I started the weekend a little early by taking a half day on Friday to crew. We were scheduled to dive Graves Light and the City of Salisbury wreck with a good group of divers from Maine that chartered the boat. The weather was perfect and I believe this was the first charter that I’ve worked this season that we had a majority of people in wetsuits. **Brr** Since I’m a “warm water wimp” I stuck to my drysuit.
Capt. Chris was running the boat with me as crew and Jim on as a passenger for a “fun dive.” Jim ended up doing one dive at Graves with a newer diver and grabbed a three or four bugs. There were numerous seals in the water. One group had a brief seal encounter but the rest of them remained elusive. The guys reported about 15ft of visibility
We ended up anchoring up at the City of Salisbury for our second dive. I dove with the newer diver and had a nice relaxing dive. I managed to grab 3 bugs myself. The visibility was around 20-25ft with 48f degrees at depth and ~55f water surface temp. Tons of flounder and lobsters, large schools of pollack. Summer is definitely here.
On Saturday I went out with my friend’s at Cape Ann Charters (Daybreaker) for a special exploration trip to Jeffrey’s Ledge. It was a long boat ride but the sea conditions were like glass. We anchored up in approximately 115ft of water and dropped a weighted shot line on a “ledge” that looked “interested.” Not too much to report but the landscape was very interesting. The vertical visibility was FANTASTIC, at least 50-60ft+. I could see everyone else as they were coming back up the shotline. The dive itself was like a field / moonscape of Red cushion starfish… Definitely need to explore here more and find some ledges, drop offs.. I didn’t take any good photos or video so I’m attaching a picture that Marissa took to give you an idea..On the way back in from Jeffrey’s Ledge we were greeted with numerous whale sighting. I think they were finbacks?
On the way back in we stopped at Halfway Rock for our second dive. Me and my friend Eric dove together and grabbed a couple bugs. The visibility was approximately 25ft. It was a really nice dive with more northern red anemones than I can count.. We did a 70 minute dive. Max depth was ~100ft and water temperature was around 48f.
On Sunday I was out with the Daybreaker again with my friends John, Ben and Gilly. We were scheduled to dive the Nina T. Me and Marissa were tasked with setting the mooring which is nice because I’ve been trying to get more practice helping setting moorings.
The weighted shotline was dropped on the wreck and me and Marissa dropped down to tie-in. The shot line ended up right next to a large piece of a staircase that is a little off to the side of the wreck.
I stupidly figured this would be a most secure location to tie in. We didn’t really have enough a long enough chain to tie into large section so I figured the staircase railing would suffice. Wrong again. I was pretty happy with our 6 minute tie-in job, as I am sure Matt was, right up until the moment the mooring snapped as soon as Matt apparently tied into it and the surge/wave action dislodged the newly tied mooring.
Unfortunately me and Marissa were oblivious to this and had ourselves a really nice dive. We figured we would do a nice thing and run the reel from the mooring to the main wreckage and connected debris field. At the end of our hour dive we started noticing a distinct lack of divers in the water. Once we arrived back at the “mooring” location. We noticed why as it had been ripped from the staircase railing. We ended up having to shoot bags. Not the best way to set a mooring but lessons learned and everyone was safe. Wind picked up something fierce so we ended up salvaging part of the day but tucking behind the castle out of the wind where everyone got to do a nice long shallow dive. No pictures.
