuits. No buoys were visible on the surface, so we navigated to the port, midships position with our D-GPS and I dropped into the water. I found the midships mooring line with the five-gallon float at a depth of fifteen feet (just where we left it last year). I tied a thirty foot nylon line with a one-gallon bottle on the end to the mooring line and Enterprise tied up to it. I then descended and surveyed the wreck for other mooring lines. We usually have three lines tied off to the wreck. It is a popular wreck and often there are more than one or two dive boats tied off to it at a time. The bow mooring was missing entirely -- we will have to come back to reinstall it another day. The stern mooring was in place. We attach our moorings with chain, in this case, to one of the ship's cleats. The chain goes through a thimble which is spliced into the end of a 5/8" poly line that is bouyed up by a five gallon plastic drum fifteen feet beneath the surface. The end of the poly line is finished in a spliced eye to which we tie a 5/8" nylon line about 30 feet long. That line is buoyed up to the surface by a one-gallon "Tide" bottle. The nylon line was gone from the stern mooring so I carried that info back to the boat. Bruno attached a new line to the stern mooring. We left the Wisconsin with two good moorings to start the year out. We now have moorings on the Wisconsin, Seabird and the unknown wreck off of Zion that we call the Minesweeper. Good diving, Dale -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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