|
Home
of the Runawaylobster
|
|
Queen of Nassau (formerly known as
Islamorada Wreck) 225fsw. There is a silver lining in every cloud, and this dive was it. My plans for this weekend had been hashed over, and rehashed and then dashed with cancellations etc: etc:. Then up popped the opportunity to go back to dive this awesome shipwreck. I didn't hesitate. I dived this wreck back in February and had only seen her once before. Back in February the weather was snotty and the water was filled with that sea snot too. The wreck had been very dark and gloomy and had seemed almost like a night dive. As I was driving down to Islamorada I looked out over the ocean. From the 18 mile stretch (the part of US1 between Florida City and Key largo) if you look you can see card sound bridge in the distance. Today I looked and saw the bridge combined with a beautiful sunrise and the ocean looked just like a mirror. My anticipation level was going off the scale. I
was one of the first to arrive, then gradually the others began to trickle
in one by one. All told we had a group of 6 divers. With the
boat loaded we set off for the wreck. It's a big boat and we had the
luxury of plenty of space to comfortably spread out (believe me, tech
divers can manage ALOT of spreading out). Again I was stunned
by the incredible conditions.. the sea was STILL like a mirror even as far out
as the wreck. I was also interested to note that we could
still see the Keys on the skyline today, when back in February we might as well
have been 40 miles offshore with no land in sight due to the weather. I was a little disappointed as we reached the wreck and the visibility dropped down to about 40ft or so. This apparently is very usual for this wreck and it is VERY silty there. The conditions were still much better than my last dive and I eagerly set about exploring the wreck. This time I was gratified to get a much better look. I swam towards the bow, over the top of the ship, this part reminded me of a sailboat. Some of the superstructure is still intact, and you can see all kinds of window hatches peeking down to the lower decks. In some areas the ocean has removed all but the metal framework. You can swim in and out of all this framing but it is very hard not to poof up the silt, even using the utmost care it's almost mission impossible. I also saw a really big jewfish on the wreck, and I wondered if it was the same guy I had seen on the previous dive. I had not gone very far when Joe (thank you :-)... again ) flagged me down and offered to loan me his scooter for a spin around the wreck.... Yippee... I clipped it on and off I went it was so much fun, and as I quickly cleared the silt cloud I could see the wreck so much better and also I now had the opportunity to check out the debris field in the neighborhood as well :-)... I did two complete laps around the wreck but I do have to confess now I had the scooter to play with I did get a bit distracted from the wreck and didn't give it as much attention as it deserves. I buzzed over the fishing nets that drape parts of the wreck and around the stern, and then made my way back up the port side of the wreck to visit the bow. I was struck by it's interesting sort of ram shape. By this time I was feeling a bit guilty so I returned the scooter to it's owner and continued exploring the wreck by frog kick alone. It is amazing how different the perspective of the wreck can be when swimming it. Previously, I had not really been able to get a feel for the wreck because of the low vis and being only able to see a little part of it at a time, the scooter ride changed all that. By this time we were approaching our BT and my buddy signaled to start heading back to the line. I signaled the other buddy teams that we were leaving, and off we went. We had planned a 25 min BT, a bit shorter than the scooter guys, so we headed up the line while they planned to unhook from the wreck later as they left.
As
we cleared the wreck I looked up and I could see the visibility increasing as we
returned back to the clear water we had experienced
earlier. It is very strange why this wreck is this way,
it definitely has a dark mysterious gloomy personality. At least today you could see the white colour of the silty water because it was so
sunny. My first stop was at 120, which gave me a chance to
quickly glance around and look back at the wreck which had now almost
disappeared. I still haven't lost my enjoyment of
relaxing and hanging out on deco. After a while the
scooter boys caught up with our team as our stops became longer, and we hung out
together. I was pretty glad about this because for the very
first time I actually saw a Bullshark (usually someone tells me there was
one behind me). He or she cruised past us, coming from
significantly below us but fortunately made only one pass and disappeared again
:-). I was wondering what Mike was doing pointing his
fingers up behind his head, later I found out it meant BULL shark
:-). We spent the rest of the deco playing
around, I watched the scooter guys playing trains and bugging each
other. Not to mention someone who was hiding behind me
and squeaking every time I breathed... I even switched to my backup
reg to see if the noise stopped. Eventually I turned around and
figured it out, I saw three people completely cracking
up. Between us we were laughing so hard we nearly choked
ourselves. This is a new skill, buoyancy control while
surpressing hysterical laughter. We also had candy kindly
passed out for deco but it didn't taste quite as good in salt water as it had
when I tried it on a cave dive :-). |