gcarter
Contributor
I haven't actually seen anything about this posted here:
Tanker still stuck 'like a boot in mud' in seaway at Morrisburg
We planned a dive for Wednesday evening, expecting it to have been freed already. GoPros at the ready, 7 of us showed up anticipating being the first to see what it did underwater. It looks to have run up on the berm on the other side of the outer lock wall on Lock 23, the wall being around 12 or 13 feet under the surface.
We were frustrated in our expectations.
When we showed up, the two tugs were still working hard trying to break it free of the bottom, with the tanker itself hitting reverse pretty hard as part of the effort.
It was pretty obvious we were not going to be drifting down the outside of the outer wall. Needing to get wet, we decided to take a tour down the inner lock. It was a beautiful day, air temperature ~ 30C, with the water coming in at a balmy 13C/55F. 7mm 1 piece with a 5mm hood was sufficient for the task.
The drift through the lock was pleasantly relaxing. Conspicuously absent was the very high current we experienced pretty much all of last summer. Water flow is at a more normal level. Vis was pretty good, up to 15 or 20 feet (I suck at judging vis distance). Once we got through the inner path, though, vis started to drop, down to 5 - 10 feet, and it was noticeably darker, especially given our max depth was 39 FFW and it was a bright sunny day.
We worked our way past the cribs and shortly hit the turn point and headed north. I found my compass was definitely affected by that big chunk of metal sitting just behind us.
Vis continued to be poor as we made our way in, and as we hit the point where the ground takes a noticeable slope up, we found ourselves in a blackout. Lights weren't visible from more than a couple of feet away. Unsurprisingly, the group wound up separated at this point. All of us are very experienced with this site, so nobody got very stressed about it. We knew where we were, reasonably close to shore, and worst case would have had us go up 20 feet and doing a surface swim in.
I was close to 2 other divers, and we grabbed each others hands and moved north along the bottom until the vis cleared to about 5 feet again. Handholding no longer required, we continued on until one of the divers got a leg cramp. Knowing how close we were, we surfaced about 50m from shore, navigation having taken us directly to our desired exit point. All of the other divers surfaced close by, all of us within minutes.
The culprit for the bad vis was of course the tanker. The attempts at breaking it free had kicked up an enormous amount of silt which we swam right into once we exited the protection of the lock.
All in all it was a pretty good dive, 54 minutes, but we were somewhat disappointed that we did not get to examine where the ship ran aground. A dive for another day.
1st dive of the season under my belt!
Tanker still stuck 'like a boot in mud' in seaway at Morrisburg
We planned a dive for Wednesday evening, expecting it to have been freed already. GoPros at the ready, 7 of us showed up anticipating being the first to see what it did underwater. It looks to have run up on the berm on the other side of the outer lock wall on Lock 23, the wall being around 12 or 13 feet under the surface.
We were frustrated in our expectations.
When we showed up, the two tugs were still working hard trying to break it free of the bottom, with the tanker itself hitting reverse pretty hard as part of the effort.
It was pretty obvious we were not going to be drifting down the outside of the outer wall. Needing to get wet, we decided to take a tour down the inner lock. It was a beautiful day, air temperature ~ 30C, with the water coming in at a balmy 13C/55F. 7mm 1 piece with a 5mm hood was sufficient for the task.
The drift through the lock was pleasantly relaxing. Conspicuously absent was the very high current we experienced pretty much all of last summer. Water flow is at a more normal level. Vis was pretty good, up to 15 or 20 feet (I suck at judging vis distance). Once we got through the inner path, though, vis started to drop, down to 5 - 10 feet, and it was noticeably darker, especially given our max depth was 39 FFW and it was a bright sunny day.
We worked our way past the cribs and shortly hit the turn point and headed north. I found my compass was definitely affected by that big chunk of metal sitting just behind us.
Vis continued to be poor as we made our way in, and as we hit the point where the ground takes a noticeable slope up, we found ourselves in a blackout. Lights weren't visible from more than a couple of feet away. Unsurprisingly, the group wound up separated at this point. All of us are very experienced with this site, so nobody got very stressed about it. We knew where we were, reasonably close to shore, and worst case would have had us go up 20 feet and doing a surface swim in.
I was close to 2 other divers, and we grabbed each others hands and moved north along the bottom until the vis cleared to about 5 feet again. Handholding no longer required, we continued on until one of the divers got a leg cramp. Knowing how close we were, we surfaced about 50m from shore, navigation having taken us directly to our desired exit point. All of the other divers surfaced close by, all of us within minutes.
The culprit for the bad vis was of course the tanker. The attempts at breaking it free had kicked up an enormous amount of silt which we swam right into once we exited the protection of the lock.
All in all it was a pretty good dive, 54 minutes, but we were somewhat disappointed that we did not get to examine where the ship ran aground. A dive for another day.
1st dive of the season under my belt!
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