Wednesday and sunday of last week I got to do the duel wrecks up in Long branch. It has always been a long walk. But we found a new way down to the wreck and with steve up from Va. and sue off from work I guess it was time to try it.
Wednesday morning At 0800 standing on the beach looking at a flat ocean and with the vis. looking pretty good from the jetty. It was time to go see an old friend ( the wreck ) As an instructor I used this wreck for student dives and have hundreds of dives on it.
Getting in the water was so easy, just walked in and put our fins on rolled over on our backs and started swimming out to the wreck. I have never had a hard time finding this wreck with the land ranges I have. But that was afew years ago. Now one of the ranges I used I couldn't see do to the trees growing. Using the one land range and my compass I dropped to the bottom and started swimming. With 10-15 foot of vis. it wasn't long before the wreck came into view. I hit the wreck in the same spot I always did, about half way down the wreck on the propeller shalf.
I was home! Just looking around I could remember everything. With sue and steve following it was down the shalf to the Adonis, the first ship to sink at this spot. This is the wooden part of the duel wreck, It's on the southern end of the wreck. Damn! It was covered in sand, Not much of the wreck was showing. The gindstones were still there, but only afew rib top were above the sand line.
We swam back up the shalf and moved to the offshore side of the rusland, (this is the ship that ran up on the Adonis's grindstones 18 years later and sank right on top of the Adonis) Out in to the sand we swam and came across the hull plateing of the rusland. The sand along the jersey shore is always moving so you never know what you are going to see. Well today the sand was some place other than here. I have never seen this much hull plateing before.
But after 80 minutes on the wreck it was time to go. Trying to save us the walk over the jetty, we swam south on the bottom. As we started into the beach, we got a real surprise, that nice flat ocean was now 2-3 footers. It was no big deal we just had to work alittle harder getting out.
This is one great beach wreck!!!