The reason I love the sea I cannot explain — it’s physical. When you dive you begin to feel like an angel. It’s a liberation of your weight.~ Jacques-Yves Cousteau Today we kicked off the 1st annual Wreck Valley Divers Club dive. It was an early wake up call and I had trouble getting in gear so early in the morning. After a lot of wondering what I was doing up so early I hit the road. I pulled into the lot at around 0620 to find a good representation of the Wreck Valley crew. Frnak was there and was our illustrious leader for the trip. There was also Kelly, Shelly, RJP, Francousteau, Mike, Paule, and Nick among others. Gear on board and we were off.
Today’s destination was the Tolten, a freighter originally the Danish ship Lotta. It was taken over and renamed by the Chilean government after Denmark fell to “zee Germans” LOL. The German U-boat U-404 sank the ship early during WWII. It was wire dragged after it sunk to reduce its menace to shipping.
It took us no time at all to reach the site, as the Gypsy is pretty fast. There was a fishing boat there when we got there but I guess they weren’t too enthused and soon after our arrival it left. Seven or eight minutes later we were tied in and Lake Atlantic was open. Mike and myself took our time getting ready, as there were a lot of divers on the boat but soon headed out for our first dive.
The viz to the thermo cline was pretty amazing. Once on the top of the wreck though you were lucky to get 10 to 15 ft viz. Mike tied his reel in and we were off. The whole Jersey thing is still relatively new to me so it really is hard for me to make out what it is I’m looking at. Much of the wreck is overgrown with anemones and hydroids. We were tied in close to the boilers and it’s probably the biggest structure on the wreck. A lot of the wreck is mostly flattened out with lots of hiding places for fish and lobsters. Mike and I looked around for a while and I was able to put my first bug in the catch bag a short no less but hey it was my first time. After a little more looking around it was time to start heading up for our surface interval.
Once on board we were treated to some great sandwiches courtesy of the Gypsy Blood. We were able to admire some nice artifacts as well. Nick pulled up a porthole and what appears to be a brass vent cap of some sort. After what appeared like an eternity Frnak came up to join us. He wouldn’t say how much deco time he did though. LOL
Second dive was much of the same. Again I bagged a short but it was great fun and practice. After everyone was on board from their second dive, Frank had a raffle. T-shirts were won and a free day of diving was won by yours truly.
We couldn’t have asked for a better day.
Thanks again Frank for putting this together.
Jay
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