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After two days of blowouts, we got back in the saddle today with a wonderful dive on the wreck of the Monitor. Our last dive on Thursday went well, though the divers found out just how much debris had to be moved in order to get to the artifact layer -- quite a bit. Decompression on Thursday was fun, with an appearance of two large wahoo that came within close proximity of the divers, providing a great peek at these pelagic wanderers. Today, we splashed four divers to work on an area around the engine area. I hit the water lugging 3 large plastic containers that acted like a large sea anchor as I worked my way to the bottom. Visibility was great at around 80', as we hit amidships of the wreck. We found a counter-current on the bottom which would present a dilemma on decompression. As my buddy and I placed the plastic debris containers near the wreck and doffed our stages, the other team proceeded to stake out a 10' x 10' transect in the wreck for us to excavate. After delineating the area, we went to work and began pulling coal and iron debris into the containers that would be walked out of the wrecksite to a nearby containment area just off the wreck. Visibility soon went to hell as we dug like groundhogs and piled up loose material into the baskets. Larger pieces were "walked" off the wreck. Soon, we began reaching the lower areas and wood decking. I came across one particularly nice honey-hole that revealed several nice brass pieces that will be documented tomorrow before we excavate further. As our allotted dive time reached its end, I went around the sediment cloud notifying my team members to wrap it up in anticipation of our extraction. After securing all our gear and donning our deco bottles, we floated off the starboard side (the "wrong" side). I knew that this would present a problem as we had a 400-foot long barge overhead with its 8-point mooring that was begging to foul our liftbags. After ascending a bit, we were eventually grabbed by the surface currents and moved back in the normal direction back under the barge. Due to the great visibility, we could observe the barge and tug overhead as we slowly floated past as I acknowledged the hassle with a single-finger salute. I had my bag rigged and ready to shoot, but then noticed one of the mooring lines appear out of the gloom; yet another delay. I knew the support divers and dive boat was waiting for our signal bags and they would be wondering what was causing this delay. Unfortunately, there was no alternative but to wait a tad longer. After I cleared the mooring, I shot the first bag just a couple minutes overdue. Soon, the support divers rained down on us and we completed our deco in the beautiful blue waters off Hatteras. We are looking forward on hitting the wreck again tomorrow before another front moves in on us. Hopefully, we will get some good shots and possibly recover some cool artifacts. Stay tuned... We watched some cool footage tonight of the engine recovery -- I am looking forward to adding this to the AUE website next week. 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/intl.asp -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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