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Sleepy and I ended up in VB on Saturday, spending the day overhauling my regs and mixing gas for a dive on the Morgan Sunday. We headed out on the Flying Fish which is a great, well-maintained boat. I spent the first dive giving my buddy a tour of the wreck, heading aft from the tie-in point near the mid-ship high section. We had about 10' of vis as we headed around the starboard side of the stern and back around along the sand. We poked into the stern section for a few minutes and then back to the ammo pile and tanks, before heading forward past the high section. Satisfied with the dive, we headed back to the warmer surface waters and a much needed lunch. The second dive Sleepy concentrated on recovering a few ammo shells for a souvenir. I spent a while helping him and then poking around the wreck a bit, dodging all the wreck-reel line floating about. I eventually grew cold and tired of the wreck, so I told Sleepy I was heading up. I stayed under the boat, entertained by divers heading up and down the line, waiting to meet my buddy. After a few minutes he appeared out of the gloom and I swam over to relieve him of the artifacts which I carried to the surface. By the time all the divers surfaced, the ocean had calmed to a very mellow and hardly distinguishable swell, making the ride in very enjoyable. Today, we loaded up and headed south to Hatteras to join Phase III of the Monitor Expedition. Murphy caught up to me, as my left rear tire blew out just as I started to cross the Bonner bridge over Oregon Inlet -- great place for a flat tire! During a lull in opposite traffic, I made a u-turn and slowly creeped for the safety of the end of the bridge where we could change the tire. By the time I made it off the bridge, the tire was reduced to a few bits of rubber. My buddy and I made quick work of the flat, as I swore to get rid of the remaining Firestone (go figure) tires on my truck; this was the second one to shred on me. We finally pulled into Hatteras and rendezvoused at the USCG Boat Maintenance Facility (BMF) to find our old friends preparing the gear for our first dive tomorrow. We learned that the US Navy had accomplished in recovering the engine at 1 p.m. today, an amazing accomplishment. Lots of cool artifacts have been recovered as well, including the beautiful reversing wheel from the engine room; it was found to be barely hanging on as corrosion had eaten through the steel shaft. Also, a neat engine room thermometer was recovered. An interesting note: the Monitor engine room was known to experience temperatures of over 150 degrees -- ouch!! Probably most shocking (and pleasing) upon our arrival at the BMF was the fact that the dive protocol is taking steps towards more efficient diving procedures. Tami mugged me as I drove up and dragged me over to show me that the deco gas bottles are now labeled with MOD, and AL 40s are being permitted. Good steps in the right direction. They are still some other issues, but baby steps are better than no steps. We spent a good bit of time rigging several of the O2 bottles correctly, avoiding metal-to-metal connections for improved safety. NURC is very interested in improving their technical diving procedures, and AUE has been working to take them in the right direction. It is great to see them taking our suggestions seriously and wanting to improve dive safety and efficiency. Anyway, we loaded the boat and then just had our first team meeting tonight. We are hoping to get some video tomorrow of the "new" wreck of the Monitor (no engine!) and recover a lot of the artifacts that the Navy divers have uncovered around the engine. We watched some cool video showing the Navy divers and the saturation divers at work; we will be working side-by-side with them which will be pretty cool. We are already planning our practical joke attack on the Navy. I will be sending daily images to Mikey and Zurl to try and post on the AUE and DeeperStuff websites. Upon my return, I plan to add extensive images of the past work on the Monitor so everyone can check out this cool project. I may be sending some great Doria trip images later tonight, so stay tuned... Cheers, Michael C. Barnette Association of Underwater Explorers Because it's there...somewhere...maybe. http://www.mikey.net/aue _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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