It was almost three years ago that I first put up a
blog entry about the sinking of the Island Seal. It had gone down near Brandywine Bay and there was a few containers floating around for a bit.
This has been in Fish Bay sinking deeper and deeper. Since I looked out my front hatch at it all the time, I kind of kept a photographic journal of the wreck. It was going to be towed out and sunk off the south drop as a fish attraction device, and then we had permission to sink it in WRECK Alley off Cooper Island, which was great news.
One of the things that struck me when looking back at the pictures of when it first sunk was how much it has changed, and you do not notice it in the day to day view. Compare the picture of when it first sank...

and this summer. Quite a difference hey!

WHen it was still in Fish Bay this summer I jumped in the water to take some pictures of it before it was moved....

Then I kind of watched to see when it might get towed away, and soon enough Husky was on the job with lift bags refloating it and pumping it full of air to move...

We were coming around the corner of Beef Island the other day when we saw it in tow...

She slowly (boy that would be a boring job towing boats like this upside down...It took HOURS for them to get across the channel!

And then it subsequently took awhile for them to get the air out of the ship, position it where it was going to be sunk and we watched it slowly slowly start to sink and once it starts to go! Boom!

It was positioned perfectly right beside the Beatta, as we took the opportunity to jump in the water after it went down to see what it looked like. These pictures have a lot of noise in them that I have not bothered to filter out, although I may on a couple as the lift bags hanging off the boat gave me some neat picture perspectives! Since we were in the water maybe half an hour after she went down, the sand was still pretty stirred up...

Lots of air coming out of it still....

The wreck will make a great compliment when you are diving the Beatta. The Seal is right next to it, and it is lying multi level from about 70 feet up to about 30-40, with an amazing wide open swim through at the bottom that I can see attracting lots of inhabitants. There was already a barracuda and a big grey snapper scoping out there new houses!!

I absolutely loved the lift bags on it. It looked surreal, like hot air balloons up around the wreck. Husky was coming back in the morning to retrieve all their lift bags. Surprising to us, there were quite a few that had popped going down, and they were obviously all new bags...

And that is my pictorial of the sinking and making of a brand new wreck dive for us here in the BVI over the last few years! I am sure we are the wreck capital of the Caribbean now.