Cranford Wreck

The Wreck of the Cranford
We don’t always get to do what we want and I happen to be on a roll in that direction right now. I wanted to dive Saturday but the Dive Gods said NO! And I wanted to dive Wednesday but it wasn’t to be, so I set my sights on a 3 tanker for Friday before I had to head out to Pittsburgh (who goes to Pittsburgh this weekend, my relatives are crazy!!). for the holiday weekend. But that never came to be either, but that is not necessarily a bad thing.
If you are reading this and did not get out on Friday........you really need to quit your job and become a dive bum. You missed the most excellent of dive days. The kind of dive day where you start out saying “Can anything else happen here?” and end up asking the Captain to take it slower on the way home.
I arrived at the Stingray at 6:45AM and there was not a parking space to be seen. I unloaded all my gear out of my car, and dragged it to practically the END of the dock, could he get a slip farther away, really. Then I had to go park my car in Sea Girt and walk back. The mate Jim was already at the boat and did help me get everything on board and I started to set up my gear....... Just Jim and I.......and my gear..... And no one else....Oh Jeesh!!! ..... Don’t tell me no one else is going to show and we aren’t going and now I have to put this all back in my car and go to Pittsburgh!!
Henrik arrived and we waited a little longer (actually a lot longer) and then Andrew arrived. Andrew is a Firefighter from Baltimore, he had a bit of a drive so we will forgive him.
While Andrew and I finished setting up our gear we chatted and I turned on my air and looked down and what does my gauge say? 750lbs......on my pony? NO!! on my primary tank? YES!! It is empty, I cant believe it! DOH!! Andrew then looks up and says “I cant do 3 tanks, only brought one set of doubles” Well at least we are both in the same boat, literally.
And that was it, no one else showed, Oh Oh.
I love Henrik, he looked at us, looked at the clear blue skies, and looked down at the water and you could see the bottom from the slip. And he said......”Lets go diving.” Woo Hoo!!! Things were looking up.
As we cleared the last of the bridges, the sun was shining, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and we were heading out onto “Lake Atlantic” not a wave to be seen. We all huddled in the wheelhouse with Henrik like eager little kids jumping from one foot to the other. Where are we going? Huh? Huh? Were are we going?
He rattled off several options and they all sounded good to me, I had never been to any of them. The Wreck of the Cranford was decided on. It would give Andrew decent air time with his doubles and offered bugs, spear fishing, and lots wreck to sift through.
The ride out was perfect. We stretched out on the benches, sunning ourselves and talking, occasionally looking down at the water to get a glimpse of what the viz might be. You could see for miles in every direction and we speculated what towns and parts of shore we were looking at.
Upon arriving at the dive site we dropped the tuna ball over and Jim went in and the bottle was up in record time, we were dead on the center of the wreck.
The Cranford was a propeller-driven, steam-powered, double-decker, double-ended ferry belonging to the now-defunct Central Railroad of New Jersey. After her retirement in 1965, she was sold to a pair of brothers who brought her to a dock in Brielle but apparently not before hitting the railroad bridge on the way in and damaging the bridge and stopping traffic for over 8 hours. There she was converted to a floating restaurant operating until 1979. The brothers then tried to move the vessel to a new location, but were denied permits by the government, who did not want to see a repeat of the Cranford's eventful trip into the river She was finally sold for one dollar to a welding concern who hacked off her entire upper works and sold it for scrap and the rest of her was then donated to the artificial reef program and sunk in the vicinity of the Sea Girt Reef. The remains are well broken-down but parts of the hull ribbing still stick up 10 ft or more, this 191 X 44 wreck, nicknamed "the sandbox”, sits in 70 fsw.
I had put my regs in for yearly servicing and was using a set of rental regulators and they just did not fit or sit the same as mine do, things pulled and tugged in random spots making things just a little or a lot off. Andrew was in the water before I was and on the way down the line I got entangled and could not for the life of me figure out where or why. It was easier to go down the line than it was to go up and I knew there were 2 divers there that would come back to that spot eventually so down I went. A few minutes after my arrival Jim came back past and untangled me and I was off. I am not entirely comfortable diving solo, I know I could have followed Andrews line and caught up with him, but I was still feeling the pulling of the hoses under my arms and not getting the range of motion I really wanted, was still flustered from my entanglement, and figured I would just stay close to the line and work on catching my buoyancy quicker and look around local since we were tied into a good part of the wrecks structure. I tied in my reel as there was a slight surge at the bottom and started looking. There was at least 15 feet of visibility so I could see pretty well and the bottom temps were a comfy 47 degrees. The wall we were tied into was about 10 foot tall with small circular holes, too small to be windows but still at least twice the size of my fist and lined up down the length of wall, which was covered in an assortment of sponges, anemones and wiggly things. Small sea bass swam freely in and out among the growth on this side and coming to a large break in the structure I went through and came up on the other side where you could easily make out the ribs of the hull and there were large pieces of wood and parts of things lying about that looked to make good hidey holes for things and they got the best of me and I started to just swim around looking over and about. Camouflaged perfectly among the debris was one of those fish that looks like a rock, the largest I have seen so far, as I looked closer I could see him saying under his breath “You cant see me...You cant see me...” so I let him be. But I was still getting a pulling everywhere so I decided to head up and rework the hoses to be more comfortable for the second dive.
Up I went and when I arrived at the ladder, I started up and yelled “Honey I’m home!” and Jim was right there to help me aboard. Another transom to straddle, I truly wish my legs were longer cause it really is a trial to get over these things.
Once on board Andrew was not far behind me carrying his “legal by a hair” lobster and the grill was fired up and lunch was on. We had Caribbean Jerk chicken kabobs and watermelon and Jims famous burgers. I am pretty sure a whole cow was sacrificed for those 4 burgers, they were GI-NORMOUS. And smothered in Jims secret sauce. Lunch was excellent and we just sat about the deck talking and lazing and eating. And eating. And eating. I don’t think we needed weights for the second dive, we were pretty full.
Second trip down the line a current had picked up on the surface and Jim must have gotten tired of watching me swim against it and tossed a line out and pulled me over to the ball. Nice touch.... down I went with no problems, the visibility had dropped some, I want to say it was 10 feet but I cant so I will say 8, a healthy 8 feet. I picked up Andrews line but wanted to find the lawn chair which had been discussed at length during lunch. I ran my reel and quickly crossed paths with Andrew who had found himself a nice sized bug to add to his collection. I swam around the area we talked about but did not find any lawn chair. These guys are crazy. Since I was looking more diligently this trip as I looked down I saw something poking just above the sand. Upon closer look, it was a bottle! I just read an article in one of the dive magazines on Jersey bottle hunting and finding them on wrecks and was a little excited. This was stuck under a piece of debris and buried deep so I had to dig some to get it, kind of stirring things up a bit, but I got it! I didn’t have my goody bag with me so I was going to have to just carry this along with me on my travels. This made rewinding my reel a bit challenging but it was doable. Upon arriving back at the tie in Andrew was there and ready to go up. He showed me his new bug and I congratulated him. Up he went but I saw some things of interest just off in the sand and went to check them out. I looked about and saw an enormous moon snail shell, bigger than my reel, and it was empty so I added it to my collection. I‘m a Mommy, I am used to juggling, I can do this. I went back to the line and with shell in one hand, bottle in the other, my arm around the line and my pinky or something venting my wing and my gauges are on a retractor so that was pulled out and held in place with my other arm so I could see my ascent and up I went. No problem! When I hit my 3 min stop I had the opportunity to examine my new found treasure further. What could I have found? A circa 1800’s medicine bottle? Or possibly antique beer bottle or something better!!! Wow, my first artifact how exciting! What is this? Threads? Threads!! My antique artifact, my colonial era bottle had threads!!! A screw cap!!! I just spent all that time...and gas.... digging this up.... and then I lugged it for how long? And struggled all the way up the line.... All this for SOME WINE COOLER BOTTLE SOME PARTY BOAT THREW OVER!!!!! ARRRGGGHH!!!! I hit the surface, went over to the ladder and up I went. I handed my moon snail shell to Jim and told him “Don‘t ask!“.
Once on deck I quickly got out of my dry suit as it was a warm 91 degrees on the surface and I just laid back with a cold drink and relaxed, the new sound system putting out some excellent music. Jim came back up with the hook and we had collected 3 lobster, 3 nice sea bass and a very pretty shell and were on our way back. The only thing missing here were cup holders and I mentioned this to Henrik, we will see.
What a beautiful day out, we all hated to see the bridges and knowing it was almost over. The only thing that could have made this trip better would be a dive slave to carry my gear back to my car at the end of the day, but I won’t complain, even without one it was pretty darn good.

Back Bay

Belmar Back Bay
Shore dives are among my favorite. I love to poke around and look at things and look under things and just go round and sight see. Kind of like shopping. I LOVE shopping.
Divers Two organized a bay dive this evening and about 10 divers showed to participate. Steve gave a briefing suggesting approximate directions and times to swim about. I was buddied up with Sterling and he quickly learned my lightening quick ability to kit up. Hey, I had to stop and talk to PIR8 (Bob) about his upcoming trip and to Al about Saturdays boat dive and with the car next to mine just because.
We entered the water at the beach and started a surface swim towards the dock, chatting a bit about our dive plan on the way out. The swim was pleasant and effortless, easy, floaty, too easy, weightless even.................(OH!!!!!!! Blonde moment!!!!! ) Luckily Steve was still on the dock and went and retrieved my weight harness, right where I left it. He promised not to tell anyone but we were not alone.
Back on track we continued on out till we were deep enough to drop down.
My navigational skills are legendary so Sterling was to lead the way and I would follow with the dive flag. Unfortunately he had a compass malfunction and we needed to switch roles. I did not let us down, kinda.
I took a heading and off we went. Things are just starting to wake up here in the bay. The water temps were a balmy 48 F, the visibility about 15 feet and the “locals are feeling frisky” if you know what I mean. We got to the pilings and headed south and immediately came upon two horseshoe crabs having a ..........private moment. We moved right along and passed over several more good sized horseshoe crabs moving about. In a patch of sandy bottom was a lone starfish bigger than the size of my hand. In and about the growth on the bottom were several spider crabs and small and medium sized blue claws. As we passed over them they would stop and raise their claws and wave them at us, sort of like you would wave greetings to a passer by. We continued along our way just taking it all in.
We swam around the pilings checking out the stairs that lead to the sailboat school parking lot. What are they there for? And then headed out towards the bulkhead. Unfortunately the water was only about 5 foot here so we headed west following Steves recommendation of 5 minutes so that we did not end up in the channel or past it in the flats.
On this leg of our trip we past over several armies of spider crabs, and this time they were waving at us menacingly as if, by virtue of their numbers, they could scare us off. From what we saw, there will be an abundance of baby spider crabs this season, their little orgies looked like battle scenes from the Star Wars movies with these long legged creatures all scattered and thrashing about.
Just shy of 5 minutes I was becoming concerned since we were again in 5 feet of water. I popped to the surface to get a bearing and............... Well............ Land was pretty far away. My navigational abilities were true to form. I think had we swam another minute we would have been in Lakewood or Ohio maybe. It was getting dark, this was not good. The logical thing to do would be to swim east for 6 minutes and we would be home. Actually, the logical thing to do would be to give Sterling my compass and buddy up with the dive flag but we went with Plan A.
As we traveled back we passed over some more scattered spider crabs and a little poke would send them scurrying and several blue claws rummaging about, we came across another horseshoe crab which I stopped to play with, a cinderblock with a few more crabs making themselves comfortable inside, and a field of teeny tiny baby star fish. They looked like little star confetti and stuck to your glove when you picked them up. And a good sized blue claw crab that bared its teeth at me. It was so cool I poked him and made him do it again. 6 minutes later, with my AAD in full swing and my compass nowhere to be found, we were still not in past the channel buoy but we could still see land, I didn’t have us lost at sea yet. A surface swim was in order to get us back on track.
We pulled into the boat ramp just as the last of daylight was falling away. All in all........a great kick off to the shore dives

Dutch Springs

Guess Where I Was
I wasn’t going to write a trip report but Nick requested one to keep him up to date and I have to tell you about Frank, he is sooo bad.
It was a gorgeous day to be out diving............... Diving Anywhere.
Given my options, Dutch Springs would not have been my first choice this week, but after the day is said and done........I have no complaints.
I arrived at Dutch this morning under warm clear skies. Frank was already there as were Bill B., newly released from his surgery, and Cindy, a usually warm water diver giving today a try .
The 4 of us joined forces and set out for our first dive. Bill innocently set out the dive plan, not knowing of my navigational challenges from my last dives at Dutch. To the platforms, 180 degrees, to the bus, then on to the helicopter and home again. Frank, ever helpful, immediately suggested everyone follow me. Nice.
Cooler heads prevailed and someone else led the way and we had a wonderfully relaxing dive out to the helicopter and back despite the water temps still being in the 45-47 degree range.
Jack (Sprat man) had arrived just as we were entering the water and he was entering the water for his maiden dive on his new dry suit just as we exited. Turns out he did quite well with it and will be returning for several more practice runs. Good luck with that Jack.
Our second dive was to be a tour. Frank was emitting hellatious vibes regarding the speed with which I donned my fins, I didn’t need to be a mind reader to get their gist. He forgets very quickly my trials and tribulations with these just a few short weeks ago.
Anyway.....We are going out to the trolley, though the trees, to the hole, back over the road, past the airplane, around the island, through the redneck backyard, over the boat, across the platforms and home again. Frank led the way and his navigation was flawless. The sight of the forest of trees in 70 feet of clear water and swimming through them, over and around the branches was kind of like a surreal sort of flying. Really cool. This is another spot I had never seen before and I was not disappointed. Another tremendous dive. The viability is amazing, it is hard to imagine taking the same dive during the July and August algae bloom and seeing half the sights. Another outstanding dive, interesting, relaxing and fun.
A few more of the fishie friends are coming out and they hung with us during our safety stops. These guys are starting to get quite large and definitely have no fear.
When we got in we discovered Nick and Ann had arrived and set up camp. They and Frank are spending the night, with Nick and Frank planning on a night dive and then diving again tomorrow. Always a fun time to stop and chat with this crew and in accordance with Nicks recommendation, I will not mention the conversation regarding the Irish.
On my way out of the compound I stopped on the student side to chat for a few minutes with Pir8 before heading on home.
All in all a decent day of diving

Double East Wreck

The moment when you first wake up in the morning is the most wonderful of the twenty-four hours. No matter how weary or dreary you may feel, you possess the certainty that, during the day that lies before you, absolutely anything may happen. And the fact that it practically always doesn't, matters not a jot. The possibility is always there. ~Monica Baldwin

O Dark thirty is an ungodly hour to get up. Dennis kissed me goodbye the nite before so I wouldn’t wake him. Why do I do this? I wondered myself as I climbed in the car in the dark and headed down to Tuckerton and the Tuna Seazure.
Today we were going to the Double East or The Slabs as it is sometimes known, a wreck I have never been to. I tried to find some information but its history is stingy. A barge, the depth varying depending upon where I read from 60 to 80 feet, and the cargo was granite slabs, rumored to have been meant for construction of the Washington Monument. Additionally, this wreck had produced an 8 lb 2 oz lobster which held the NJ record from 2001 to 2003. That is it, everything I know, so lets dive it and see what I find.
The boat was full 6 divers, 2 mates and the captain. I knew one of the other divers and a mate from a previous trips and the other mate was none other than the Bartman of moon snail fame. ( don’t ask, you either know or you don’t).
As we cleared the inlet the sun was out and held promise of a great day. We arrived at the wreck and you could see the relief of the granite slabs and an additional small debris field on the radar screen (what a cool little toy). The surfaced temp was 53 F and the seas were flat. Things looked promising.
I am still waiting on my weighted STA so I was diving double stainless steel plates and since this was my first ocean dive with the new rig I added 8 lbs and kitted up. Standing up was barely an option, I gotta hit the gym, I made it over to the side in a slight imitation of a drunken swagger, sat on down and rolled on in.
As I moved down the line I could see we were to have at least 20 foot of viz maybe 30. The water was a cool green, and getting cooler as I anticipated a thermo cline. I remembered to hold my trim and descend horizontally and I was also remembering the clear warm blue waters of my earlier winter dives in Florida. There was just no comparison..........I’m a Jersey Girl through and through, this was Jersey wreck diving and I was loving it. I kept an eye below me anxiously awaiting the moment the wreck would come into view and I could see what there was to explore.
Upon reaching the sand we took a tour of the area to see what was about. The barge was wooden and much of what was left of it was scattered about in a low debris field. Brushing at the sandy bottom would often reveal some wooden decking and several of the rotting boards could be lifted but there was nothing but sand below them. The real interesting feature of this dive were the granite slabs. Like a giant deck of cards they had fallen, some resting one upon the other domino style and some broken or stacked one upon the other haphazardly forming giant steps and ledges and crevices and indentations in all manner and size. What could possibly be about here? Hmmm.................
There were small sea bass swimming about and in the larger crevices and spaces some nice size tog. Several small sets of claws were spotted but left for future pickings as we nosed and poked about. In a small crevice between two slabs was a narrow ledge, and tucked back in that ledge.......were some claws in a size that held promise. The space was narrow and my dive buddy backed out to let me have a try at it since my arms were smaller. While the opening was narrow it was also deep. With nothing to pin this puppy against and the space being too narrow to keep a good visual, I tucked and grabbed but he scooted back just out of reach. I waited a minute to see if he was going to come back to see what was up but that wasn’t to be. Spending most of the dive peeking in and under things I had not paid good attention to where we were on the wreck just followed my buddy and his line. I felt I reached my turn around time and thumbed up and as it turned out I was just feet from the anchor line. I went on up anyway. I was still warm and dry and there was a second dive.
I am liking the new longer open sided ladder that was added this year. Swimming over to the ladder I grabbed on and was already standing on the second rung. Up I went and my only issue was straddling the transom. If only I had longer legs and could reach the deck.
The Surface interval held the usual stories and good natured banter and while Captain Bill had promised to pillage everyone’s coolers and lunch bags while we were under he must not have been too hungry as everyone still had most of their lunches and snacks. Chris, being quite the hunter today, caught his limit on Tog and 2 juvenile (must be as in delinquent) lobsters snuck aboard. But they were discovered and promptly returned to the sea.
I geared up for my second dive and while another of the divers swore by placing his hood in the microwave for 20 seconds, I opted out as I thought it might have been smoke and not steam coming from his hood since I could detect the faint smell of burnt neoprene. My second walk over and entry was much more graceful and again I was on my way down the line. This time though we were on a mission. Our little friend in the little crevice.
We gave a second look around to see if any other little clawed creatures were going to come out and play but did not see any, all we found were a few lead sinkers. We headed back to the crevice for our “friend” and we had a plan, scoop him out and grab him. Worked like a charm and while my buddy arm wrestled the little fighter into his goody bag, I picked up the reel and wound us back to the anchor line.
By this time my hands were getting cold. The 43 F bottom temps were getting to them, so I headed up the line. On my hang large clumps kept raining down on me and I could not figure out what was going on, until I surfaced and saw that several bags of mussels had been collected and were being cleaned. And one of the guys had collected a bag for me while I was on my lobster mission, what a sweetheart.
The ride home was outstanding, pleasure boat quality.... Warm sunshine, flat seas, lively conversation. What a great end to the day. And by the way, since I was definitely in the sand looking under things I can officially say the wreck sits at 62 fsw.