Wreck Fest

We ended up doing five dives on the Wreck Fest with Silent World. We'd been hoping to get dives on Northern Light, Spiegel Grove, Duane and maybe Queen of Nassau. But there weren't enough people to organize a boat for Queen, and on the Monday when we were meant to dive Duane the currents were too fast and we ended up diving Spiegel Grove again. So we actually dove Spiegel Grove three times and Northern Lights twice.

These were our first ever proper decompression dives in the ocean. They were also our first ocean dives with the hammerheads, scooters and two ali-80 stages each. Getting from a boat that's tossing about in surge and wind into an ocean that's pumping current with all that kit on is not easy! At least, as an initiation, our first dive onto the Spiegel was relatively easy because there was no current and the sea was flat. So we could jump in first and then be handed the stages and scooter to clip on once we were in the water. But on our second dive which was to Northern Lights, we had to put everything on and then stumble across the deck and wait at the stern to drop off close to the anchor line.

Easy jump, just my rebreather (Oliver stabilising me)

Tough jump, walking all that kit across deck and then waiting for the drop

Once in the water, it was a different story. We had plenty of gas in case of a failure, our machines behaved as if they were made for salty water, and our scooters were the best toys we've ever had while diving. Wreck diving is transformed with a scooter. You can easily see the whole wreck during a dive and if you're allowed as long as you want (we did 80 -100 minutes on each dive), then on a shallower wreck like the Spiegel, you can circle the wreck a few times at different levels as well as do penetrations and swim throughs.

Spiegel Grove bow

Spiegel Grove is a 155m US Navy ship that was purposefully sunk in 2002 to create an artificial reef. She tipped over while sinking, but was pushed the right way up by hurricane Dennis in 2005. She lies at a depth in the sand of 36m, and her top superstructure is at about 20m. On a PO2 of 1.3 with 36% helium we could dive 60min and only have 20min of deco. This is oodles of time. On our first dive there we had the best conditions. Unfortunately on our second dive when we took the camera, we had the worst visibility. Nevertheless, Kev managed to get a couple of nice pics, and we got a few odd stares from other divers as we zoomed passed from place to place on the ship with Kev holding on to my butt plate and the camera, and me scootering us to where we wanted to go ... I wish we could have got a pic of that! :)

Spiegle Grove bow

Spiegel Grove deck

Inside Spiegel Grove

Northern Light was originally a steam freighter built in 1888 for service in the Great Lakes. In 1917 it was moved to salt water and to pass it through the locks connecting the Great Lakes they had to split it in two and then reassemble it in the Atlantic. By 1920 it was becoming unprofitable as a cargo ship and the owners tried to scuttle the vessel by setting it on fire. This was unsuccessful, and a new owner converted the ship into a “barge” by removing damaged superstructures and rearranging its remains. In the 1930s however it encountered a storm and became de-attached from its tow vehicle and sunk claiming five lives.

Northern Lights has a maximum depth in the sand of 60m and the top lies at about 45m. This is a great normoxic dive to do because it's not too deep to make the deco time outweigh your bottom time looking around the ship. We also saw reef shark and bull shark on both dives to this wreck which was fantastic. Our first dive here we did just over 45min bottom time and 45min deco. On the second dive 30min bottom time and 30min deco, although I had to go back to the anchor line on the second dive and lift it up away from the wreck, so we ended up with an 80min total dive time.

On the first trip the current wasn't too bad at all, but on the second the surge was tough and the current was pumping (more than 1.5 knots). At least we had the scooters, so we opted to be dropped on the anchor line and then scooter along the line down to to the wreck. It took my scooter on pitch 7 out of 9 and gear 3, with me kicking as well to keep me on the line and get me down to the wreck! Unfortunately 4 other guys doing the dive with us had been hot dropped instead, and they never hit the wreck.

One thing we learned from these dives is that although it's very nice to have an anchor line guiding you to the wreck, it is much more comfortable to come up on a deploy buoy and go with the current than to hang on to that anchor line and be tugged about for your whole deco time. I was unsuccessful in getting the anchor to hold up above the sand when we left the second dive, so by 40min of deco hanging on to the rope our hands and arms were quite tired and sore. But this was excellent experience, and our first proper decompression diving in the ocean, so we were thrilled with the dives. Both the wrecks were also large and interesting, so we really enjoyed our time diving here.

Silent World boat and dock with Tom Mount sitting on the far left

One thing I didn't mention is that we had a celebrity diving on wreck fest ... Tom Mount! We missed the morning dive to Spiegel Grove that he participated in, but were there to snap a pic when the boat returned. Weirdly enough, as he left the boat he came over to us and said that he hoped that we would have better luck on our dive than he'd had on his. And when we asked why, he said that his primary controller (a hammerhead rev-d just like ours) had switched off during the dive! What are the chances!