Oriskany Trip 3/22/08

Saturday the seas were finally calm enough to get out to the Oriskany on board the H2O Below. We had a full boat with several from Canada and from Russia. The water was 68 degrees on the flight deck and Scott said it wasn't much less at the sand. Most of us were in 5m wetsuits and we were fine. The air temp was in the mid seventies and sunny, so the surface interval was perfect.

We are seeing much bigger barracubas. There was one that was as big as Dive master Josh! We actually got close enough to one of them to touch it - crazy dude! :11:

I saw more Bluehead Wrasses than ever before. Josh pointed out a three foot long Trumpetfish that was beautiful. The tropicals are everywhere. There are still a lot of little AJs and snapper. I'm sure that the big ones are deeper but I'm happy to stay above the hanger deck.

It was a great day and the smooth seas made it easy to see a sunfish on the way in. He was huge - probably about 200 pounds. Fun!

Thanks to everyone - Captain Douglas, Josh (Dive Master), two Dive Masters in training on board Jerry and Nathan and ofcourse the videographer - Scott.

I am so jealous!! the last 3 times we planned the O we got blown out congrats on a good dive sounds like yall had fun. Can't wait to get down there this season.

Thanks for letting us live through you !

sounds like a great dive. I think I've watched the discovery channel special on the big O's sinking about 10 times. Now....whare are the pics/vids so we can all truly live vicariously through you?

Sorry, the video is Scott's department right now. He was trying to get video of the crack in the hull. From what I understand somewhere around 200 feet on the port side midship is a large crack in the hull that he believes happened when the ship sank. It went down hard on it's a$$ leaving a crack parallel to the sand. I don't know because I'm not a tech diver and have never been that deep. So it is as unknown as the Loch Nest Monster to me.

However, for your viewing pleasure, please help yourself to my photogallery. I need to update it but this trip was all about cleaning the captain's balls again. If you have never had to hang upside down in 35 feet of water with a putty knife in your hand and your face getting smacked around by an orange buoy ball you'll know that a camera is the last thing you need. Although, Scott said he almost drown laughing at me while he was watching from his safety stop. Unfortunately or fortunately depending on who you are, he was out of video tape at the time.

Stop it... we will not get off on another discussion about captain's balls or getting smacked in the face with said balls or the color of said balls or putty knives and said captains balls.... This is a serious trip report about a professional dive operation! :mooner:

Then can I ask, how big are the Captain's balls ?

Actually, there are four different captains represented on the Oriskany. Captain Douglas' has the largest balls and Captain Dave the smallest - but in Captain Dave's defense, he has two that are connected. Most of them are so big that you can't get your arms around them. To clean them you must wrap the line around either your leg or your hand to hang on while you scrub VERY HARD with the putty knife. Captain Ron has blond fuzzy stuff on his. Everybody else's are brown or black fuzzy.

YouTube is just waiting for a video of this.

It sure does take a lot of air to clean these balls. I generally have a very good SAC rate, but not when cleaning balls!

Thnx for the report

I hope to hit the Big O sometime after June. I'm doing my Deep Air/Adv Nitrox check out dives sometime in June and I hope to hit the deck of the O soon after. (Maybe after several dives in Pelham at 130/40 ffw. At least get some experience in. )

Great report again. I can't wait.