No more diving on the Thunderbolt by Dive Charters?

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gamon

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Location
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I've trying to get this wreck off my bucket list for years. I'm headed to the Keys for my every 3 month or so dive trip.

Now I can't even find a charter boat to take me there because the mooring has been off the wreck for several months now, and there's apparently no plans to restore it.

Does anyone have a clue if there's a charter boat that will do a hot drop on this wreck and also does anyone know if there are any plans to put the mooring ball back on it?

Thanks
 
Oh. That is sad. I hope it can be restored. I have fond memories of it.
 
Rent your own boat and go to the site yourself. It's something few people think of doing. You can even use ScubaBoard to get a group of local divers together. You'll want someone experienced to play captain. If you've never anchored into a wreck, advertise for a NJ or NC wreck diver with experience in that sort of thing. It could be an adventure.
 
The way mooring balls are repaired here you will be waiting forever
 
Rent your own boat and go to the site yourself. It's something few people think of doing. You can even use ScubaBoard to get a group of local divers together. You'll want someone experienced to play captain. If you've never anchored into a wreck, advertise for a NJ or NC wreck diver with experience in that sort of thing. It could be an adventure.

My system as an example, we do it all the time on my boat in near-zero viz on deep wrecks. Find the wreck on sonar, get a good bead on it with a few passes. Have a shot line* prepared and when passing over the wreck drop the shot on the wreck. As soon as the shot line hits bottom, one diver goes down and ties the bottom of the shot line into the wreck using a couple lengths of sisal rope. Lead diver then sends up a tennis ball or other buoyant object to indicate a successful tie in.

We then generally backroll all divers in the water near the shot line then the boat stands off, divers descend on the shotline (which is marked in 10' intervals). When divers resurface they are recovered using a long tag line on the stern of the boat. When done, we tie the shot line to a stern cleat and give a good yank with the motors, the sisal rope breaks off and the shot line is free. Make sure to use sisal and not nylon so it will both break as well as being non-polluting since sisal is natural fiber and will decompose quickly. We also use a second polyform buoy on an anchor ring to run up the shot line back to the surface as it sucks to pull that kind of weight up by hand from 100+ feet.

* For a shot line, we use a 25 kilo kettleball hooked up to 10' of chain and 200' of 2-strand nylon anchor line. Top of the shot line goes to a marine pulley and pulley is secured to a #3 polyform mooring ball. The other end of the shot line through the pulley is a 5 pound platter weight. The 5 pounder hangs down and tensions the rope on the pulley to keep it more vertical than if just tied on the ball. We also have a 2 liter soda bottle tied to the polyform with 10' of sinking line that functions as a current indicator.

We have in the past used a wreck anchor instead of a polyform but I found that it sank to the bottom noticeably slower than the kettlebell (which hits 150' in 10 seconds) and also the wreck anchor was damaging the wrecks.
 
As soon as the shot line hits bottom, one diver goes down and ties the bottom of the shot line into the wreck using a couple lengths of sisal rope. Lead diver then sends up a tennis ball or other buoyant object to indicate a successful tie in.

We used to do a similar scenario when diving some of the deep wrecks with the tech group I dived with. The first two divers down were on rebreathers so had time to sort out a mooring line from the shot line.

The weight was recovered using a lift bag attached and sent to the surface and this was also an indicator that the line was attached to the wreck.
 
I chatted with the head of the buoy team last night. They are contract divers to NOAA, and have to follow NOAA rules. That means they are barely getting in the water post covid. Many NOAA workers are still working remotely. They will take over buoys on the T-bolt, but I wouldn’t expect anything this year or the first half of next year…
 
Thanks for the information. I have dived off my own boat in NY many times on local wrecks using sonar and the Navionics App, and got pretty good at it by the end of the third and last summer, but the idea of renting a boat in the Keys and to transport dive gear and do a hot drop in heavy current is not something I'm looking to do at this time.

I'll just wait it out.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/peregrine/
https://xf2.scubaboard.com/community/forums/cave-diving.45/

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