Mailing List Archive Mailing List Archive
We had a nice dive on the Marine Electric this past weekend. JT rented the Miss Lindsey out for the weekend and a group of us camped out over the ME and dove 5-6 dives apiece. The weather was awesome, flat water, no wind, minimal currents. Surface temp around 70-76F with water temps of 63F. Vis varied greatly from about 15' to 45' at times, changing during the dive. There were great clouds of plankton and jellyfish which swept the wreck site like banks of fog. This is a huge wreck, 600' long and perfect for scootering. The max depth (at the bow) is 133' by my gauges so you can get several dives a day with no problem. We were using nitrox and 100% 02 for deco. JT and Rick were planning to go inside the engine section and I was going to spend my dive sightseeing. I had a new drysuit to try out, replaced my neoprene unit with a trilaminate DUI 450. It was nice to finish a dive perfectly dry and have minimal buoyancy changes between the surface and the bottom. I found that the non-elastic trilaminate fabric meant that I was not as flexible as with neoprene but the benefits outweighed the drawbacks. I was also glad I changed my underwear from 200g to 400g at the last minute due to the information I garnered from this list. We left at 11:30 pm Friday night and arrived at ME at about 6am. It's was nice to get to a wreck and not be in a assholes & elbows hurry to get in the water, so I enjoyed setting back and watching various divers get ready. I got another Dacor apollo scooter to replace the one left on the U-140. For towing instead of a carabiner I tried out a double bolt snap, theory being that if one snap jammed you would have another to use to disconnect from the scooter if needed. This arraignment worked out to be most satisfactory and I think I will stick with it. I (and other divers) find that the shroud loop tended to get caught behind the snap of the carabiner. The bolt snap comes right off and you don't have to have anything dangling from the scooter. The ship lies on the bottom at a bearing of south southwest and lies more or less in a straight line. The engine section is laying on her stb side at an angle of 70 degrees. The center section is inverted and collapsed and the bow section is inverted. The wreck has huge relief, great sweeping sections of bottom seem to stretch on forever. On the top of the engine section the current is magnified by the sweep of the hull and you can hang out up there with tautaug and other large fish whipping around you. It's one of those places you can just sit there and watch the going's on. I accompanied the penetration team down to the tiny skylight hatch and watched them squeeze themselves through to enter the ship. Me, I am not doing stuff like that again until my kid's get a little older... As I said this is a great scooter wreck and it was great fun to put the Apollo on cruise control and go do some exploring down the great lengths of hull. The center section offers many opportunities for easy penetration but there is not much to see in there as this ship was carrying coal and not much else. The bow section is another story. If you cruse forward along the collapsed center section you will notice it getting darker. The plating quits and you hit some sand and muck piles. It's really dark now and when you flash your light around you realize that you have scootered straight up into the bow! The bow section is so huge that you can enter it without seeing the top or sides unless you are looking for them. It is possible to scooter freely about 100-150ft into the bow among torn hull members and msch. machinery. The penetration team wound it's way deep into the wreck and found the galley, they brought back some plates, cups and mugs. I found a very large ceramic insulator from the radio off of the radar mast and presented it to the journalist we had on board. I also gathered some coal from the cargo the ME which the journalist plans on sending to the survivors of the wreck. In our minds was the thought that 31 people who died when the ME foundered, and it added a bit of a blue note as you scootered over the wreckage. I did 5 dives and would not hesitate to do 5 more. Jim ------------------------------------------------------------------- Learn About Trimix at http://www.cisatlantic.com/trimix/ -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
Navigate by Author:
[Previous]
[Next]
[Author Search Index]
Navigate by Subject:
[Previous]
[Next]
[Subject Search Index]
[Send Reply] [Send Message with New Topic]
[Search Selection] [Mailing List Home] [Home]