mos11b1p
Registered
Ok I am coming to believe the Whiskey Wreck off Orange Beach in Gulf Shores, AL is something along the equivalent lines of the "Snipe" of Snipe hunting. (For those of you who do NOT know what Snipe hunting is it's something you send a kid out to do with a pillow case and a flashlight at deer camp.) They keep telling me it's out there, but I don't think I believe 'em anymore. The first time I dove for it was with a highly trained Search and Recovery diver from Chicago. At the risk of sounding crude, he said to me "I've been trained to find a dead baby in zero vis. But I'll be damned if we could find a 100 foot long wreck 150 yards off shore with these simple instructions!"
The second time I dove for it was a year later, this past Saturday night with cmufieldhockey. Cmufieldhockey claims to have been on the Whiskey Wreck TWICE with suprbugman (whom, I'm told, is an outstanding Whiskey Wreck guide. Strictly hearsay though.) Again, this stupid wreck eluded me!
Our trip started out with a delicious dinner at the Pensacola Ale House with the entire staff and friends of Andrews Institute. Andrews provides athletic trainers to the highschools of Pensacola. It was a night of lots "twenty-something college grads screaming at flat screen TVs featuring their football-game-of-choice and telling athletic injury war stories." (***can I please get my ankle spat?*** No, cant do it... all out of tape... backordered.) It was a birthday party of cmufieldhockey's coworker and something we opted to do at the last minute... pushing our dive a number of hours further into the night. But that's ok. The later the night, the darker the sky and the brighter our HID
The gang from Andrews seemed a bit blown away when we said our goodbyes and told them we were about to go scuba diving in the middle of the night with spearguns. (Just how DO you explain the motivation to "normal" people, anyway? Can't be done.
We drove over to Bahama Bob's parking lot and not a soul was around. NOBODY. An entire parking lot, an entire beach, and an entire ocean to ourselves. Gearing up in the freezing cold of night, cmufieldhockey in her drysuit and me in 12 mil worth of layered wetsuit, our compass, bug bag, HID lights, a couple of lil JBL spearguns and a hoop-style stainless steel fish stringer... we waddled down to the beach. Deciding the likelihood of getting run over by a boat was slim at almost 1 o'clock in the morning, we opted to "bend the rules" and plant the dive flag firmly in the sand to mark our entry point.
Now everything I've been told to do adds up to: "Line up with the east side of Bahama Bob's and swim out due South for about 150 yards and you should find the wreck in 12-15 feet of water. A north wind made an almost NO SURF night and we easily waded in, dawned fins, dropped below and began our journey, cmufieldhockey on the compass and her lil mini speargun in tote clipped to her D ring. My lil mini speargun "Locked-n-loaded" to bring home a stringer full of flounder. (Cmufieldhockey and myself both got our Alabama spearfishing licenses on line the night before. No limit on Alabama flounder as long as they're 12 inches, but an aggregate catch of 20 fish permitted in a single event means between the two of us, we're good to go to bring home 40 flounder tonight!! Lol It's gonna be a full stringer!)
The first ten minutes of the dive was ZERO vis...a complete "silt-out." I could not read my dive computer. Cmufieldhockey pressed the compass to the glass of her mask. We joined elbows and pushed on through the murk due South. Now I could go ON and ON in this narrative, but let me just get to the summary:
The best the vis got was two feet. Most of the time 18inches or less. One hundred and twenty one minutes of bottom time logged on the computer on single aluminum 80's and we NEVER found the wreck. LoL We saw a single founder the size of cmufieldhockey's hand. (Those of you who know her have some idea just how SMALL this flounder was.) We saw a single stingray the size of MY hand. We saw a blowfish, and two little one-inch long fluorescent squid. (Do you think it bothers their eyes when you put a 15watt HID light and a 10watt HID light on one of those lil squid at the same time??)
We exited the water at 3 o'clock in the morning!!! Still nobody around which made for strippin' down and dryin off a lil little less risque. Home by 4am. The following afternoon (Sunday) we enjoyed a magnificent freshly caught 10 pound redfish. Cooked him up on cmufieldhockey's charcoal grill. Cmufieldhockey made a yummy seasoned potato side dish to go with him. (The redfish is completely unrelated to this trip report. I must say, however, he was fresh and I offer no explanation for the apparent hole in his side I noticed while filleting him.)
The second time I dove for it was a year later, this past Saturday night with cmufieldhockey. Cmufieldhockey claims to have been on the Whiskey Wreck TWICE with suprbugman (whom, I'm told, is an outstanding Whiskey Wreck guide. Strictly hearsay though.) Again, this stupid wreck eluded me!
Our trip started out with a delicious dinner at the Pensacola Ale House with the entire staff and friends of Andrews Institute. Andrews provides athletic trainers to the highschools of Pensacola. It was a night of lots "twenty-something college grads screaming at flat screen TVs featuring their football-game-of-choice and telling athletic injury war stories." (***can I please get my ankle spat?*** No, cant do it... all out of tape... backordered.) It was a birthday party of cmufieldhockey's coworker and something we opted to do at the last minute... pushing our dive a number of hours further into the night. But that's ok. The later the night, the darker the sky and the brighter our HID
The gang from Andrews seemed a bit blown away when we said our goodbyes and told them we were about to go scuba diving in the middle of the night with spearguns. (Just how DO you explain the motivation to "normal" people, anyway? Can't be done. We drove over to Bahama Bob's parking lot and not a soul was around. NOBODY. An entire parking lot, an entire beach, and an entire ocean to ourselves. Gearing up in the freezing cold of night, cmufieldhockey in her drysuit and me in 12 mil worth of layered wetsuit, our compass, bug bag, HID lights, a couple of lil JBL spearguns and a hoop-style stainless steel fish stringer... we waddled down to the beach. Deciding the likelihood of getting run over by a boat was slim at almost 1 o'clock in the morning, we opted to "bend the rules" and plant the dive flag firmly in the sand to mark our entry point.
Now everything I've been told to do adds up to: "Line up with the east side of Bahama Bob's and swim out due South for about 150 yards and you should find the wreck in 12-15 feet of water. A north wind made an almost NO SURF night and we easily waded in, dawned fins, dropped below and began our journey, cmufieldhockey on the compass and her lil mini speargun in tote clipped to her D ring. My lil mini speargun "Locked-n-loaded" to bring home a stringer full of flounder. (Cmufieldhockey and myself both got our Alabama spearfishing licenses on line the night before. No limit on Alabama flounder as long as they're 12 inches, but an aggregate catch of 20 fish permitted in a single event means between the two of us, we're good to go to bring home 40 flounder tonight!! Lol It's gonna be a full stringer!)
The first ten minutes of the dive was ZERO vis...a complete "silt-out." I could not read my dive computer. Cmufieldhockey pressed the compass to the glass of her mask. We joined elbows and pushed on through the murk due South. Now I could go ON and ON in this narrative, but let me just get to the summary:
The best the vis got was two feet. Most of the time 18inches or less. One hundred and twenty one minutes of bottom time logged on the computer on single aluminum 80's and we NEVER found the wreck. LoL We saw a single founder the size of cmufieldhockey's hand. (Those of you who know her have some idea just how SMALL this flounder was.) We saw a single stingray the size of MY hand. We saw a blowfish, and two little one-inch long fluorescent squid. (Do you think it bothers their eyes when you put a 15watt HID light and a 10watt HID light on one of those lil squid at the same time??)
We exited the water at 3 o'clock in the morning!!! Still nobody around which made for strippin' down and dryin off a lil little less risque.
Home by 4am. The following afternoon (Sunday) we enjoyed a magnificent freshly caught 10 pound redfish. Cooked him up on cmufieldhockey's charcoal grill. Cmufieldhockey made a yummy seasoned potato side dish to go with him. (The redfish is completely unrelated to this trip report. I must say, however, he was fresh and I offer no explanation for the apparent hole in his side I noticed while filleting him.)
