- WEST PALM BEACH _DEEP AIR TECH DIVES -
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September 18, 2001: The Hydro Atlantic Wreck – Located 1 mile east of Boca Raton Inlet. She is a 320-foot long Freighter, fully Intact that was sunk in a storm on Dec. 7th , 1987 while in tow. She sits upright in 180 feet of water. Her main deck is at 145 feet. The top of the wheelhouse is at 115 feet. The dive conditions were better today but there was still a good current (1.5 knots) on the wreck. This made visibility poor (30 feet) and kept us from our plan or visiting the rudder and prop. The Dive Master Brian had gone in and tied the boat's anchor line to the wreck so we could find the wreck and deco on the line on our way up. The dive plan was for 170 feet/ 30 minutes bottom time (GF 10/85) and gave me a run time of about 80 minutes! After hitting the deck and doing a bubble check with my buddies (John, John and Matt) we took a quick tour of the deck to acquaint John Morris with the wreck. It was John's first time on this wreck and within 15 minutes he was ready to penetrate the engine room! We entered the engine room at 20 minutes and at 27 minutes both John Morris and myself each had a brass gauge from the engines instrument panel and were on our way to the anchor line to do our mandatory decompression. The deco tables for these deep air dives are stored in Deco Planner.
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September 19, 2001: The Lowrance Wreck – A 420-foot long freighter with a 55-foot beam, this wreck take's your breath away!! She was sunk on March 31 st , 1984 as an artificial reef in 220-feet of water and is one of the biggest shipwrecks in the area. This wreck has a lot of marine life on it and a lot of fishing line too! Her deck is at 170-feet and the first catwalk in the cargo holes is at 180-feet. Another heavy current dive (2 to 3 knots) Brian went in and tied the anchor line to the wreck for us to descend / ascend on but asked if the person with the longest run time would untie so the people doing there deco on the anchor would not get beaten to death. It was decided that Mark and Dana would untie at the end of their dive. John Morris and I hit the water at 0950 and started our drop to the deck of the wreck. At about 100-feet the current let up to about 1 knot which made life much better. We landed on the deck of the wreck at about 2.5 minutes and after a quick bubble and narcosis check we started our tour of this huge wreck for the first time. We wanted to familiarize ourselves with the wreck knowing that we would be diving here for the next couple of days. The engine room was at amidships right under the wheelhouse and 2 to 3 levels down. We had a dive plan of 180-feet with a 30 minute bottom time and I did not want to push it on this dive. We went in to the wheelhouse and down a level to find the entry point for the engine room. After making some mental notes and checking for other ways in we made our way out and back to the weather deck. We swam forward towards the bow and found the anchor line. Our run time was at 28-minutes and we spent the last 2 minutes looking for Mark and Dana. Not seeing them but knowing it was their job to untie we left the anchor line tied to the wreck for them. John Morris and I spent the next 60 minutes being beaten to death decompressing on the anchor line because Mark and Dana got lost and separated and then blown off the wreck. That was the worst 'Hang' I have ever done!! (Mark omitted 15-minutes plus of deco. He ran out of gas underwater!) The Worst part of all this was when John and I hit the surface at 11:15 am and the boat was nowhere to be seen. The current on the surface was ripping at over 3 knots and I did not know how long I would be able to hang on to the tag line. The sea was pitching and rolling with swells of 3 to 4 feet and I felt about as big as a bug in Lake Tahoe. About 15 minutes later as I was about to give up, let go of the tag line and drift to Cuba I saw the dive boat coming in to view. At that moment I started to get really pissed knowing that somebody had really screwed up and the dive boat had to cut away to go get another diver or something like that. I didn't know that it had been Mark and Dana. Mark was already on the boat and out of his dive suit and as I got back on the boat all I could think of to say was 'Thanks for undoing the anchor line Mark! John and I had a great time hanging on it like a couple of flag's in a hurricane!!!' It wasn't till I got unsuited that I learned that Dana still was not on board and Mark had made some of the worst mistakes a diver could ever make. We found Dana who did complete all of his deco and headed back to port. What a great dive!!!!
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September 20, 2001: The Lowrance Wreck – Day number two on this wreck, John Morris and myself had planned on a more aggressive penetration of the engine room but due to another day of heavy and unpredictable currents we missed the wreck on our free decent. We hit the bottom in less than 2-minutes of our jump and could not believe that there was nothing to see but sand. I can tell you from experience that sand at 190-feet looks the same as it does at 30-feet!! We rolled around in the current for about 15 minutes and then shot our lift bags and ran a bailout deco plan, which made our run time about 60 minutes. I did see a Sword Fish while I was hanging at my 30-foot deco stop. It swam right past me at a range of about 20 feet!! We will hit the wreck tomorrow.
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September 21, 2001: The Lowrance Wreck – Day number three started out just as nice as the rest, sunny and warm with a light breeze out of the Northeast. The current was down to about 1 knot, which was a nice change from the past couple of days. Rob and Brian decided to try something new and instead of bouncing Brian down to the wreck to tie us off they were going to drop a grapple hook with a buoy attached right beside the wreck. If the hook caught in the sand then we would jump off the boat and follow the line to the wreck. In past trips finding the wreck has not been a problem with 100-foot plus visibility but this trip the storms have stirred up the bottom to the point that we were lucky to see each other!! Rob's idea worked and away we went 'DIVE, DIVE, DIVE'. John Morris and I followed the anchor line to the sand and stopped our decent just short of 190-feet where again we saw sand! Looking at the anchor line where it hit the sand we could see the direction of the current and started swimming into it to try and find the wreck. Looking ahead of us in the distance all I could see was darkness and I thought that once again we had missed. I kept swimming, as did John who was now in the lead and then something very cool happened! The darkness in front of us started to take form and as we swam into it we saw something that only a handful ever get to see. We were swimming up to the down current side of the biggest shipwreck I had ever seen. Seeing this wreck from the deck does not do her justice. But seeing her from the side in good visibility makes her look like a skyscraper lying there on it's side! After getting over the 'Wow' feeling I posed a little for Harry who was shooting video of the dive and then followed John into the wreck through one of the large holes in her side at 180-feet. We were on the first catwalk one level below the main weather deck looking down into one of the forward cargo holes. We started to move our way aft towards the engine room. At the cargo hole just forward of the wheelhouse we made our way through a hatch that led to compartments below the wheelhouse. After searching through rooms we finally found the stairs leading down to the engine room. Making our way into the huge room I looked at my computer and made a mental note that we had 20 minutes of bottom time left. I made a gesture to John and told him that we had 15 minutes in side and no more!! He gave me an OK and we started looking for brass. This wreck was stripped fairly clean before she was sunk so we did not expect to find much. John did most of the scouting while I followed and gave him some extra light when he needed it. John pried off a couple of things but no gauges. Time was running short and we were going on 20-minutes bottom time so I started looking real hard for something to take home to remember this great wreck by. There on the wall of the engine room over one of the set's of stairs leading to the lower level was a mass of piping and at the end of it where it went through a bulkhead were some valves!! I know from diving on wrecks that air/water valves on ships are always made of brass! I drop down and start to pry one of the valve assembles off the wall. It takes a bit of effort but finally it comes free. I turn and look for John and he signals me it's time to go so we make our way through a small hole in the bulkhead and through a passage way that leads to the third level of the forward cargo hole. We then ascend to the deck in front of the wheelhouse and bag off the wreck for our long one-hour decompression. Back on the boat we all stated that this was the best wreck dive of the week!!! (I can't wait to go there again!!!!!)
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