It was a great day for diving with seas at 1-2 ft. We all arrived early, the show time was 8AM and by 8:10 AM we were full throttle heading North. 25 minutes later we were on site. There was blue water and no current. We gear up and dropped in. A cool rush of water hit my right sleeve and I knew this was to be my first wet dry suit dive. I couldn't find the leak, it didn't feel like a high flow so I continued the dive. We ok'd at 20ft and headed down. To the North there were a large school of blue runners and bar jacks. I good sign we were near the wreck. This is one of two wrecks I've missed in my life time. At 100ft I could see sand and started working on which way to go. There was a shadow to the North where the fish had been so I knew we were close. We started scootering North at 130ft and soon we were over the barge.
The barge lies East to West with the water tower on the East side. All the debris in the barge is lying on the East side. We scootered West to see what was left on that side? A small Southern Stingray lifted off and went into a sharp climb up the wall of the barge to the freedom of the open ocean. Nothing was lying in wait under the sloped edge of the barge.
Scootering down the North side of the barge the Red Octocoral was bright and vibrant. I found a worm crawled up tight in the branches. I couldn't identify it. Juvenile Sunshine fish were tucked into the triangular corners of beam propped up on concrete culverts.
Looking up over the lip on the barge, bait fish schooled above the alien like dome structure. Except for portholes, circles are quite rare underwater, especially one that are 50ft or so in diameter.
The tower was originally welded onto the deck of the barge when it sank. I'm guessing the side with debris filled with water faster and listed causing all the material to go that side on the way down. The sinking and impact with the ocean floor caused the tower to break its welds and roll off the East side into the sand where it lays today.
One side of the water tower dome is crushed and there is a big rip. It looks like one of the support beams punctured and ripped a 1ft wide and 10ft long tear up the bottom. As we swam around I was going to enter from the top, but backed off. That would ruin the visibility before I got to the bottom to get a shot looking back up. I scootered down around to the side and went up from a bottom opening. The last time I dove this I didn't notice the walkway around the middle of the tower. It is now facing down indicating that the tower is upside down.
Looking up at the light in the rounded patter is very unique experience in wreck diving. Going into a large round enclosed area is an empty feeling. Cave-like, but better as there are blue windows around at the 6 points of the circle. Down in the corner with the tear, I notice a Reef Butterfly fish. My glance was going to move on until it stopped and paused, the shape of that fish was angled, not oval. I went down for a closer look. It was a Bank Butterfly fish!
They are uncommon in Florida and are more easily seen beyond safe diving limits. They range from 65ft-550ft in depth. There were at the sand at 175ft. They moved back under a ledge as I approached. I re-adjusted my strobe to get a flash on plain with my camera. After three frustrating shots I felt the task loaded focus take over where a diver blocks out his team, gas, depth and focuses on the task at hand. This is the feeling that causes divers to run out of gas trying to bag one last bug or spear one last fish.
One more shot and I let go of the desire to take a great photo. My team was right there looking at me and I checked my time (3 minutes to go) and gas ( 400 psi until rock bottom). I scooter up to my team and tried to get a shot of them with the strange window behind them. I exited first and turned to get an "coming out of the wreck" photo of the team. Taking the photo of David, I didn't notice the thumb he was throwing on the way out. I turned and saw Jody's and got the point. I secured the camera and we headed up.
David lead a perfect deco and started working on the "Jewfish boom". Its a great attention/acknowledgment underwater. I unusually use three booms for attention and two for acknowledgment. It is particularly helpful in three man teams when the middle guy is blocking the view from first team member to the third. We also hold our hands our flat and make an exaggerated "C" shape indicating it is time to move up 10 ft in our decompression.
I love it when there is no current and great visibility so that we can ascend off the wreck and get the "big picture" as we make our deep stops. The deco gas switch and bag shoot went off perfectly. The line was straight up and down the whole way. Andrea was right there with the boat to pick us up.
An hour later Jody and David dropped on the Number 7 Barge and scootered to the Army Tanks, Antenna Towers, and ended up at the Patricia. They buzzed the open water divers from the Big-Com-Ocean and avoided being shot from a gaggle of free diving speros that anchored on the Patricia and spread out from there. They had a good 40 minutes on the trigger around these sites.
After scouting the Virgina Key Bridge Cut and channel on the baby boat, he decided to try it in the big boat. There is a channel marker at the beginning, but that's it. The rest was following the GPS at 30 MPH staying in the 7ft section and out of the 2ft section. The bridge itself has two Manatee "No Wake" signs to the left of the channel. Most people would instinctively go between the signs. I looked up to see the channel markers were turned off, but on the section to the right on the bridge. After clearing the no wake zone, Jody opened the twin 350hp V8 Yamaha's to full throttle. I was joking with him that something was wrong because we were only doing 49 mph with 3 sets of doubles, deco bottles, stages, and 4 Gavins. He worked the trim tabs and motor tilt until we reached 50 mph!
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