Diving the wreck of the Chikuzen and life lessons...

We must be big into learning lessons lately, as we had some more on our plate...Always wonder if I should write this stuff or not, or if I should stick to the tourist brochure where we are perfect and everything is wonderful??? I guess it is all part of life though! nope, we are not perfect. Experienced, but there are still curve balls out there.
Did you think I had run away last night? nope, we might have had one of the most stressful learning experiences we have ever had on charter yesterday and I think I might have had a vodka or two last night! I will tell that story later, but we will start back with a few cute pictures that I snagged off someone's camera while they were at the Baths...You don't think that I would ever be able to take pictures from this angle do you? That would entail going ashore!











These guests really wanted to dive the Chikuzen. The weather forecast was iffy this week and we told them that we did not think it would happen, but if we got up one morning and it looked flat enough, we would try and take a run out there.
We were anchored at Mountain Point and had planned on diving the dogs before going to the Chikuzen. BAZZA (note I capitalized his name!) came down to me in the AM while I was flipping pancakes til they went out of style and said, "it looks pretty good, I am sure it will be marginal, but maybe we should give it a try! Great so off we went, seas were probably 3-5 feet, doable for experienced divers and boat crew!
I had told them about the Goliath Grouper that you have the best chance of seeing when you just get in, so there was another photographer who was following me in and a few more. Simeon was taking in the less experienced ones...
We pulled up to the ball, hooked onto it and I jumped in the water, reached up to grab my camera from Bazza and COULD NOT...I was washed away immediately to the front of the boat where the ball was. Well, I said immediately, but i attempted to swim back to the back for a minute. At the ball, I said to Simeon, "there is a ton of current, I have to go down and check it out" meaning in my mind
1) Don't let anyone else in the water until I come back
2) I knew that no one would believe that I would go anywhere without my camera! So Bazza should know there was a problem.

That apparently meant in Simeon's mind, "she is fine and going down" which he relayed to Bazza and he read it as "ok, she is going down to spot the wreck, then come back up and get her camera and point to everyone the direction to go"
Meanwhile, as I am pulling myself hand over hand down the mooring line, imagine my surprise when I found the end of the line attached to nothing in my hands! I am by this time going for a great tow. I quickly come to the surface, while on one side of the Boat B is throwing divers in the water, quick, quick, quick...Now there is 3 divers in the water, plus me, and at least I am hanging onto the mooring ball and line. I wave it madly in the air...I attempt to inflate my safety sausage (which failed miserably) and them I watched the throw the other end of the mooring ball over the boat. Gulp. About this time I am yelling at the boat trying to figure out what in the world is going on and why divers were in the water (not that they could hear me, it was getting smaller by the minute, and there were divers spread out between me and them!)
It seemed to take forever to see the boat turn around and find the divers one by one. I was just happily floating around on my mooring ball.. which you can see here as they pulled it up on the boat so it did not foul our props and we could see the condition.

There is supposed to be three shackles and pins at the bottom of the mooring lines. They are all in pretty rough shape. The last few times there has only been one strand left of the three. Bazza has griped for years as they use stainless steel and it causes something called crevice corrosion. It is the wrong material. This pin was being held on by just a couple millimeters still because of this. And it snapped. Now this is not the first time that this has happened with dive balls, and the Dive Operators mostly the first thing they do is go down to attach another line to the bottom. Don't think this is the first time that this has happened to a dive boat here!
This is what the corrosion looks like on the pin...

Believe me the story does not end there. It goes on...some of the back end of the story is that, as usual, even with 4 crew members, communication was crap here. Bazza says that he knew as soon as I went in the water that the mooring ball line had snapped, as I was not going the right way for surface currents (how does he know this stuff??) Plus he also could see all his down lines and float lines getting all tangled up under the boat in the rudder and props. He quickly sent Simeon up to check the ball, and says his first mistake was trusting Simeon for a minute and a half that the mooring was actually fine, when he knew immediately it could not be.
Simeon had to quickly get on gear and go after the two who were at 35 feet and bring them back, my other photographer was on the surface.. Then Bazza could not move the boat that quickly, as he had to tie up and unwind the line around the bottom of the boat as best he could before moving. We could not have put down the dinghy, the seas were too big, although we could have and would have cut it down if it would have gotten to that point and threw over a life raft. but it did not get to the point.
Everyone was now safely on board and we anchored just off the Chikuzen (remember this sentence for later) and went for our dive. It was fine under water!

The wreck coming into view...



John is trying to read the instruction manual on how to use his new housing underwater I believe!

The photographer and I took pictures of each other...as we are usually the ones taking the pictures!

Inside the wreck..

The wonderful large Goliath Grouper swam right by me! Most of our divers saw him today...

Jennifer peaking in the hold...

And a lot of frigging big barracuda!!



I want to point out that for the first time in history Simeon does not have a wetsuit on!!

Janice gazing off into the distance (yes we saw Cobia and Turtles!)

Pretty little fish looking for food scraps...

Looking up at one of the masts. Notice the chain under there? Remember that picture as well as there will be a story there afterwards...

HOrse Eyed Jacks...

All the schools of fish at the stern...

My beautiful turtle!



We did two dives on there, and they were both wonderful, although the sea conditions kept picking up...A couple of our girls decided head down not looking at the seas was the best place to be! Catherine and Lynn looked like bookends!



Now we get to the next episode of the story..This day just does not end! We anchored well off the wreck, but by a fluke, if you remember the pic above of the anchor chain under the mast, yep, it has hooked under the mast, and the boat was surging too much for us to safely get enough slack to manually get it under. We had a clear shot getting it out if we went to port, had some slack and caught the waves the right way to bounce it under. Seemed like a plan. Yeah right. Did not work. We decided then to send down a diver to unshackle the anchor, put float bags on the anchor and we would just pull up the chain. Down Simeon went tools and lift bags in hand. And that is what happened, anchor was taken off and eventually lifted up with the bags, however that is jumping ahead in the story!

With us trying to get it out we had actually made it worse and we now had chain wrapped around two masts, in figure 8's with about 4 turns in it... We were not going anywhere unless the Chikuzen was coming with us!
It was now a two person job, Janice is giving Brent encouragement as he hides his farmers tan under a wet suit and prepares to be commercial diver as well...

The guests thought it was a perfect time to nap...

And Bazza, well he just handled it like Bazza does, with our limited help. The boys came up and we thought they were finally done, but no, one more wrap, and they needed more air! Down again. They were not touching anything but the end of the chain and throwing it over where they had to so there fingers were clear of the danger... About this time while filling tanks on board an O ring burst which just about capped it off... Finally we were free.

Things we did wrong, right and after thoughts? Well that will have to wait until next entry I believe, this has already taken long enough! We had many options for getting the anchor, we could have dumped it from the boat end, but that idea did not thrill us. We were reminded once again how you have to be prepared for the one in a million accident, that you stop bothering to prepare for cuz it so seldom happens..We should have anchored in the first place, as we knew what shape that mooring was in....we always have to send someone in to check out the conditions and balls first (although, since the shackle broke so quickly, we would not have had time to get a line on the bottom first, but at least I would have been the only one in the water. I know there is more. But, everyone was back safely, we had a great two dives so all does end well.
It was time to sail in to Marina Cay for the group could go to Michael Beans for dinner. Then we decided to catch Tuna, after Tuna, after Tuna...

The vegetarian in our group thought this was a horrible site, but it did taste good!

Beans second last show, and the guests all enjoyed it very muchly...

I think Janice had her share of rum shots as well!!!

She had brought down a present for me, which is a nightgown in towel material! How wonderful!! BUT she wears a size small and I wear big girls!



The guests loved the Chikuzen, the crew wished we would have defaulted and dove the Dogs!