genenaples
Contributor
Four of us drove from Naples to P'Cola two weeks back and dove Oriskany. We dove with MBT Divers http://www.mbtdivers.com/ on the chartered H2O Below dive boat. We had a great time and everyone involved was very nice and professional as well. Good clean cheap rooms at the Suburban Lodge http://www.choicehotels.com/ires/en-us/html/HotelInfo?hotel=FL964&promo=gglocal, very close to the dive shop. The dive was excellent, about 60' feet of vis in 84 degree water. The ship was of course still in excellent shape with very little marine growth for a month under water. The Navy did a good job of prep on the ship; removing windows, doors and other entanglements. We went down on air to the flight deck at 135' on the first dive and entered the tower at the bottom and swam up through the stairs and rooms to the top. The flight deck is made of wood and is still in decent shape. On the second dive we dove 30% Nitrox and went to about 85' and penetrated all of the different bridges. Lots of cool stuff that has not been taken yet, valves, first aid boxes, all sorts of electronic gear mounted to the walls. Unfortunately, this wont last long as the dive boat had no problem encouraging people to use lift bags to send their "booty" to the surface. IMO it would be nice if the dive boats policed this rather than encouraged it, but they are only destroying their own resource. If you go, don't miss the escalator that runs from the flight deck to the top of the tower, a very cool swim up the escalator!! Our dive boat had lots of food, water and other drinks provided as well as hot dogs on the BBQ on the ride back in! Of course with every great dive there are some downers. The boats are way too crowded. And most of the people on our boat were diving no deco but had tech set ups. Alum 100's etc and there just was no room for the tanks in the holders. I don't understand the need for these tanks as we all had the same bottom time limits. The boat trip from P'Cola to the Oriskany is 2.5 hours!! This is a very long boat ride when there is no place to sit. Thankfully the conditions were excellent so we had a smooth ride. We had planned to dive again the next day but cancelled that and went home early because the 2.5 hours was too much to bear again since the boat was oversold for the next day as well. The other issue has to do with mooring, there are no mooring balls and when we arrived it took at least 45 minutes to fit our way in amongst the 6 boats already tied off to the tower. It was a bit hairy for a few minutes and the lines kind of intermingle with the other boats lines. You can imagine the fun on the way back up! The LDS will have to figure out a way to maintain some buoys or some bad things could happen during rough weather. This is defiantly an advanced dive; you should have plenty of deep dives under your belt and a deep or penetration specialty. Overall it was worth the 12 hour drive (we stopped at Ginnie on the way up to split up the trip and dive the springs) and the 2.5 hour trip out but... been there done that. I will take the Spiegel Grove any day! Not a lot to see on the small tower of Oriskany and the deck may be 800 feet long but this is mostly off limits except for a touch and go. This will be one of the great tech dives. Getting into the hangar decks below 135 will be awesome.
