Glory Wreck April 21 2007

When one door closes another one opens. Late Friday afternoon I found out my planned Saturday charter was cancelled, but after a few quick phone calls I was scheduled for the Tuna Seazure the next morning. Tuckerton is a long haul from Boonton, but by taking the camper down Friday night I was able to awaken at 6am feeling passably frisky. Warm sunny and breezeless, the day was ripe with promise.

Last Wednesday I did my crossover checkout for a Megalodon rebreather. Curiosity, weight, compactness, and not least a pretty decent deal on it led me to get the unit, so I was looking forward to putting it through its paces. It’s a much more fiddly unit than either of my other rebreathers in terms of how much time I’ve put into configuring it the way I want it, and even after several hours I still see a significant number of changes I want to make. Brandon McJangles was crewing, and betrayed a more-than-casual interest by noticing that I had a Hammerhead on it. His doctorate it close enough to taste, and it seems he might have a new toy in his immediate future. Considering the impressive diving he’s managed to do as a student, it will be interesting to see where his diving goes when he has more freedom and a regular paycheck.

For those that haven’t been on it, the Tuna Seazure is a very nice boat. It’s a six pack, with ample space in the rear, a large, comfortable cabin up front, and 30 knots-worth of power under the hood. This latter was conveyed to me indelibly when I experienced weightlessness as we cleared the inlet: one moment I had a floor under me, the next I just plain didn’t. Fortunately I was able to land neatly on my feet, but for a moment there I think you could have driven a car underneath me. Our destination was the Glory Wreck, or maybe the Gloria, or the Kennebec, or the Lake Frampton. Call it what you like, it's all the same junkyard in 70’ and no one can prove you’re wrong. Had my poker-loving wife been onboard she would have swam for the shore, as not far off you could see Atlantic City basking in the sun. Seas were minimal, gentle two foot rollers with long intervals in between. A Bedouin couldn’t have gotten seasick if he tried.

Contrary to my usual procedure I waited last to splash. For my first real ocean dive on the Meg I wanted plenty of time to run checks on both my gear and my brain. Satisfied with each, I rolled over the side and kicked down the line to see what the Glory had for me. Water temps are inching up, a not-unreasonable 43F, with viz in the 15’ range. I took a few minutes at the bottom to sort out buoyancy and the loop, and to verify that I could put my hand on each piece of gear. The grapnel was tied into the bow, so I clipped my strobe, tied off to a convenient piece of debris, and headed aft. There wasn’t too much relief, usually in the 3’-4’ range, but with lots of plating and machinery cast about. Roughly halfway down I saw some antennae sticking out from under a plate, and got down to business. There was an odd surge, there and then gone, and with uneven force. It took a bit of timing, but I was able to glide in and scoop both that bug and a neighbor from their shallow holes. Cool, 30 minutes in and I’ve got dinner covered. Eventually I made it to the stern, which has a big open swim-through well populated with tog and sea bass. Very very pretty, there’s probably 18’ of relief, with plenty of light from either end as well as a couple of holes. I was so engrossed in the tog that it wasn’t until my second pass that I noticed two fat and sassy bugs within easy reach. The only problem was, my catch bag already had two, plus a razor clam, some funky copper tubing, and a horseshoe crab carapace to show the kids, and was looking kind of full. Fortunately I carry two catch bags; unfortunately, when I went to pull #2 out I found it had slipped from my pocket. Ah well, I was still plenty warm at 75 minutes, and at least with the reel I easily could retrace my steps, so to speak. I followed the line all the way back to the grapnel to no avail, then returned to the stern to find the missing bag sitting almost exactly where I had locked and dropped the reel. One bug was smart enough to beat feet out of there, but the other, a nice 3#-er, waltzed right into my bag with little coaxing. I was toasty and wanted to stay down, but I had left word topside to expect me in 60-90 minutes, and since it was already over 100 it was time to make an appearance. Somehow all the little gear gremlins that I can usually keep at bay made an appearance on the return swim: grit in the reel made it a pain to take up line, the gate on my light also jammed with grit and wouldn’t open, the two goody bags wrapped around the anchor line on the ascent and got twisted up. Little niggling annoyances that delayed me further, such that my dive stretched to two hours before I climbed over the transom. No worries though, and Captain Bill was even kind enough to let me take an hour and twenty minute surface interval before dive two. In chatting with the other mate, Charlie, I learned that there is reel hope for butterfingered Stephan and Carl: not long back he too dropped his reel on a dive, in the spring, but recovered it that October with little damage. ‘Course, that might mean he’s sucked all the luck out of that bit of serendipity, but you decide if the glass is half full or half empty.

This time I was looking to see what my pole spear could do. I’m still totally wet behind the ears with it, this being only my second time taking it out. Once at depth I screwed the four parts together and began the hunt. I decided to begin spearfishing not only for the obvious reason (damn they’re tasty), but also for the excitement of learning such a new and different skill. Deep, rebreathers, scooters, they are all technical skills to learn. CCR buoyancy plays off what you already know, scooters profit from the experience of diving in flow, trimix is just math with a sprinkling of voodoo. Spearfishing is new in a way none of those other skills are. Gliding silently down the wreck, trying to suss out trajectories, distances, fish-think ie what will and will not spook them – not to mash metaphors, but I’m hooked.

I’m also kind of hapless. I speared a beautiful blue Tog, and despite hearing that I should plant him right in the sand I went for my bag. Two seconds later he was gone. What the hell, I had three inches of trident sticking out of him! I hope for his sake it was merely a flesh wound. I’m also a lousy judge of 14”, and what seemed oh so legal had to be left for the sharks and crabs. In the final tally my catch bag stayed empty, but over the course of 90 minutes my toolbox of skills began filling nicely.

The Tuna Seazure has the sensible policy that they’d like to check you out on something mellow before joining on a tech trip. With all the great wrecks down there, I hope they like what they saw. I know I did.