Here's my report that I posted over on
The SCUBA Stop:
Today notabob, Spectre, Chickdiver, and I were supposed to dive the wreck of the U-853 off of Block Island. Because I am a cursed mofo, we had our charter cancelled due to high winds. I have it on good authority that I am now banned from all U-853 charters with this particular group of people since I am, so far, 0 for 5 trying to dive her! However, not to be deterred, we called Cape Ann Divers up en masse, and booked an afternoon trip on the big boat to the Chester Poling and Nina T wrecks. It turned out to be a beautiful, yet windy, sunny day with two good dives.
Our first dive was on the Chester Poling wreck. notabob and I were buddied.
Chester Poling:
We were on the stern mooring and dropped down to the sand, swam up along the starboard side of the wreck to the break, then came back on the deck along the starboard side. Vis was decent, maybe 15 feet, with a lot of ambient light. There was a mild, somewhat irritating current that kept wanting to push us off the side of the wreck. There was also a fair enough current on the hang bar that we had to...well...hang on to it loosely while the boat rocked up and down.
Bottom time: 21 minutes.
Run time: 34 minutes.
Bottom temperature: 39 degrees F
Surface temperature: 48 degrees F
Air temperature: 70 degrees, but with the wind it felt more like 50.
Tide: As low as it gets.
We headed in near Magnolia Rocks for our surface interval to get out of the wind and to avoid stressing the already fragile mooring on the Nina T.
Our second dive was on the Nina T:
Nina T
The Nina T is now definitely a wreck in the truest sense of the word. The winter was not kind to her and she now looks nothing like the ship she once was. No longer is the beautiful mast pointing up towards the sky. It is in a crumbled pile on the bottom along with the rest of the wreck. In fact, it is difficult to identify any parts of the wreck any more as it's all collapsed to the bottom with the exception of a small piece of the hull. The mooring was tied to some unidentifiable piece of wreckage. notabob found a Zeagle second stage on the bottom....who knows where that came from. Hopefully someone lost it overboard and not during the dive!
We did a tour of the wreckage before getting bored and cold and ascending. There was a really annoying surface current on the top 5 feet or so that made getting to the ladder a pain in the arse, but obviously we made it back ok.
Bottom time: 17 minutes.
Run time: 32 minutes.
Bottom temperature: 39 degrees F
Surface temperature: 48 degrees F
Air temperature: 64 degrees
Tide: A little less low than before.
All and all it was a great day of diving and was good to have Chickdiver on board with us, visiting from Florida. I hope she has thawed out by now!
