RED DEVIL SCUBA SUPPLIES

It took me 4 years but I finally got to check off the USS Oriskany off my bucket list of "Must Dive, Dive Sites"

For those not familiar with this particular dive site - here is a brief overview. The USS Oriskany was an United States Air Craft carrier that was launched in 1947 and after seeing service in both Korean and Vietnam was eventually retired until 2006 was it was sunk as an artificial reef south of Pensacola, Florida in the Gulf of Mexico. As far as I know, this is 1 of 2 aircraft carriers within scuba limits with the other being being the Saratoga which was sunk at Bikini Atoll in the South Pacific as part of a nuclear weapons test in 1946. With a career that long and with enough berths to house 2200 officers and sailors, thousands upon thousands of members of the US Navy served aboard the "Mighty O". Arguably the most famous of the service members was Lieutenant Commander John McCain ... yep that guy that would later run for President of the United States. In fact it was the Oriskany that John McCain flew off when he was shot down and became a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War.

I haven't been able to peg down the exact dimensions of the wreck (there is conflicting sources of information) but it was roughly 900' long, almost 140' (not including all the radio and radar masts) tall and nearly 150' wide. To give you an idea - the famous Great Lakes shipwreck, "Edmund Fitzgerald" was 730' long 75' wide and 75' tall. Yep, this was one HUGE ship and is now one HUGE shipwreck. Due to its tremendous size, when it was decided to turn it into an artificial reef, a spot had to be found that would allow it to be sunk deep enough to not be a hazard to navigation in the worst case scenario that it sunk on its side (its not an exact science to get a ship to sink exactly like you want) because the wreck is actually wider then it is tall. The site selected is in 210' of water which put the flight deck in 135' of water but unfortunately Hurricane Gustav caused the wreck to sink an additional 10' into the sand. Putting the flight deck in 145'-150'.

In the winter of 2007, Gary and I were in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida to complete our instructor course and as a graduation present we drove to Pensacola with the idea of diving the largest artificial reef in the world. Mother Nature decided not to co-operate and with hurricane force winds, our charter got scrapped. Being away for over 2 weeks had exhausted our vacation time so we had to accept that we wouldn't get to do this dive. However, every since I have been thinking about what that dive would be like and finally I stepped up to the plate to make sure I got this dive in.

This past February I drove to Pensacola and had arranged to be in town for 4 days and crossed my fingers I would get my chance. Success came on Friday, February 18th. The sky was clear, just a slight onshore wind and thanks to the co-operation between 2 different charter captains we had enough people to make a trip possible. The charter boat was a small "6-pack" catamaran and the slight onshore wind had created some pretty decent size rollers on the Gulf. The 90 minute boat ride was in one word - rough. Diving off a small boat is always nice since the number of divers is limited but when the wreck site is 22 miles into a huge body of water like the Gulf of Mexico even a slight breeze can cause some pretty decent sized "flat rollers". That said, there was no sea sickness, just a few wobbly legs.

When we reached the wreck site, we got our briefing on how to maximize our bottom time and what to expect. It was at this point that I noticed the water was a lot "greener" then I was used to when I am diving in the "tropics". Apparently this is caused by the large algae blooms compliments of the Mississippi river flowing into the Gulf although occasionally blue water will move in from the deeper parts of the Gulf during the summer. We were also told that the water temperature was going to be in the high 50's - to be fair, I had already knew that and had my drysuit with me plus the added depth were the reason I drove so I had all of my own gear including a 25% nitrox mix in my tanks.

It didn't take long for me to gear up and hop into the water with my camera and make my way towards the down line. With my dive buddies following we began our dive. We quickly dropped down the line although we slowed when we came across a bunch of jelly fish that were slowly moving across the down line and we didn't really feel like getting stung. Once we started to descend again, it wasn't long before we saw the outline of a VERY big shipwreck. Due to the depth and the fact my dive buddies weren't trained in some of the higher levels of diving our dive plan called for us to stay around the "island" of the ship which is 150' long itself. The top of the wreck is in 75-80' of water and as soon as we all gave the OK, we dropped to 128' to checkout the command bridge and get a good view of the flight deck. It was at this point that I discovered that although my camera housing is rated to 180', the shutter release spring, apparently isn't so I had some challenges getting my camera to work at this depth. To get my camera working, we ascended back to 115' - 120' range and explored the navigation bridge as well as the flight control bridge (I was also a little narc'd at this point and remember giggling to myself about the level of confusion that would exist if a crew member was ordered to the "Bridge").

To maximize our bottom time, we slowly worked our way up the island and explored the upper parts of the structure. All too soon, we had maxed out our allowable bottom time and were on our way back to the surface. It was at this time that I realized I didn't have enough lead on to comfortably hold my safety stop and had to resort to the death grip on the down line to hold myself in place. I had assumed my fully loaded double tanks, plus a stage would be more then enough to offset the added buoyancy from the salt water - that would be a no to that assumption. Once we were back on the charter, I went about setting up my gear with an additional 10 lbs of lead since I knew I was a little lite to begin with plus I would be using up some of my gas which would make me even more buoyant.

During our service interval, I got to talk to my dive buddies who were a husband and wife from Pennsylvania and I found out that the husband had been in the navy as an electronic warfare specialist so he had actually flown off aircraft carriers (although not the Oriskany) so it was very interesting to learn more about his experiences. We had a surface interval of roughly 90 minutes and by that time, I was itching to get back for a second dive.

This dive maxed out to 121' where I was able to get a picture of the top of the command bridge and the navigation bridge. After our exploration from the first dive, we had decided on a penetration plan and we had a blast working our way through the various rooms and hallways that made up this part of the wreck and I remember thinking how cool it was that I was swimming through an area that John McCain might have walked through only hours before he would be shot down and become a prisoner of war. Once again, the dive was all too short and we had to begin our ascent ... this time the extra lead allowed for a very comfortable safety stop which I extended since my dive buddies had managed to put their dive computers into decompression. They weren't overly familiar with their computers and 2 deep dives right to the limits of the allowable bottom time had caused their brand of computers to penalize them with a 10 minute decompression stop.

Back on the boat, breaking gear down and a 90 minute boat ride back to Pensacola brought my amazing dive trip to an end. A 17 hour drive back to Ontario got me home just before another winter storm struck ... Mother Nature co-operated much more then in 2007. My pictures are posted on my facebook page (or follow this link: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2112386&id=1151182224&l=61f09519d3) - I apologize for them being on the dark side and if you didn't know better, you'd think they were taken in the Great Lakes.