The Coimbra August 5 2006

Friday night saw me back with the chic crowd, driving out to the Hamptons. The Sea Turtle was planning on going to the Coimbra, and the way both Ted and Chuck spoke of it tones of awe had me intrigued. By design I got there late, making the drive from NNJ to Montauk in under three hours, then crashed on the boat. It was a bit stuffy, but the payoff was in being able to avoid all that 4am load-in. In fact, it wasn't until 7:30 that I got up, refreshed and ready for some northeast wreck diving. Besides Chuck and Ted as Captain and crew respectively, we had Andy Koppinger also mating, and Joe Zimmerman, Ron Hamski, Kevin Moen, and Andy Przepiorowski (it helps to have a mouthful of peanut butter when you say that last name), a fine bunch of wreck divers and good company to boot.

The Coimbra was a British tanker that was torpedoed by the U-123 on January 15, 1942. The war was little over a month old for the US, and we still had to learn the painful lessons of antisubmarine warfare. I'm a little surprised that the Brits were so unwary, having already had several years of brutal experience with the uboats, but so it was. The Germans quickly dispatched 5 uboats to the US East Coast for Operation Paukenschlag (Drumbeat), and heavily laden tankers like the Coimbra were meat on the table. They were running with their lights on, so Kapitänleutnant Reinhard Hardegan took his time, lined them up and executed them. Only 9 men of 46 survived the explosions that sent burning fuel and flame 600' into the sky, followed by hours spent in the Atlantic in January. Hardegen sank a total of 9 ships during Operation Drumbeat, and was awarded the Knight's Cross, Germany's highest honor (interestingly, he is still alive and living in Germany.) The Coimbra now lies in 190' of water on its starboard side, broken in two places and with debris fields at the breaks and below where the superstructure was.

The sun was shining and the seas relatively flat when we arrived at 9am, and not a minute too soon. Three other boats were converging on us, so after scouting the bottom for the stern and grappling it we were happy to run up the colors and thumb our noses at them. Ted was kind enough to let me splash with him, so in we jumped and down we went. I had a hold up at 80' when my ears couldn't clear, and had a couple of minutes of anxiety until they cooperated. Eventually they did. Descending I found Ted finishing off the tie-in, apparently the grapple had fallen through a hatch and had to be man-handled out and up. The plan had been for me to model for Ted, but his camera unfortunately crapped out. Viz was in the 20'-25' range, and the bottom temp was 48F.
Dropping to the bottom, we poked around in the debris for a bit, and I pulled out two very nice square tiles dated 1934 on the bottom. Ted was working away at a nice size bug but couldn't quite get him. However, when he swam away I saw it had moved to a more accessible place, so I called him back. By beating the bushes I was able to drive it to him, and into the bag he went. Fluke were everywhere in the sand, and pollack swam back and forth above us. Ling cod were also in abundance. The steel plating on the deck is being eaten away, and as we swam to the stern I made note of some penetration points for dive two. Rounding the corner we came up on the prop jutting out from the sand, always one of my favorite things to see. As crew Ted couldn't stay down too long, so after pointing out a nice hole as a swim-through we separated. I found a really neat looking brass cooling tube, about 4' high and coiled up to a point. I thought hard about bringing it up but ultimately decided to leave it for a future dive. In my poking about I also came across the biggest damn bug I've ever seen. It had to be ten pounds minimum, with claws longer than my hands, and a body bigger around than my arm. Truly a beast. I looked for ways to get it out, but it seemed pretty secure in its foxhole - I could grab him, but then there was no way to pull him out, and it was nearly time to go. I hadn't run a reel, but after a couple of minutes I was able to orient myself, and left the wreck at 40 minutes showing just under an hour of deco.

As I ticked off my stops the rest of the divers passed me on the way down, followed a half hour later by their bubbles signaling their return. I was at my 20 stop, looking at Ron and Joe below me, when I saw them start shaking and making all sorts of jerking motions. Joe looked up to me with saucer eyes, and waved his arm like "WHAT THE FUCK!" I had no clue, so I returned the signal, like "I don't know. What is the fuck?" It became apparent though, when I saw Ron signaling another diver, first Shark, then arms as wide as he could stretch them - if there was a signal for exclamation marks there would have been lots of them. Up on the boat they explained what they saw. Gray. Big. Real Big. Big enough that with 20' of viz they couldn't see it all. Three body lengths between the dorsal fin and the tail. "It wasn't a blue shark, and it wasn't a mako shark, and it wasn't a thresher shark..." Tiger maybe? They don't get that big. According to Ted there have been 3 great whites sightings on the Coimbra before, and it seems there may now be four. For you adrenaline junkies, per Ron it is the biggest hit he's ever felt in his life. Earlier something had jumped out of the water and made a splash like somebody had thrown a volkswagen, and throughout our surface interval we could see fins cutting the water all around the boat.

I know it will pain my mother to read this, but I couldn't wait to get back in the water. Dive 2 was fantastic, what wreck diving is all about. Dropping to the bottom I immediately grabbed a 2.5# bug strutting about the sand, and found several nice octagonal tiles. I then returned to the stern to see if I could squeeze in. One of the things I like about the prism is how the width is less than my shoulders (as opposed to the sport kiss, which sticks out several inches). Tucking my tanks under me I slipped right into the engine room. It was tight in there, but I enjoyed checking out the machinery, as well as the remains of the ladders and gangways. Ambient light poured in from several holes, and after swimming about a bit I exited through one of the larger ones near the break. Near another entry I found a 4.5# bug (I later weighed him) just hanging out waiting to be bagged, so I obliged. I had marked Bugzilla from dive one, so revisited him, and even saw a way I could possibly get him out. I decided not to try though. For me, if they make it over five pounds they are home free. I'd have liked to take him just for a picture topside, but since this was dive two I had no way to bring him back safely, and down he stayed.

I was a little disappointed I had missed Jaws on dive one, all the more so since if I had looked in the right place at the right time I would have seen him (Moral: Pay less attention to gauges. No, wait...) I had a change of heart though, when I was hanging at 90' with another 45 minutes of deco to go, all alone with the light fading. Right there right then my thinking was how much I really didn't want to see him go sliding by, eyeing me up with those big black eyes. I kept a pretty good vigil, enough that I was setting off chain reactions later when we all were at the upper stops together. I'd sweep my eyes left right below and rear, and then Ron and Joe would see that, think I'd seen something, and start looking frantically around as well. We must have looked like a bunch of bobblehead dolls.

We had talked about going to the Jug after dive one, which is a busted up wreck in 135' known for bugs and scallops. I was pretty okay with it, as I felt I had done the Coimbra justice. After dive two I realized, I will need many many more dives here before I'll be satisfied.