Whitefish Point--Fun time had by all!

[diverbrian]

Busy person that I have been, I had to slip out and do some diving (OK, I have planned and paid for this trip since Feb., but I had to make it sound like I did something spontaneous).

So, I packed up the Mustang with two sets of doubles and an Oxygen bottle bound for Whitefish Point on Friday July 29. I met up with my dive buddies for this trip at a rest area in Clare where I gave one of them a two-way radio so that we could communicate between vehicles in route. They were coming in from Indianapois.

After dinner at the Big Buck Brewery in Gaylord, we all bought some growlers to take up with us. Then, we were going to Paradise.... Paradise, MI that is and Curley's hotel.

We spent a busy night prepping our dive gear for the dives to come on the next day.

Saturday morning arrived and we had glass for seas, comfortable air temps (so we didn't sweat to death getting into our drysuits) and all kinds of sun. First wreck on the agenda was the Samuel Mathers which is a wooden steamer in about 180 ft. of water.

There are intact masts still standing on this one. I could have spent hours in the water exploring this shipwreck, but alas, I only had about twenty minutes before I was going to owe the deco man more minutes than I felt like paying back on the line, LOL.
Also, this was a dive where can lights were apparently not allowed by the scuba gods. Mine went out in the crew's quarters and the trip leader's light failed on him as well.

I played around at the deco stop as I was clear on my oxygen about fifteen minutes more quickly than some of the other divers (Oh, and the VR-3 is *somewhat* less conservative than the Suuntos that the others were diving).

Run time: 62 minutes Depth: 158 ffw

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[diverbrian]

Dive #2 was the Panther. This old wooden ship was sunk in a collision and happens to be in about 100 ft. of water. It was also the worst PITA (Mr. Murphy type) wreck that I have dove in a long time.

After trying to drop anchor for an hour or so, we finally found a volunteer from the studio audience to actually set the hook. This same volunteer shot a lift bag and reel to signal that the hook was set and that everyone could dive.

Plenty of fish live on this wreck and one of our divers even saved one caught in a net on the wreck. BTW, both my cannister light and our dive leader's cannister light worked perfectly on this wreck after cutting on the Mathers? Not the best of luck, I would say (except they now appear to work).

Run time: 37 minutes Depth: 101 ft.

Upon leaving, we realized that the last diver up didn't get the lift bag/reel or free the hook. I would have, but my gas was too low for the deco obligation that would have occured had I bounced back down and got them and I was the first one up by a wide margin.

So, we tried to retrieve the lift bag. We finally got the bag but the line broke to the reel and the Panther decided it wanted a reel of it's very own. We finally set someone down to free the hook. We had two divers on the boat that couldn't do the actual dive due their 57 minutes of PLANNED deco on the Mather (and the fact that they were using mix tables). Ryan, our dive leader, was one of these two. He graciously volunteered to free the hook and bring up the reel if he saw it.

Well, he saw the reel but was too far into the dive at the point to go down to 100 ft. to get it. So, if anyone finds a blue DiveRite reel on the STBD side of the Panther, could you please PM me?

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[diverbrian]

Sunday: We wake to hear thunder and hear wind howling. We (the divers) think to ourselves that this is not particularly a good thing. We had the J.M. Obsourne and the Vienna on the schedule, but the long and short of it is that 4-6 footers are NOT fun or safe, so we got blown out (You should have seen the hail that hit us too).


This is not all bad. One of our group brought his sister along and another brought his wife. All four of them are in route to Indy as we speak. Anyways the ladies consist of a non-diver and strictly warm-water type divemaster respectively. They scouted out shore activities for us. We went through the Whitefish Point Shipwreck Muesem and walked out the beach to note the white caps still coming in.

We stopped in St. Ignace to eat and noticed a real live 1925 schooner in port. We watched them push off and give their seamanship lessons to a bunch of civilians. I would have loved to have sailed around the Straits for awhile with them, but none of us really had three hours to burn on the way home.

Sunday was fun for all of us as we could give the ladies with us an idea of why we do this.

All in all, this was a fun trip and while it didn't go perfectly, great company made it more than worthwhile....

Oh, and about that dive reel?.......

 

[Jchoby]

Samuel Mathers which is a wooden steamer in about 180 ft. of water.

There are intact masts still standing on this one. I could have spent hours in the water exploring this shipwreck, but alas, I only had about twenty minutes before I was going to owe the deco man more minutes than I felt like paying back on the line, LOL.
Also, this was a dive where can lights were apparently not allowed by the scuba gods. Mine went out in the crew's quarters and the trip leader's light failed on him as well.

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Any pics to post????

 

[netmage]

What was bottom times on those wreck... That VR3 is looking appealing...

 

[diverbrian]

What was bottom times on those wreck... That VR3 is looking appealing...

I had about twenty minutes on both wrecks as far actual bottom time with an hour and a half surface interval. That was with a 20/15 bottom mix and pure O2 for deco.

I am waiting on my buddies for photos as my camera never wet. I didn't want to fool with my camera at the expected depth of 160 ft. and I had another job on the Panther. My buddies had full video rigs and are now in the process of getting their photos together.