"The sea is everything. It covers seven tenths of the terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and healthy. It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely, for he feels life stirring on all sides."
~ Jules Verne….20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Confusion is my middle name and that is how Friday started out….we got a little of a late start as everyone scrambled with last minute stuff to get ready….but then, we were off. We had left too late to catch the last ferry so we drove on down, Mark, Big Jim and myself, with Jim at the wheel, and arrived in Ocean City, Maryland late but with no problems.
We checked into the rooms and passed out. Our 5:30AM wake up would come way too quickly.
We were up and at WaWa, someone’s favorite “restaurant”, bright and early getting lunch for the day and then on to the diner for breakfast. We met the rest of the group there and fueled up for the start of the day. And what a group we were. Mark, Jim and myself…Bob another local diver and Chris, a friend of the captains…the Shore Scuba Crew of Dave, Eugene, Kenny, John and Patty…and the infamous Captain Rob of Pirate King fame.
After loading up the boat, we pulled out in somewhat foggy conditions, but with great expectations. Our destination had changed several times before ever arriving in Maryland and as we headed out, it changed once again.
We were now on our way to the Saetia, a 322 foot coal fired steam engine that was sunk on November 9, 1918 after hitting a mine from the U-117. All 65 of her crew got off safely and she then sank quickly in 110 feet of water.
We were all exhausted on our way out, the Shore Scuba guys had arrived after we did, and everyone settled in for a little nap. I was forward on the bunks with Mark in the outer room bunk and Jim at the top of the stairs. Patty was in what was to become her favorite napping position, she just laid her forehead on the table and went to sleep. And the rest of the gang just lay strewn about. I could just not sleep as the fog and humidity had everything wet and my allergies were kicking in so I got up and opened the cabin door to note “smoke” coming through the louvers of the closet door. I very calmly said “Mark, should there be smoke coming out of there?” He jumped straight up, not sat up, not one end up and then the other but his entire body went straight up in the air, Jim came flying down the stairs along with Eugene and the captain was there not 5 seconds later. I had definitely gotten everyone’s attention. Turns out it was steam and it was overflow from one of the engines overheating, but it was enough to wake everyone up and get their blood pumping.
We were just about at the dive sight so we busied ourselves getting ready. Jim tied us in and Mark, Chris and I jumped in first to go down and meet him. I knew we were on the wreck when I hit it. Visibility was the length of my arm and I have short arms. Hugging close to the wreck we headed out to see if things would improve but no luck. I kept one hand on the wreck as we moved along and stayed close to Mark. From what I could see it looked like this would have been a nice dive under better conditions. There were a myriad of nooks and crannies to look in and surprisingly we found no lobsters hiding in any of them and the growth on the outside of the wreck seemed to have a bit of a red glow. We headed out a bit into the sand and occasionally came across some debris but you had to run head first into it to see it so we headed back in and up.
Bob jumped in as we came up, he was going to pull the hook, and as he did his SMB made an escape attempt. Mark leapt into action and repeated his New Years rescue dive. Without a word or hesitation he jumped over and recaptured the errant gear. Once again, his rescue training paying off.
Topside things were not looking up and we were going to continue in on one engine. While we talked about the situation and had lunch we were visited by….a whale! It breached the water directly in front of us and we all stood at the bow and waited for it to surface again. We were not disappointed when it came up again about 100 feet off of our port side and you could see that it again swam under eyeing us up to see what we were all about. Directly afterwards we watched what appeared to be a fin again about 100 feet off of our port side and we guessed at what it could be. Turns out, it was one enormous sea turtle and that was its head sticking out of the water we could see from so far away. Not bad for one lunch interval. We immediately followed this with 10 lbs of cookies and 10 lbs of Nestles crunch bars and Reeses peanut butter cups. (John took quite the fancy to the peanut caramel cups) and upon us all entering a sugar induced coma the captain headed on in.
On the way in we made our second stop on the Arthur T Hall, a 165 foot coast guard buoy tender, sitting upright in about 120 foot of water. This wreck is intact with even the railings still in place with the top sitting at about 70 feet and swim throughs at the main deck and below. We were greeted with about 10 - 15 feet of visibility (what a difference a few miles makes) and water in the mid 60’s range. We really enjoyed this dive swimming from deck to deck and looking all about. While there was growth all about the wreck, it looked like a ship and you could make out where you were going and what you wanted to see next.
After coming up we headed on to the marina. It would be a long ride home on one engine but we would be fine.
We were met by the dive shop truck taking our tanks for fills and we headed back to the hotel for a shower and dinner.
We were meeting the shop to pick up our tanks at 5:30AM and for the life of me I can’t figure why diving has to occur at such ungodly hours. The fog was still with us as we headed out once more. This time we were doing 2 dives on the Washingtonian and then calling it a trip.
The Washingtonian was a short lived 407 foot freighter. Built in 1914, it was carrying a cargo of sugar from Honolulu when, in January of 1915, it collided with the 300 foot, 5 masted wooden schooner Elizabeth Palmer and sank upside down in 90 – 100 feet of water. The collision caused a huge hole in her starboard side and she sank fast, but luckily all of her crew escaped in lifeboats. There is not much left of the Elizabeth Palmer, once the largest wooden schooner a float, but for a few ribs sticking from the sand with the majority of the wreck lying buried, but the Washingtonian still has enormous boilers and a mass of broken hull plates and such a long debris field that there is still a lot to see.
We arrived at the Washingtonian, a little slowly, but without incident and tied in. Well… a little trouble with the tie in but Jim took one heck of a tour with the chain. He came up reporting sharks abounding on the wreck and 20-30 foot of viz. Divers clamored to get in the water.
The top of the boilers came quickly into view as we descended and schools of fish swam over it. Most of the sharks had retreated and just remnants remained. But the boilers were impressive. The rows of rivets up their sides looked like hand holds for a climbing wall. They were as wide across as my hand and rows of them lined the sides. There were several abandoned nets and ropes laying hanging in several spots and definite thermo clines as you made your way to the sand.
Visibility was close at the bottom and we ran a reel and tried moving out into the sand to see if it cleared. Diver fin error was not the reason we couldn’t see and we headed back and looked about the hull plates debris surrounding the boilers. There were some sea bass and tog swimming about and as we came to the end of a piece of wreckage I caught sight of 2 enormous black fish swimming around the corner and disappearing into the wreckage. A large lone trigger fish tried valiantly to fit in the middle of a school of bait fish and spade fish were about. As we headed up, I was looking up at the light coming through the water and the outline of our boat when Mark tapped me on the shoulder and pointed down. The fog must have burned off and the ambient light lit up the wreck below us and the schooling fish below us put on a show to watch throughout our hang time. We were warm, relaxed and entertained, I could definitely do a second dive here.
During the surface interval we snacked and ate and snacked…this group will never starve…
I walked up to the bow and there were bodies strewn about napping…I had to laugh…I noted out loud that the scene looked like something out of a movie where the boat had been adrift for 3 days and the captain immediately threatened to throw me overboard if I continued. This was apparently another sugar induced incident as there was a milk crate filled with candy wrappers in the center of the deck. Ken admitted to knowing where the last Caramel peanut butter cup was hidden but never did divulge the information. I moved to the stern of the boat and we proceeded to eat pistachio nuts and try our darnedest to throw them overboard, into the wind…apparently the entire boat was in a laxidazical mood.
Mark had our surface interval timed and was soon nudging me along to get back into the water. We took the camera this time to see if we could get some shark pics, but as we reached the wreck there were none about so he tied it off to the line and we took off to explore some more.
We again ran out the line of hull plates looking about and then over the wreckage to the other side. Down one end we came across an abandoned grapple and decided to come back for it later. We went out in the sand and there were large flounder swimming about. As we went along I notices something strange in the sand below and I headed for it. It was 4 or 5 flounder all piled one on top of the other and buried in the sand. You know without a doubt what I did…….I poked them and they took off in a hurry. Mark had not seen them and when they scattered I could here him yell “holy sh**!!” into his reg. That got a smile out of me and on we went swimming up and over and about through schools of fish and wreckage. The water was cooling and the bottom thermo cline was moving up noticeably. Before we headed up we went over to retrieve the grapple and Mark carried it with him.
At the line I took the camera (do we see a problem here? Yup) and we headed on up. As we were hanging a school of huge spade fish just engulfed us and swam about. They were close enough to reach out and touch. Mark was urging me to take pictures, but like the blonde who holds the camera backwards I just couldn’t get the thing to work. Mark did reach over finally and turn it on but I still was not having much luck and I don’t think I ever got a picture. Oh well…
When we got up we started to break down our gear and get ready to head in….one slight problem was a clip on the line stuck over a knot and a volunteer was needed to jump in and free it. Someone who was still in their suit….I hated that back zipper at this moment…..and made a mental note to take the suit off first from now on…. I jumped in and swam over and freed the clip and climbed back on board. As soon as the guys hauled in the anchor we would be on our way home.
Once back at the marina we loaded our gear in the truck and said our good byes…we were heading back to the hotel for a quick shower and making a beeline for the last ferry to NJ. The Pirate King was going to make the trip back to Cape May in the morning…I wish it luck.