Northern California Oceans Foundation Fundraiser Dive

Memorial Day weekend of diving Wreck Alley in San Diego.
 
Eighteen of us from Northern California trekked down to San Diego this weekend to dive Wreck Alley of San Diego. This is also a fundraiser for NCOF (Northern California Oceans Foundation) to help raise funds for sinking military ships in Northern California.  We were on the boat "D and D II" by Dive Connections who donated 50% of the proceeds back to NCOF!

Thanks for Mike Clough who organized this trip!
 
Barry, owner of Dive Connections (http://www.gottadive.com/), stated to me over and over what the sinking of the Yukon did for his business and supports our efforts to sink ships in Northern California.  Talk about a guy who has the big picture!
 
On Saturday we all showed up at 7 AM on the dock, signed in, boarded and took off. We had quite a variety of divers. Rick Rowett from Dolphin Scuba with 5 students; Libby, Kent, Mike and Chris and Nicolas.
 
Rebreather, 4 with doubles, the rest single tanks.
 
Saturday Dive One: Yukon. Various teams/buddies dove together. Mike was leading our group of 6 divers and took us on a tour of the outside of the Yukon and then went inside toward the end of the dive.  The viz wasn't the best, but I got a chance to see parts of the Yukon. Max depth 100', 32% Nitrox, 45 minutes, viz 10'-15', Ave Depth 67', 54 degrees F. We were in the water at 9:00 AM. Lots of Metridiums and small fishes on the Yukon. Someone even saw the large 6' lingcod in the smoke stack!
 
Saturday Dive Two: The El Rey was and old kelp cutter and did not have a  buoy on it, so Mike, I and Zbigniew volunteered to be dropped off, find the wreck and tie a temporary buoy to it. The captain of the D and D II did a great job, we landed right on top of the wreck, tied off the buoy and off we went. At about 11 AM everyone else splashed in!  The El Rey, while much smaller than the Yukon (about 150' or so) still offered lots of marine life and growth for us to check out.
 
Then it was back to the dock to get our tank refilled and get lunch.
 
Saturday Dive Three: Yukon.  Viz was around 10 feet and our team of 4 got separated into 2 teams of 2 each. Fortunately the Yukon is pretty easy to navigate with the maps that were supplied.
 
Saturday Dive Four: The Ruby E is smaller than the Yukon at about 150' but has been in the water a lot longer had a tremendous amount of pink anemones. Very colorful and lots of fish. We entered the engine room where they still had the engines intact. One engine had the heads off and you could see the cylinders! Lots of life inside this one. 
 
Saturday Dive Five was to be a night dive on the Ruby E or the Yukon, but by then most everyone had plenty of diving and I couldn't ask the boat captain and dive master who has four infants at home to take out only 3 divers. Still they were willing to take us out anyway.
 
At the end of the day's dives we were able to just leave our gear on the boat. Barry was staying on the dock. Very nice not to have to schlep my doubles back to the hotel and back!
 
Sunday Dive One: Yukon. This was THE sweet dive of the weekend!!  The sun came out, the weather calmed and the viz opened up to 30 or so feet!  I'm not sure because we spent just about all of our time inside the Yukon. It was Mike, Zbigniew and Steve.
 
Dropping down the buoy line towards the back of the ship we then went along the side to the 4th deck and dropped down into the engine room. The Yukon is an incredibly unique wreck because it has SO many diver holes cut into it.  
 
Sunday Dive Two: NOS towers. These are a lattice type structure/framework that was some kind of research device that fell over and is now an artificial reef.  The viz varied from 5' feet to 15' which made it interesting. What I found extremely interesting about this dive was the incredible variety of marine life. There were a variety of anemones and other invertebrates bit also a large variety of fish life. I crap when it comes to fish identification (I'm going to have to study up on that) but I saw wrasses and other. It definitely reminded me of tropical fish, although a bit less colorful.  It was also interesting to see how Rick was instructing his students on how to use the wreck to float a Surface Marker Buoy under a railing on the wreck, then doing the descent and once on top retrieving the line effectively doing your safety stop or deco time and not have to drift away.
 
Sunday afternoon, a small group of us visited the Midway, the famous WW II aircraft carrier. Since the Oriskany was just sunk off of Pensicola Florida we were particularly interested in touring the Midway to get an idea what it would be like to dive. 
 
For those of you who want to dive the Oriskany, the dive boats are booked until the end of the year, but you can go visit the Hornet in the SF Bay Area as it's the same class of carrier (Essex Class).
 

Dive well!

Harry (doc) Wong www.docwong.com
Active Life Medical and Chiropractic Center
Office: 650-365-7775, cell: 650-400-9887
President: Northern Caifornia Oceans Foundation
Proj Mgr: Warships to Nurseries
1. Join Northern California Ships2Reef mail-list by using the link:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NorCalShips2Reefs/   or  by sending an email to: NorCalShips2Reefs-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
2. Forum created for this at: http://www.divingnortherncalifornia.com
3. Web site at: www.oceansfoundation.org