Jerry’s Dive Stories

Mystery Dive and the Stone Schooner

 Two years ago Gary Gentile and myself hired a commercial fishing boat to take us to "hang's" that the captain swore were shipwrecks. We spent an entire day going to different sites, all off Chatham, I marked every one on my GPS. We then went out and dove the ones within 10 miles of the coast. Every single one was just a pile of rocks. Very disappointing. 

One object we marked was 25 miles off shore, east of Chatham, right at the edge of the shipping lane a few miles from the Regal Sword. The object I marked was in 110 feet of water and it's highest point was at a depth of 87 feet. The captain swore to me that this was a shipwreck. 

Over two years it's taken me to get out to this site. I never wanted to take my boat, with the one engine and all. Yesterday we headed out on Chris's boat. Yes, it has two engines. The winds were out of the northeast at 10 and the seas were running about 5 feet. 

Sadly, about 20 miles out we ran over a 500 pound ocean sunfish, a Mola Mola, it never had a change, we caught it with both engines.

Anyway, I took control of the helm and located the object within 30 minutes. We dropped the hook three times and each time the hook slipped off. We then set up a hook not attached to the boat and threw it into the water with a ball tied to the end. It was at this point that we realized just how hard the current was running this far off shore. The current pulled the ball underwater, it also pulled the 20 pound grapnel and 15 foot of 5/8 chain off the site.

We pulled up the hook and replaced it with a sand anchor. 

Dave Wood and I suit up and enter the water 50 ft. up current of the ball. In two seconds I'm at the ball, Dave misses it entirely. I can't believe the force of the water. I can only manage to pull myself down the line hand over hand, six inches at a time. I stop at 50 feet to rest, the reg is freeflowing in my mouth from the force of the water pressure hitting the purge. I reposition myself on the line pinning it between my inner arm and chest and continue down. I'm looking forward and a massive black object begins to form in front of me. My heart rate, already nearing the red line goes up even more as I anticipate the discovery of a virgin wreck.

Slowly the object becomes clear in the nearly 50 foot vis. It's a group of massive rocks. Surrounding this underwater oasis are more cod fish than I've ever seen. I count three massive lobsters in my field of vision. I spy some of the biggest flounder I've ever seen. Dave tells me later the rocks were covered with nudibranchs. ( I never look for those things, they give me a tummy ache when I eat them) On the north side of the rocks is a massive scallop dredge and a huge lobster trap, both captured by the giant rocks. I still think it was a fantastic dive even if we didn't discover a new wreck, just getting to the bottom in that kind of current was reward enough. Seeing all those cod fish, diving that far offshore with awesome vis.................. I wouldn't want to spend a Sunday any other way.

We did a wooden schooner for our second dive, Dave taking these pictures. We recovered some nice artifacts.

On another note, another friend was out sidescanning and "something" came along and "ate" the towfish. His towfish is 4 feet long. Whatever took it, did it in one bite. 

Wed, I'm going out there and dive the wreck he discovered just before the towfish was eaten. It was probably just a goose fish. I'm sure that was all it was. What else could it be?

Come dive with us if you dare.

~j~

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