Where no great fish venture
nor small fish glitter and dart,
only the anemones
and flower of the wild sea-thyme
cover the silent walls
of an old sea-city at rest.
~Hilda Doolittle~
Cindy Bill and I spend the evening with a bottle of wine, relaxing on the deck and I get a sneak preview of pictures and stories to come from their trip to the Philippines. Dinner, once again, makes me too full for dessert and lulls me into a lazy comfortable haze calling out for a soft bed and softer pillow. I oblige and come morning we are once again on the dock of the Sea Eagle loading tanks and gear for our dive. Bill is using his old booties and a new dive friend, Mike, today. Cindy and I are doing a diva dive and plan on checking out the elevator shaft and poking some fish. At least I do.
Upon surfacing from our last dive yesterday, I discovered I had lost an earring, I am not sure how I feel about the pirate look and have skipped the earrings this morning while I decide. Bill suggested that the glitter of light on my silver hoops were the tantalizing draw that kept the barracuda so close to us yesterday and here I thought it was just my sparkling personality. I asked everyone aboard to keep an eye out for my earring, how hard could it be to find? It’s not like there are that many down there.
I like diving with Cindy, she, like me, loves to peek about and enjoys the small treasures each dive has to offer. We gear up and she gracefully steps off the port side and into the water. I follow with a launch and plummet as only I can do….. maybe this is what made me so memorable to the crew….. it is my signature move…..
We are again tied to the stern mooring ball, our second dive we will move to a mooring closer to the bow, and as we drop on down we can feel that the current has picked up ever so slightly since the day before, Earl is on his way. I follow Cindy as we make our way forward and she suddenly points and picks up a lone earring from the deck. What are the chances….. it is a pearl stud, not my loop but I tuck it into my sleeve before continuing on. It can only enhance that pirate look I am beginning to embrace, and oh the story it will add to it.
We come to the elevator shaft. The water is hazy and you cannot see all the way down. Cindy slips over the side and down we go slowly dropping towards the dark. At about 110fsw the first opening appears and it is completely dark, no light from a swim through cutout reaches this spot. I turn on my light and poke my head in but Cindy is not carrying doubles and chooses to explore other areas this dive and signals up and we head on back to the deck. She has much she wants to see and today she is not carrying her camera as she did on yesterday’s dives, it is the size of a small sofa with arms and strobes and gidgets and gadgets…. I have no idea how she does it, but I do love her pictures.
I have been soaking in all the changes in the 10 months since I was last here. Like each of her past unique services, Vandy is embracing her new position, this time beneath the water’s surface. Her final retirement duty is possibly her greatest success. She has settled upright on the seafloor sturdily riding out the currents without wavering. Soft corals and sponges are tentatively laying claim to her nooks and crannies. And fish…. Well the neighborhood is filling out. Size is the most notable since my last visit. The small parrotfish that last time nibbled at the algae on the radar dish are now gi-normous. They have little fear as they nibble their way along, their colors flashing against the still bland colors of the hull. Regal sized queen angel fish swim about the tie in and large blue ones flit about.
The grunts swarm the higher parts of the superstructure and the barracuda have bulked up dining among these plentiful schools of fish who dart about in an unimaginable unison. Like Dancing With the Stars, with no noticeable signal, they quickly take off and make a chain of graceful precision turns as if choreographed to some music only they can hear and practiced in the long warm water afternoons. I found myself in their center several times during these dives and just stuck out my hand as they washed over me, marveling at the scene unfolding around me.
The small damselfish still puff out their chests and protect their “hood” as if they were the size of small whales and not goldfish and as I dropped between two railing to escape some of the current I came across the telltale squiggles of sand leading to a black and brown sea cucumber the size of a size 10 Nike doing what sea cucumbers do best.
There were midsized fish also. Large yellow and black butterfly fish swimming in and out of doorways, neon blues with their single vertical white stripe outlined in black, and the rest of the rainbow of colors that mark fish that call the warm southern waters home. These, I am sure, were the tiny fish we saw last October, just hatched and hiding among the safety of structure below deck in their new home. Large spiny legged shrimp try to blend in with the butt hinges of the doorways as they await their next meal and tickle as they scurry over your hand.
And there were new hatchlings and small fish varying size and color. They have replaced the parrot fish grazing on the grate like structure of the dish.
All are now schooled in poking 101 and I imagine the ship makes a small sigh as she settles farther in.
While the interior porcelain still shows white, the thinner pieces of metal are slowly bending with the waters currents. The frames of shelves and bunks are slowly showing signs of buckling and the salt water and changing currents have made the thin pieces of grating fragile and starting to fall from the radar dish in spots.
It will be many long years past the time of my visits to her that her decks and sides fall away but the sea is very upfront with her intentions and has begun to slowly refit the Vandenberg in what will be her final wardrobe. Soldiers and sailors no longer scurrying about her decks, no radar dishes vacillating to and fro and the hum of electronics scanning the skies above are quieted and the strange glowing lights of aliens will no longer haunt her halls, just the TV screens of sci-fi enthusiasts. They are replaced with the vigilant sentries of barracuda, herds of colored fish and the glow of bioluminescent at night.
She will give up her battleship gray for the fields of color the corals and sea flora and fauna bring. She will sit in the center of the sea as its diversity washes over her and stick out her hand and marvel at the scene unfolding around her, just as I did, seeing what goes past and what catches and stays.
We end our dive day once again at a small table on the deck, this time I have dessert first, I do love key lime pie, and we marvel at the wonders we have seen and make plans to do this once more…….. we sit at the pier and watch the sunset in stripes of pinks and blues and look out over the water and I remember the words of Lord Byron ~ Roll on, deep and dark blue ocean, roll. Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain. Man marks the earth with ruin, but his control stops with the shore.
I’ll be back, I can’t help but to.
nor small fish glitter and dart,
only the anemones
and flower of the wild sea-thyme
cover the silent walls
of an old sea-city at rest.
~Hilda Doolittle~
Cindy Bill and I spend the evening with a bottle of wine, relaxing on the deck and I get a sneak preview of pictures and stories to come from their trip to the Philippines. Dinner, once again, makes me too full for dessert and lulls me into a lazy comfortable haze calling out for a soft bed and softer pillow. I oblige and come morning we are once again on the dock of the Sea Eagle loading tanks and gear for our dive. Bill is using his old booties and a new dive friend, Mike, today. Cindy and I are doing a diva dive and plan on checking out the elevator shaft and poking some fish. At least I do.
Upon surfacing from our last dive yesterday, I discovered I had lost an earring, I am not sure how I feel about the pirate look and have skipped the earrings this morning while I decide. Bill suggested that the glitter of light on my silver hoops were the tantalizing draw that kept the barracuda so close to us yesterday and here I thought it was just my sparkling personality. I asked everyone aboard to keep an eye out for my earring, how hard could it be to find? It’s not like there are that many down there.
I like diving with Cindy, she, like me, loves to peek about and enjoys the small treasures each dive has to offer. We gear up and she gracefully steps off the port side and into the water. I follow with a launch and plummet as only I can do….. maybe this is what made me so memorable to the crew….. it is my signature move…..
We are again tied to the stern mooring ball, our second dive we will move to a mooring closer to the bow, and as we drop on down we can feel that the current has picked up ever so slightly since the day before, Earl is on his way. I follow Cindy as we make our way forward and she suddenly points and picks up a lone earring from the deck. What are the chances….. it is a pearl stud, not my loop but I tuck it into my sleeve before continuing on. It can only enhance that pirate look I am beginning to embrace, and oh the story it will add to it.
We come to the elevator shaft. The water is hazy and you cannot see all the way down. Cindy slips over the side and down we go slowly dropping towards the dark. At about 110fsw the first opening appears and it is completely dark, no light from a swim through cutout reaches this spot. I turn on my light and poke my head in but Cindy is not carrying doubles and chooses to explore other areas this dive and signals up and we head on back to the deck. She has much she wants to see and today she is not carrying her camera as she did on yesterday’s dives, it is the size of a small sofa with arms and strobes and gidgets and gadgets…. I have no idea how she does it, but I do love her pictures.
I have been soaking in all the changes in the 10 months since I was last here. Like each of her past unique services, Vandy is embracing her new position, this time beneath the water’s surface. Her final retirement duty is possibly her greatest success. She has settled upright on the seafloor sturdily riding out the currents without wavering. Soft corals and sponges are tentatively laying claim to her nooks and crannies. And fish…. Well the neighborhood is filling out. Size is the most notable since my last visit. The small parrotfish that last time nibbled at the algae on the radar dish are now gi-normous. They have little fear as they nibble their way along, their colors flashing against the still bland colors of the hull. Regal sized queen angel fish swim about the tie in and large blue ones flit about.
The grunts swarm the higher parts of the superstructure and the barracuda have bulked up dining among these plentiful schools of fish who dart about in an unimaginable unison. Like Dancing With the Stars, with no noticeable signal, they quickly take off and make a chain of graceful precision turns as if choreographed to some music only they can hear and practiced in the long warm water afternoons. I found myself in their center several times during these dives and just stuck out my hand as they washed over me, marveling at the scene unfolding around me.
The small damselfish still puff out their chests and protect their “hood” as if they were the size of small whales and not goldfish and as I dropped between two railing to escape some of the current I came across the telltale squiggles of sand leading to a black and brown sea cucumber the size of a size 10 Nike doing what sea cucumbers do best.
There were midsized fish also. Large yellow and black butterfly fish swimming in and out of doorways, neon blues with their single vertical white stripe outlined in black, and the rest of the rainbow of colors that mark fish that call the warm southern waters home. These, I am sure, were the tiny fish we saw last October, just hatched and hiding among the safety of structure below deck in their new home. Large spiny legged shrimp try to blend in with the butt hinges of the doorways as they await their next meal and tickle as they scurry over your hand.
And there were new hatchlings and small fish varying size and color. They have replaced the parrot fish grazing on the grate like structure of the dish.
All are now schooled in poking 101 and I imagine the ship makes a small sigh as she settles farther in.
While the interior porcelain still shows white, the thinner pieces of metal are slowly bending with the waters currents. The frames of shelves and bunks are slowly showing signs of buckling and the salt water and changing currents have made the thin pieces of grating fragile and starting to fall from the radar dish in spots.
It will be many long years past the time of my visits to her that her decks and sides fall away but the sea is very upfront with her intentions and has begun to slowly refit the Vandenberg in what will be her final wardrobe. Soldiers and sailors no longer scurrying about her decks, no radar dishes vacillating to and fro and the hum of electronics scanning the skies above are quieted and the strange glowing lights of aliens will no longer haunt her halls, just the TV screens of sci-fi enthusiasts. They are replaced with the vigilant sentries of barracuda, herds of colored fish and the glow of bioluminescent at night.
She will give up her battleship gray for the fields of color the corals and sea flora and fauna bring. She will sit in the center of the sea as its diversity washes over her and stick out her hand and marvel at the scene unfolding around her, just as I did, seeing what goes past and what catches and stays.
We end our dive day once again at a small table on the deck, this time I have dessert first, I do love key lime pie, and we marvel at the wonders we have seen and make plans to do this once more…….. we sit at the pier and watch the sunset in stripes of pinks and blues and look out over the water and I remember the words of Lord Byron ~ Roll on, deep and dark blue ocean, roll. Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain. Man marks the earth with ruin, but his control stops with the shore.
I’ll be back, I can’t help but to.