I had a great weekend of tech diving though I didn’t take a camera or GoPro since I just figured I would enjoy the dives without looking at life through a viewfinder. The water temperatures are finally beginning to warm up into the 50s signaling to me that at least summer is finally here.
On Saturday I went out with the Gauntlet (North Atlantic Dive Expeditions). It was literally a last minute split second decision since my car was loaded from the night before and I wanted to dive. I texted Heather at 6am and grabbed a last minute spot and headed down to the boat to load at 6:45am. We were originally scheduled to go to the Baleen (170′) however upon arrival Heather/Dave noticed what looked like a gillnet with flags on the surface. It appeared to be running length-wise along side the wreck so they opted to go to the Alma Holmes (160′) instead since they knew there was already a mooring on the wreck. It was my forth time diving the wreck which is nice since it’s an easy wreck to navigate and I know it pretty well at this point.
Since the Holmes is closer inshore compared to the Baleen it doesn’t always have the best visibility especially in the summer months. From what I remember my last 3 dives on it were around 10-15ft of visibility. In any case when we arrived and hooked into the mooring it looked like we had some amazing visibility at the top of the water column. None of us wanted to get too excited since this doesn’t always translate to good visibility on the bottom. Nevertheless the dive report from Dave indicated about ~30ft of viz! Fantastic.
I splashed in shortly after they returned. Not too much else to report. Plenty of the usual suspects on the wreck, lots of cunners, frilled anemones as is the case with most deep wrecks in New England. The weather was fantastic though we hit a really heavy bank of fog on the way back into Beverly Harbor.
Alma E.A. Holmes (06/04/2016)
Max depth: 158ft
Runtime: 64 minutes.
Visibility: ~30ft
Water temp: 44f (bottom) and 55f (on deco). Summer is here!
On Sunday I was scheduled to dive the USS Bass with Canned Air Charters run by Capt. Wayne Gordon. The weather was looking a little dicey and I wasn’t quite sure if we were actually going to make it out to the USS Bass which was “sunk” a little ways off Block Island, Rhode Island. Sunk is really the wrong term. It was actually torpedoed by the U.S. Navy for target practice. From Wikipedia below..
USS Bass (SF-5/SS-164), a Barracuda-class submarine and one of the “V-boats”, was the first ship of the United States Navy to be named for the bass. Her keel was laid at the Portsmouth Navy Yard.
She was launched as V-2 (SF-5) on 27 December 1924 sponsored by Mrs. Douglas E. Dismukes, wife of Captain Dismukes, and commissioned on 26 September 1925, Lieutenant Commander G.A. Rood in command. Like her sisters, Bass was designed to meet the fleet submarine requirement of 21 knots (39 km/h) surface speed for operating with contemporary battleships.
Bass was decommissioned at the Naval Submarine Base New London on 3 March 1945 and expended as a target for the Mark 24 Fido “mine” (actually an acoustic homing torpedo) on 12 March 1945. The location of the wreck is 41°01′N 072°32′W (source).
I had signed up through my buddy Red who owns Giant Stride Dive Shop in Rhode Island. The Bass is a popular wreck and trips usually fill up instantly. In any case I was very happy that they didn’t cancel. Sometimes you never know until you try. We had a good group of divers aboard and the weather and seas out to the wreck were actually fine. It wasn’t really until everyone’s 2nd dive and on the way back in that the seas started picking up late in the afternoon. We had some 5-6ft seas on the way back to Point Judith. We were also spared the rain that they had predicted which was also nice.
I opted to do one long dive instead of two since I knew the seas were going to pick up later in the afternoon. I was pleasantly surprised that I had about ~20ft of visibility with a lot of ambient light on the wreck. I did a few loops around the wreck but didn’t end up making it to the bow which is broken off from the rest of wreck. A few years ago we had some epic 60-70ft of visibility where you could literally see the length of the entire wreck and navigate both pieces without running a reel. Not today but nevertheless it was still good visibility in my opinion. There were tons of cod on the port side of the wreck, some really big ones too. Overall it was a nice day. We even saw a mola mola on surface.
USS Bass (06/05/2016)
Max depth: 156fsw
Runtime: 83 minutes
Visibility: ~20ft
Water temp: 47-56f. Gotta love that warmer RI water!
