Can't Say

No sooner had I been helped into my bathing suit than I sprang out upon the warm sand and without thought of fear plunged into the cool water. I felt the great billows rack and sink. The buoyant motion of the water filled me with an exquisite, quivering joy. ~ Helen Keller

Things were not looking promising this morning….. I couldn’t decide if it had rained or was going to as I walked the dog. But it didn’t matter..... the prop is fixed and our merry band of divers are out on the oceans terrorizing man and beast once more…….

Arriving at the dock, cup of coffee in each hand, I was greeted by the sight of the Lady Godiver and our regular crew, Howard, Francis, Harley, John and Jack and to add to my enjoyment Dan Leib was joining us today also.

I was quickly loaded onboard and we headed out. The forecasts for the day were varied and numerous. 1-3, 3-5, 5-10, windy, no wind, south, north, east and west. We were going to find out for ourselves. Everyone had a wish list, blackfish were high on many..... just something I had not been on before, and maybe a mussel or two was on mine. Maps, charts, and numbers flew back and forth along with catching Dan up on what was east of the north/south portion of the ridge that wasn’t a barge or whatever…… he is a quick study and was soon right in there with them making my head spin.

Harley and I sat out on the deck relaxing, eating watermelon and catching up on things old and new. Each time we asked where we were going, all 5 of the jokers in the cabin would point and yell out there! We would shrug and go back to our snacks and pleasantries. Where ever it was we ended up, we knew we would not be disappointed. Soon a few names were tossed about, ever been on this one, or this one, here, how about?????? We were still going …..thataway….. and so we leaned back and enjoyed the warm sun and gently rolling seas.

I am not allowed to say where we ended up but I haven’t been to this one….. The race to see the bottom was on as divers scrambled over the sides and down. The water had a dark green haze to it with no sign of letting up as I descended the line. Once at the wreckage I was pleasantly surprised to be greeted by 54F, 20-25 foot of visibility and fish……. major fish.

The sides of this barge have fallen away and what is left is a grid of wreckage. I toured about noting large starfish lying strewn about in the sand, and squid egg casings resembling one of those squishy balls with those finger looking things sticking out all around rolled about in the current. Searobbins were everywhere and quite large and they were not fans of a finger to the forehead. Go figure.

I picked up a nicely shaped moon snail shell for my bucket and moved on to the homeboys of the wreck. I am not good with recognizing the finer points of fishies. I don’t pick up on the bump on the head, more white on the body, stripes horizontal or vertical…… whatever, as long as it's not a great white, I am poking it woo hoo!! Just let me say, I saw some big black fish that looked like they ran headfirst into the wreck and have a knot the size of a baseball on their noggin. They would not let me poke it…. I tried.

Before long I was on my way up the line and back onboard. I was soon joined by 6 of my knot headed friends…… and NOW I poked em, the fish….not the guys.

Let me also just say, reseating the valve on my arm has not helped….. I am still wet…on both arms…. Pinnacle ARE YOU LISTENING!!!!

Our next stop, I still can’t tell you where but I was here before…….. Dan explained to me that what I had previously thought to be decking lying in the sand around wrecks was actually the sides fallen in, the decking wood long ago disintegrated. Decking material is nowhere near as hardy as the ship itself. Interesting......

We sit on deck enjoying the day and the company before gearing up to roll over. Soon I am ready and with less than the grace of a ballerina I enjoyed on the Old Salty I plummeted into the sea and down the line. Here the visibility was much greener and hazier even at depth than the last site. 55F and only about 15 foot of viz in 60fsw and a much stronger current seeming to move on every side of the wreckage.

Making my way around, I peered in and about the disjointed array of hidey holes. Here, a few starfish littered the sand and there was a noticeable difference in the fish life with fewer and smaller inhabitants. Maybe I was just spoiled who knows. Mussels clung to the sides and I gathered a bag to bring up. Small fish gathered excitably around me….. maybe they had heard about me from their cousins on the Stolt but I wasn’t sharing this time. Poking, but not sharing.

Things just seemed darker here and several times things darkened above me as either the boat was overhead or a cloud moved by and I soon headed up. Once topside I sat on deck and had some lunch as I awaited the last of the divers to surface. We headed on once more, with blackfish, bags of mussels and a 3lb blue rubber dumbbell in tow. Don’t ask, Dan is a scavenger like the rest of us….. and a wise guy.

Flat seas, warm water, full coolers, good company…. What more can you ask from one day? One more dive …… that's what and this time....I still cant say where or I’d have to kill you but I have never been here and the description is typical for these guys, they are going to make me nuts. Jeesh.

I am one of the last to go over the side as I have sat in the sun drying my shirt as best I can before donning my trilam “wetsuit” once more and Howard has no plans to dive this one and asks me to pull the hook and lay it in the sand on my way up. Not knowing who will be up last we will just tug at the sisal tie to the wreck and haul in as the last diver comes onboard.

Again I head on down through a thick haze of water thinking this time it will never open up. I arrive at the sand inches from Jack struggling to place a more than legal fluke in his bag and immediately reach out and lend a hand. This was apparently an example of tag team fishing as Dan had spotted the fish as he swam by and pointed it out to Jack before continuing on his way. 5 fluke were taken in just this small area around the tie in this afternoon. Talk about being spot on with your tie in ….. Captain Howard is good.

A nice little welcome to the wreck. Visibility is still in the 15 foot range here and I begin to swim about….. Oh my! What is this? Lying in the sand is a blue dumbbell, with some small mussel growth and a good sized starfish covering it. How weird is this? Has someone been putting them in their pockets for dive weights….. how strange. I remove the starfish and place the weight in my pocket to show Dan.

I look about and spy large google eyed fish lying buried in the sand, more of the squid egg casings blowing about like tumbleweed and searobbins lining the sand like teenagers at their first school dance. I come across a pipe half buried in the sand I spy a small claw and really long antennae. I make a half hearted grab at what I am sure is an undersized bug and have him halfway out of the pipe when he stops short. Seems like he made a grab with his back legs for the pool table or something else sturdy in his little house and is holding on for dear life. I haven’t even brought a goody bag down with me and giving consideration to his last minute herculean effort……..I let him go.

Back at the line I pull the hook and unwrap the line tied around the piece of wreckage. I lift the hook over the wreck wall and swim it out into the sand so it will not catch again when we snap the sisal and coil the rope neatly next to it before heading up. On the line I pass Howard on his way down…. apparently the grand haul of fluke has changed his mind about this dive and he is going in. Gives me a chuckle as I hang for a few minutes in the warm shallow water.

I am just about out of my harness when Harley joins us on the boat. He can’t believe the hook let loose after how well he tied it in!!! All the way off in the sand…. He had a heck of a time pulling the boat back to the wreckage to tie it in again…. Whew hard work!! Gotta love it….. more tag team diving….LOL Luckily all but Howard are onboard and he will know to pull the hook once more on the way up.

As I finish stowing my gear I pull the weight from my pocket and hand it to Dan. He can now have a matched set, maybe pump a little iron on the way in. He muses over how these things can be on all the wrecks….. maybe someone is using these weights for their buoy markers and not trying them on well? We are halfway home before he gets a big grin and tells me he felt heavy when he was diving and suddenly realized he had forgotten to take the weight out of his pocket after the previous dive and so he dropped it in the sand and moved on. That starfish must have thought he hit a homerun coming across that little mussel snack on that funny blue thing in the middle of the sand. He was probably in on the step too….wise guy..

We head in, snacking on cherries and chocolate chip cookies as dolphins splash in the water just off the port side of the boat and we stand and watch as they fade in the distance. Blackfish, fluke, lobster and mussles……Three tanks, calm seas, bright sunshine and the stories that get told….. that’s a good day on a dive boat.

And one day …… after a good day on the water …… these stories will be told too. Yea… I will do this again.

The Stolt Dagli

O, I have suffered With those that I saw suffer! a brave vessel (Who had no doubt some noble creature in her) Dashed all to pieces! O, the cry did knock Against my very heart! Poor souls, they perished! ~ William Shakespeare ~

November 26th…….. 1933 - Robert Goulet was born in Mass.

........................ 1938 – Tina Turner was born in Brownsville, Texas

.........................1964 – Thanksgiving morning…….. The cruise ship Shalom, traveling in a dense fog, broadsided the parcel tanker Stolt Dagli, cutting her in half. The passengers on the Shalom barely noticed the collision but the captain of the Stolt looked on in horror as the aft portion of his tanker sank in seconds in 130 feet of water taking with her 18 men and one woman, most of whom were sleeping in their bunks.

The Stolt Dagli was an 583 foot packet tanker carrying a cargo of vegetable oil, coconut oil, fats, propylene tetramer (solvent), methanol (wood alcohol), and heptane (petroleum derivative) to Newark, NJ. The Shalom was a passenger cruise ship carrying 1050 passengers for a holiday cruise in the Caribbean.

The fog was unbelievably thick and the Shalom was having trouble with static on its radar. Word is they let the bow lookout go below for coffee and he returned to the deck in time to watch the bow of the Shalom cut through the Stolt, about ¾ of the way down her hull, sending the crews quarters and engine room and almost half her crew to the oceans floor.

With mayday coordinates over 15 miles off, it took a tremendous effort for this amazing rescue to take place. Thanks to water tight compartments, the Shalom stayed afloat as did the bow section of the Stolt. Had the impact taken place farther forward where the industrial solvents were stored both ships may have gone up in flames with even more devastation than had already happened.

Mayday positioning given by the Shalom was off by almost 20 miles and in the fog the Coast Guard had a difficult time locating the two ships. While waiting the crew from the Shalom heard cries in the water and launched a motor craft that pulled 5 surviving Stolt crewmembers from the frigid seas.

First to arrive on the scene was the Santa Paula, a Grace Line cruise ship which positioned itself so as to provide a wind break protection for the Stolt's bow section. When the coast guard arrived they proceeded to rescue 11 crew from the Stolt’s bow and pull an additional 14 crew members from the sea using helicopters and horse collar rigging and several Coast Guard cutters. Their rescue efforts were highly praised by the Captian.

13 bodies were recovered from the ocean’s surface and brought to Point Pleasant Hospital to be identified. One additional body, that of the only woman, was located by recreational divers in the submerged hull section and recovered almost 30 days after the sinking.

Both captains claimed the other to be at fault but an investigation never took place as both ships were foreign registered and the collision in international waters.

The bow portion of the Stolt was towed across the Atlantic to the Baltic where it was grafted onto the aft part of another tanker, the C.T. Gogstad, which had lost its bow. The match was so good that it was within 12-in of aft to bow sections in width and not even noticeable. This ship was named the Stolt Lady and continued to move liquid freight from port to port for years to come.

Which Captain made which call to do what…. Why and how does not matter. A loss of life took place and 140 feet of a once proud ship lies on the ocean floor.

And today…..I was diving it.

Why is 6:30am so early…..I don’t know. I was meeting Benny at the dock and diving the Stolt from the Old Salty. I have never had the pleasure of diving off the Old Salty and while I cursed their berth at the veeeeeeeeeery end of the dock, as I lugged my gear, I was pleasantly greeted by the days crew and helped on board. They are a great group. There were 8 divers and the morning was shaping itself into a beautiful day.

I was pleasantly surprised to find Eugene and Patty as 2 of my dive mates and the thought of home baked cookies filled my head. But alas it was not to be but the snack basket was still top notch as usual. I love diving with Patty.

This is my first dive after getting my drysuit back from Pinnacle and I was going to be very disappointed if I was wet. This was also to be my maiden dive on the Stolt, another thing on my diving bucket list I would be able to finally cross off.

Captain Nick arrived and we headed out with blue skies and flat seas, arriving on sight relaxed and happy and divers suited up and began hitting the water with giant strides from the stern of the boat. They said I was like a ballerina stepping off and into the water…… maybe I found my calling ……. Nahhh.

A 140 foot section of the Stolts stern is lying on its port side on the ocean floor. While the oceans waters and currents are having its way with the wreckage and it is slowly deteriorating, it still rises up from the sand to about 65 feet providing a multi level and entertaining dive.

We are tied in to the top of the wreckage and the water is warming nicely. 54F at the top of the superstructure and 50F at the sand. The water is hazy but more blue than green and viz a respectable 20 feet by my calculations. As we move about we follow the hull as it slopes down and it is covered in a blanket of soft white corals, colorful sponges and waving hydroids and aneomes. Large mussels are everywhere tucked in among the flora and fauna and there are starfish of varying sizes scattered about. Swimming above all this are hordes of cunners interspersed with small black fish, the occasional sea bass and a small Pollack or two.

I think I am in love.

There are star fish here bigger than me!!!! True story ……I swear it…… their arms so long they have fingers!!!! And the cunners…. I think they're part piranha… they bit me!

We swam along looking in all the holes and dropping down in one every now and then as fish, not large enough to take home, swarmed all around us. I poked and prodded and pushed and grabbed ….. flicked and smacked ……. bounced off of and ran into all kinds of swimmy friends.

Life is good.

I began to pull mussels off the wreck and these mussels were strong….. no match unfortunately for my compass so I smashed them open with my knife handle and let my new friends snack. I looked like the pied piper as I finned along with fish in tow and nibbling from the open mussels shells… and then… things got ugly.

I think they called aaaalllllll their friends…. Or maybe they have a fishy internet and twittered them….. doesn’t matter how but soon we truly were surrounded. The fish were so thick Benny began grabbing them with his hand and debated sticking them in his pocket but decided against it.

Then it happened. They started biting more than open mussel shells and finally one bit my lip and I was not happy. I dropped the remaining mussels and chased that little bast**d down and smacked him. The resulting cut on my lip not bloody enough to draw sharks but noticeable enough to make me tell the story several times already. Too soon our time was up and we headed to the surface for a rest, drinks and Patty’s snacks.

Let me just say…. …I was not dry…. nor happy….. and leave it at that….

For the second dive I wanted to hit the sand and look around so I teamed up with another diver who had “misplaced” his spear on dive #1 and our mission was to recover it. We headed down the line and over the side of the wreck towards the ocean’s floor . The starfish were enormous here looking like giant stepping stones lying on the sand. The propeller lies buried here and a debris field surrounding the wreck keeps scallopers from dragging the area.

We swam the length of the wreckage looking up and down but did not see the errant piece of gear and headed on up. As we headed up the line we were greeted by the sight of the missing spear, recovered by another diver…. mission complete….. day a success…but not quite over.

Once back on board the crew pulled the anchor as we broke down our gear and just as we finished up we were greeted by Alex delivering lunch. He made the best hot roast beef sandwiches.

Tired from diving and full from lunch, the cabin was crowded with bodies stretched out napping away the trip back. With a bag of mussels bouncing in the prop wash we headed home. The true sign of a successful day on the water.

I have a cut on my lip and little fish teeth imprints in my hand…..but I got in last licks..… I met up with old friends and made some new….. crossed another dive off my list…….My thanks to the Old Salty for a great day on the water.