Today I'll talk about my dives on the wreck of the Oregon, a passenger ship that sunk in 1886 about 22 miles southeast of Fire Island. You can read all about it here. For such an old wreck, there are still several cool things to see on it. My reason for wanting to go was because I wanted to see the steering quadrant, a huge cool wheel that I had seen in pictures from when some of my dive buddies went last year. Even though I am still pretty new to northeast diving, and shouldn't really be attempting anything too ambitious, I was hoping to get to the steering quadrant by following someone else's line. Unfortunately that wasn't meant to be since when we got there, another boat had tied on to the usual mooring, and we had to tie on in a place that was too far from the steering quadrant. I dove with 28% nitrox hoping that would increase my bottom time by a bit, but diving wet it was really the cold for me that was a limiting factor. My computer registered 48 degrees F. Somehow though, I used all the bottom time allotted to me on both dives (15 minutes, I think). I could have rented a drysuit but I really didn't expect it to be that cold! And yeah I didn't like the last experience I had with a rental drysuit. But ohmygosh, 48 degrees HURTS. I was swimming around paddling my feet just to keep them from going numb, and my hands were painful and tingling as we reached the end of our bottom time. On the second dive the cold was already unbearable at 50 feet, and that was only halfway down!
I must add a special thank you here to Rich, one of the newest Sea Gypsies, for lending me a spare mask when I realized I forgot mine. (It's not in my house either...really hope I just left it at the aquarium.)
Still, it was a nice dive, and a good experience for me. I set a new personal depth record -- 116 feet, and I could have gone deeper. Saw lots of starfish, of all different sizes, and a fish that looked like it had antlers, which my buddy Dr Mike said was a hake. I was not really looking forward to getting in the water for a 2nd dive, but the 2nd turned out to be better than the first, because I swam around and made the best of it. There was one other diver in a wetsuit, but it was a 2-piece and probably warmer than my full suit. Everyone else dove dry. I'm torn on the drysuit issue. I know I would be much more comfortable diving locally in a drysuit, and that they last a long time. But the diving around here is so far kind of one-note to me. You see pretty much the same animals everywhere, and the wrecks often don't look like much but heaps of rubble. Still, I get a kick out of diving in my own "backyard." I could go on a dive trip to somewhere warm and beautiful for the price of a drysuit. I'm looking into getting one for a discount, on Ebay or from a local shop.
The boat we went on was the Garloo, which I went on once before last year when I did the USS San Diego wreck. Again we arrived night before and slept on the boat, since it departs at 6 am. It has private cabins, which is nice, but it smells not so very nice. Someone had told me the smell was fixed, but it smelled exactly the same to me -- kind of like moldy wood, bad enough that I breathed through my mouth most of the time. I guess it used to be even worse. It was also extremely hot inside, but I slept better than I expected to. The power went out several times and toward the end the water crapped out too. There are a lot of things I take for granted on dive boats that this one didn't have -- like a hose or a cooler of drinking water. We also never got a boat orientation or a dive briefing from the crew. I guess most people didn't need it, but it was strange not to have that. The worst thing though was the exponentially increasing contingent of biting black flies we shared the boat with. They seemed to be attracted to our wet gear, and bug spray didn't help much.
Last year at an Oceanblue Divers party I won a silent auction prize for another trip to the San Diego on this boat. I want to do it, but I must admit I am not a huge fan of this boat! Next time I will bring perfume or something to combat the smell. Not sure what can be done about the flies though.
