I dove it last year, and even though I had a fun dive, I was a bit underwhelmed. She lies in 240 fsw, just outside of the Everett Marina, and also at the mouth of the Snohomish River. Because of the proximity to the river, the Al frequently has very poor visibility. Last year, I could tell that I was diving on a large, man made object of some kind, but not much else. The rain we experienced last night in Seattle further lowered my expectations for the dive today; and as we were setting the hook and deploying the deco station, visibility was not looking very good.
But I was determined to dive today. I figured I could always scrub the dive at depth, and pay a minimal price with the deco obligation. Certainly wouldn't be the first time I did that. So, we geared up. We were diving with Porthole Charters off of the MK V, Captained by Mike Fergesun. Mike is a fellow diver, and very good at positioning the boat for a good grapple- we nailed the drop, and after rigging up our deco trapeeze, we were busy putting divers in the water.
Diving today were myself, Dan Warter (Roomer Treece on this board), Rob Wilson(RJW), Paul Hangarter(bigsky), Ron Akeson, owner of Adventures Down Under, in Bellingham, WA, and the organizer of this charter. Also on board were Kirby and Bob- two guys that I took Advanced eanx and Deco Procedures with a couple of years back- I've dived with Kirby since then, but it was the first time since class I had seen Bob- it took us a few minutes to figure out where we knew eachother from! Small world.
Benjamin Nussbaum was our excellent safety diver for this trip. I can't wait to start doing these dives with BJ, but I'm REALLY going to miss him as a safety diver! He takes really, really good care of us, like only a brother (or sister!) diver can.
All of us except for Paul, Kirby, and Bob were diving Megalodon Closed Circuit Rebreathers, me on my COPIS, everyone else on APECS. I should point out that Paul just started his Meg class with Ron Friday night- he will be joining the rest of us in Meg land very soon! (
<---Meg Smiley!)So, in teams of two and three, we splashed, and started our descent. I was diving with Ron and Paul on this dive. Down we went, deeper and deeper. Visibility was about what I expected, but as we passed 160', I started to see lights from the other teams, and the strobes they had set on the line, below me......suddenly, the side of the wreck came into view. Oh......Oh, wow. Today was much, much, different from my previous dive. Vis was about 20 feet, and man, oh, man, what a difference that makes! The wreck is HUGE. We could discern many landmarks and features in the deck and superstructure.....ladders, railings, hatches....I attached a strobe to the downline, while Paul secured his reel and Ron started filming. We were hooked near the Bow, and started moving aft, by general consensus. We saw the usual suspects living on the wreck- gigantic lingcod and rockfish. As well as crabs, nudibranchs, and....monofilament. On my first dive here last year, I got entangled in the nasty stuff, and my buddy Rob suffered a punctured counterlung while he was cutting me free from it. Anyone diving this wreck needs to be warned- there are lots of opportunities for entanglement. I never even saw the line that grabbed me last year, and there's no way to defend against something you can't see. I just felt it, tried to back out of it, and flashed my light at Rob when I couldn't get free. He cut me out, but suffered a puncture in his counterlung during the process. Today, I saw a few strands of line, but was able to avoid them. After touring aft for a while, we turned and headed back to the tie-in, and headed forward a bit. We saw the gigantic windlass near the bow, but we turned and headed back to the line to begin our ascent before we saw it. Rob and Dan went all the way to the point of the bow, and followed it down to the bottom before turning around. I would have liked to have done that, too, but we had a fine dive going aft, and I have no regrets. (The windlass blew my mind, though!)
At 20 minutes of run time, with ~15 minutes on the wreck, we moved back to the downline, and began our ascent. As we completed our stops, visibility began deteriorating while the current began to ebb. My 20 and 10 foot stops looked like a snowstorm, with all the detrius in the water....I finally surfaced into a pleasant, more-or-less sunny afternoon.
This trip was very well planned, thanks to Ron- We enjoyed some (relatively) excellent visibility, for the Al. And for those of you out there that didn't enjoy your first dive on her- all I can say is that I didn't, either: but today more than made up for it! We had a GREATtime diving her today, and, again, no small part of that was due to the great people we had on the boat- I would happily go do this dive again tomorrow morning, if I could!
