Last week was a great week, mainly because I was on vacation and because I got to dive the Lady Luck AND hunt minis!! This was my first season of minis and it was great fun! First things first, THE LADY LUCK!!!!
Tuesday morning we get to the marina, myself and @Ron Crist, and we get all our junk on the boat. I have a friend (Kurt) that lives in Boca that was our water taxi/guide for the week. I was able to get the coords for the Lady Luck off one of the captains from another boat. I figured it IS a public wreck and why would someone lie to me.
Kurt on the other hand said we will probably be dropped off in the middle of the Atlantic due to crappy coords. Lo and behold when he plugged the coords in they put us nicely in shipwreck park, so we were optimistic. Once on the coords we got all our stuff on and prepared to drop on the wreck, we were told the deck should be right around 107FSW and the sand should be about 125FSW. We drop off the boat and then buddy up and dork around with dive flag and finally empty BCs and drop. (We looked like some live drop newbs) As we get to the sand we see that we are at about 135FSW and are on a north westernly drift, we look and look and look thinking any moment we will see this giant ship come into view. Not to be so and the only thing we saw was our NDL shrink quickly, so we come up to approx. 75FSW to gain a bit more NDL time and to keep looking. There was to be no joy on this dive but we at least got valuable drift/current info that might help on our next drop.
Wednesday morning, FIRST DAY OF MINI SEASON!!! Partner got a bit green behind the gills after our dive yesterday so we scrapped the second dive. Today we decided we wanted to get on that wreck and then do a mini dive after that. Using the info we gained the day before our Captain Kurt took us a bit more to the SE of the wreck cords and got us prepped to drop. We dropped much quicker this time, knowing we had pooped the bed the day before with our slow prep on the surface. As we sank I happened to see something come toward me at about 55FSW and come to find out it was the rear mast of the ship!!
We were moving quick so I reached out and grabbed the mast with one arm and grabbed my buddy with the other arm. Once we were both firmly holding on the mast I secured our dive flag to the very top of it and we made our way down. It was so cool to see the wreck and we spent about 20min on her. We saw just a VERY small portion of this wreck and I think this wreck would be awesome to explore with doubles and a bit of deco. There is a METRIC TON to see and you could probably dive it 20 times in single tank rec config before you could see the majority of it.. Now for some pics of the wreck..
Now on to the minis!!! Our Captain decided to drop us on a favorite spot of his and it was on the outer most reef there in Pompano. We were at a depth of about 65FSW and we caught all that we saw but two. We got a total of five with a sixth having eggs, so we let her go. It was very cool locating them and as we went along it got easier. There just were not that many out there and we don't know if they had been gotten by earlier boats or if it was a depth thing or what. My buddy also lost our Captain's nice lobster snare while we were hanging on our safety stop. Evidently it just drifted away unseen by either of us. Doh!! Needless to say another snare has already been ordered and is enroute to Kurt. THANKS AMAZON!
Sorry this was long winded, but I hope you enjoyed..
Tuesday morning we get to the marina, myself and @Ron Crist, and we get all our junk on the boat. I have a friend (Kurt) that lives in Boca that was our water taxi/guide for the week. I was able to get the coords for the Lady Luck off one of the captains from another boat. I figured it IS a public wreck and why would someone lie to me.
Kurt on the other hand said we will probably be dropped off in the middle of the Atlantic due to crappy coords. Lo and behold when he plugged the coords in they put us nicely in shipwreck park, so we were optimistic. Once on the coords we got all our stuff on and prepared to drop on the wreck, we were told the deck should be right around 107FSW and the sand should be about 125FSW. We drop off the boat and then buddy up and dork around with dive flag and finally empty BCs and drop. (We looked like some live drop newbs) As we get to the sand we see that we are at about 135FSW and are on a north westernly drift, we look and look and look thinking any moment we will see this giant ship come into view. Not to be so and the only thing we saw was our NDL shrink quickly, so we come up to approx. 75FSW to gain a bit more NDL time and to keep looking. There was to be no joy on this dive but we at least got valuable drift/current info that might help on our next drop.Wednesday morning, FIRST DAY OF MINI SEASON!!! Partner got a bit green behind the gills after our dive yesterday so we scrapped the second dive. Today we decided we wanted to get on that wreck and then do a mini dive after that. Using the info we gained the day before our Captain Kurt took us a bit more to the SE of the wreck cords and got us prepped to drop. We dropped much quicker this time, knowing we had pooped the bed the day before with our slow prep on the surface. As we sank I happened to see something come toward me at about 55FSW and come to find out it was the rear mast of the ship!!
We were moving quick so I reached out and grabbed the mast with one arm and grabbed my buddy with the other arm. Once we were both firmly holding on the mast I secured our dive flag to the very top of it and we made our way down. It was so cool to see the wreck and we spent about 20min on her. We saw just a VERY small portion of this wreck and I think this wreck would be awesome to explore with doubles and a bit of deco. There is a METRIC TON to see and you could probably dive it 20 times in single tank rec config before you could see the majority of it.. Now for some pics of the wreck..
Now on to the minis!!! Our Captain decided to drop us on a favorite spot of his and it was on the outer most reef there in Pompano. We were at a depth of about 65FSW and we caught all that we saw but two. We got a total of five with a sixth having eggs, so we let her go. It was very cool locating them and as we went along it got easier. There just were not that many out there and we don't know if they had been gotten by earlier boats or if it was a depth thing or what. My buddy also lost our Captain's nice lobster snare while we were hanging on our safety stop. Evidently it just drifted away unseen by either of us. Doh!! Needless to say another snare has already been ordered and is enroute to Kurt. THANKS AMAZON!
Sorry this was long winded, but I hope you enjoyed..
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