I can second Rick Inman's musings. Note that the 366-foot Yukon (San Diego) is sitting at about 110 feet. The bridge is up at 60 feet. Decompression procedures allow you to take enough air down and stay long enough to explore a small piece of her in detail.
The Yukon was my first artificial reef dive, just five years ago. I was lucky in that my buddy was one of the team that stripped and prepped her for the sinking, so it was a great introductory tour. Up in Nanaimo (just a ferry ride away from you) lies a Yukon sister ship, Saskatchewan, and several other big artificial reefs about five minutes out from the marina.
So deco is for me a means to an end. While (like Rick) I also enjoy the challenges of planning, provisioning, and executing multi-stiop multi-gas dives, it's really about the wrecks (relatively shallow, none of your Atlantic liners at 200 feet, thank you).
I have to admit that when I started diving I never thought I'd care to dive wrecks. But the first time I drifted down onto one and she began to take shape in the gloom and limited viz, I was hooked. There is a fascination in encountering a vessel that's come to ground, whether she failed by misadventure or was put there. You feel a connection to her, her history, her men. And even if you're just floating alongside her, it's a completely different feeling from standing on a pier and looking over a ship. You're alive and she's not.
-Bryan
