So the second day of the trip I woke up early and spent an hour mowing the grass.... that was the cost of getting to use the cabin we were in, for free.... and then we loaded up the truck and drove back up to Musining. We ate lunch, put on the
Scopolamine patches, and hit the charter.
The first day we were the only two divers on the charter, so we left almost an hour early because we were ready to go. But today, Claude and Melissa were joining us.
They were probably 10 years younger than me, and had much more expensive gear, from the drysuits to the LCD dive computers, to fins, to masks. I wondered why they were doing these simple newbie dives that I had chartered a month in advance, but I dunno. Whatever.
Because they showed up late we were a little late casting off, but again, whatev. Me and the kid suited up, loaded the gear, and were kicking it on some patio furniture in the shade by the dock as Cap'n Joe got the new people squared away. He gave us a nod of respect as he walked by us, for being so chill. We nodded back.
First dive of the day was the deeper dive... the
The Steven M. Selvick.
The Steven M. Selvick, a 70' tug intentionally sunk in 1996 in 40'-60' of water. The pilot house starts in 40 ft. of water, making this a great dive for beginners to experts. Divers have access to all areas of the tug. The pilothouse, galley, mess room, engine room, and crew quarters can all be penetrated.
(edit -
The Sinking of the Selvick)
Cap'n Joe always gives us a brief before each dive, and it turns out his father was the one who secured the tug and sunk it as a dive spot. Cap'n Joe had stood on the deck before it was sunk, and he said he visited it a couple times a year, since.
Claude and Melissa went first about a minute before us, so they were already gone before we hit the rope.
The line from the wreck to the buoy was at about 75 feet long, judging by the angle from where it was tied off at about 50' depth, to the buoy on the surface. Winds were higher today, we had actual waves, and the line was pretty close to a 45 degree angle. Vis was about 25 feet today... this means that at one point when pulling ourselves down to the wreck, looking up we saw the rope just fade away into the distance, and looking down... the rope just fading away into the distance. It was pretty eerily neat.
But we hit the deck, and we could see pretty much the entire thing all at once. It is lying at a 45 degree angle, as the bottom was rounded. It's all intact. The doorways were narrow.... I could have probably squeezed through them scraping gear, but we were just deep enough that I didn't want to push my luck. The previous dives maxed out at 30 feet, I would be very comfortable doing an emergency ascent with no air. We hit a depth of 59 feet on this dive... just deep enough to want to be extra careful. My kid didn't hesitate to go into the bridge and look around, though.
(If you happen to notice the "bubble" in the video, Cap'n Joe let me borrow his gopro for this day's dives, since I had issues with forgetting my waterproof case in the cabin. I just put my SD card in his camera. But his camera had a magenta filter over the lens, and it wasn't behaving properly, and it didn't flood correctly... there was a bubble. I didn't recognize it as such because it wasn't my equipment)
We messed around a while... kind of a small ship, so you explore it pretty fast. Mast to keel, bow to stern. The dive computers registered 63F degrees at 59 feet, a mite chilly. Will again diving the 7mm suit and gloves, me with just my 3mm suit. I could feel a chill, but not so bad that I thought about it at all. I saw Claude and Melissa once or twice, not sure if I caught them on camera... I haven't rewatched the entire dive, yet.
We spent about 30 minutes at the bottom screwing around, and headed up. We spent 3 minutes at 20 feet doing a safety stop... it isn't a full-fledged "decompression stop" that you do when you are at depth long enough to be in danger of Decompression Sickness (the bends), it's a "just to be safe" sort of thing. We spent 3 minutes there (your computer tells you how long your safety stop should be, and sounds an alarm if you ignore it. The alarm is stronger if you are ignoring official Decompression Stops. Dive computers are neat.), Claude and Melissa holding on to the rope a couple feet below us. I always let Will hit the ladder first in case he slips and falls so I can be in the water to help him, but he made it up easy and I followed. He's getting stronger. We waited for C&M and changed out our tanks heading for the last dive site.
