Wreck Crawl
Eric Keibler Jun 17, 2008
Our Deep Wreck Charter begins on Monday and you can come into Key West on Sunday evening or Monday morning. Here was an opportunity to do some more diving and maximize the weekend. Of course most of the diving around the keys is shallow reef diving which did not sound like a way to start our Dry Tortugas wreck adventure. But, we could do some more wreck diving…this sounds like the perfect fit. Of course getting everything put in place for such an adventure took advanced dive planning and coordination.
The only way any of this made sense is if we used the early dives as a tune-up for the more advanced dives in the Dry Tortugas. This meant that everyone needed their doubles, decompression cylinders, or rebreather cylinders and. bailout cylinders along with appropriate amounts of absorbent.
Thanks to Barney Corbin, who traveled to Florida over Memorial Day delivering our cylinders and the ever friendly UPS divers who delivered copious amounts of sorb, cartridges and Dave’s dry suit. We were set.
Our diving adventures for this part of the trip were with Conch Divers from Tavernier Florida. They operate two boats and offer Technical as well as recreational charters. We had 9 divers so we were able to charter our own boat.
The first day, Pam Radford, Geoff Streitel, Ron Hicks, Dave Snyder, Terry DeWolf, Wade Sparks, Jess Stark and your’s truly all decended on one of Florida’s premier recreational wrecks – The USS Speigel Grove and artificial wreck sunk in the late 90’s. Of course, we were not doing it like most divers. Our intent was to dive it on a more technical basis – one long dive!
We all jumped in and as we sank down the mooring ball, the ship came into sight. Our group would spend the next 90to 120 minutes exploring the both the inside and outside of the ship. Diving to below the decks, through the superstructure, down to the engine room through the galley, crews quarters, officer’s mess, and other spaces our group explored the vessel ending in the shallows of the wreck and then up the mooring bal back to our waiting boat.
The next day Jerry Kiselwinski joined us for our dive on the USS Duane, a Coast Guard Cutter. This ship rests on her side but in clear water. More penetrations are available for the group, especially by the bore and tunnel crew. Another 90-129 minutes passed underwater and then after a quick lunch, a chance to refill the OC bottles and it was off the USS Bibb, the sister ship of the USS Duane, which sits upright. The penetrations continued and another two hours underwater clicked away.
We have one more dive before we zip down to Key West to meet up the M/V Spree. This morning’s dive is on the Eagle, another ship resting on her side. The intrepid divers whiled away another 120 minutes exploring this wreck and fine tuning their equipment and diving style before the deep diving begins. Another 120 minutes underwater.
After the dive, we checked out of the condominiums, loaded the trucks and headed out for Key West where the MV Spree and the remainder of our group awaits our arrival.
