Dive Report: Ande Date: Saturday morning January 6, 2001 Boat: Sea Hunter, Fourth Edition Captain: Sal Arena By: Mike Rodriguez I got a phone call from someone a few weeks before this dive. The caller identified himself as Captain Sal Arena. He said he just moved one of his boats, the Sea Hunter IV, from Long Island down here to Delray Beach, Florida and he'd heard through the grapevine that the AUE guys and I do a lot of diving. He was wondering if we'd be interested in chartering his boat for local trips. I told him we're always interested and we agreed to meet at the boat the following morning to talk about it. Captain Sal's reputation preceded him. He's well-known to northeast divers as a competent captain. He's run many trips and many prominent northeast divers to the Andrea Doria over the years. When I arrived at the boat, I could see that it would make an excellent platform for our dives and we arranged for an all-day trip to the Ande and the Skye Cliffe off West Palm Beach and Boynton. We also set up a trip to the Andrea Doria in July, 2001 on his larger boat docked in Long Island. I thought this would work out well since the dives on the Florida wrecks would give the AUE gang and Sal a chance to get to know each other before we went to the Doria. So, a few weeks later, a large group of AUE divers showed up at Sal's boat for a day of diving. Everyone followed my excellent directions to the boat :) and started loading by 8am. It was a cool, clear morning. The sun was shining bright, but the air temperature was in the low 60s; there was a light northwest breeze. About 45 minutes after leaving the dock we exited the Boynton Inlet and found the seas under two feet on the way to the Ande. The water temperature was about 73F. The Ande is one of the newest Palm Beach County artificial reefs. It's located just north of the Lake Worth Inlet off Singer Island. The ship is 300 feet long and rests upright and pointing east on a sandy bottom in 190 feet of water. The cargo mast stands 85 feet above the ocean floor. The Ande is already home to numerous colonies of sea life including snapper, grouper, billfish, and jewfish. On this dive I was diving trimix 20/33/47 with 50% and 100% oxygen for decompression. An hour out of the inlet, we arrived at the GPS numbers given by the county for the Ande. It was no surprise when the ship was nowhere to be found. The county people seem to delight in publishing *approximate* coordinates rather than accurate coordinates. We were expecting this, so we ran a search pattern for a while and finally found the wreck almost two tenths of a mile from the published coordinates. Just as we found the wreck, another local captain we dive with, Rene'e LaChapelle of SS Minnow Charters in West Palm Beach, was kind enough to return our call to give us accurate GPS coordinates for the wreck. We thanked her and began setting up for the dive. We ran over the wreck a few more times to scan it on the bottom mapper, then we tossed out a jug and waited to see what the current was doing. The jug didn't snag the wreck, so we had to pull it up and try a second drop. My dive buddy and I took turns pulling up the thin line which at one point slipped through my buddy's fingers making a ZZZZIP sound. My buddy yelped as the friction burned his fingers and that prompted a fit of good-natured laughter on my part. I took over pulling on the line, and we eventually got the weight back on the boat. A second drop of the jug snagged the wreck and we were able to determine that the current was going north briskly. Everyone began gearing up for the dive as we kept an eye on the jug trying to gauge the current. We rigged our floatline and I hooked it to a cleat at the stern near where I would roll into the water. Everyone geared up and the captain maneuvered the boat up-current for the drop. When we were in position, I grabbed the floatline, made sure my reels hanging off my rear crotch-strap d-ring wouldn't snag the gunnel, and rolled over the side. I headed down quickly in the excellent visibility, but by the time I spotted the jug line and then the wreck, we'd already been blown past it to the north by the current. I turned south and swam hard hoping the floatline had enough scope to let me reach the wreck; it didn't. Even with three of us pulling the line hard, it continued to pull us north. I realized this wasn't going to work, so I turned to the two divers helping above me and signaled that we should let the line go. This was the prearranged plan if we were in sight of the wreck but unable to tie in the line. Free of the relentless line it was much easier to swim though the current but it was still much faster than we could swim. Fortunately, we were only about 100 feet from the wreck, which lies across the current in an east-west direction, so we were able to duck down below deck level and out of the current. Once in the lee of the ship, swimming against the remaining current was possible, and we made our way the rest of the distance to the ship. I stopped in the sand next to the hull to catch my breath for a minute, then swam aft. As I approached the stern, I saw there were numerous fish there. All of them seemed to be swimming vigorously into the current. Even several sleek barracuda seemed to be working at holding position. When I tried to round the stern of the ship, I found out why. The current was outrageous! Since the ship lies east-west, a lot of the water going north gets funneled aft and through the space between the hull and the rudder. The water flowing through the opening was all the open water flow plus the flow channeled by the intersection of the hull and the sea floor. It was spectacular. With great effort, I managed to move into the space by the rudder and held on there with both hands watching the fish. I was careful not to turn my head since the flow would easily take my mask off. My regulator free-flowed in the hard current and I had to turn the cracking-pressure all the way down to make it stop. Even then, if I lifted my head too far, it would still free-flow. I sometimes use something called an 'underwater sled' to comb over large areas of reef looking for lobsters. This is a plank of wood or composite material with two handles. The front is attached by a line to a boat. With the boat traveling at five knots, you can use the handles to angle the plank up or down and make very rapid changes in depth. Traveling at five knots, you can search a large area of reef quickly; much faster than you could with a scooter. I've done this often so I know what five knots feels like underwater, and I'd judge the current passing the rudder of the Ande was easily six knots or more. After hanging there for several minutes, I tried to move to the starboard side of the ship; it was impossible. The current was far too strong to even attempt it. I gave up and ducked back into the lee of the ship and watched particles in the water fly by just a few feet away. The flow at Ginnie is a cakewalk by comparison. I checked my gas to see how much I'd lost to the free-flow, then headed toward the bow along the hull out of the flow. Near the bow, I moved up to the deck, and while pulling myself into one of the holds I suddenly felt a shot of cold water along the zipper of my drysuit. Damn! Once in the hold, I swam back to the stern and into the engine room under the wheelhouse which is big and interesting. I swam around behind the engine and back along the other side as one of my buddies joined me. I exited the engine room and met up with my other buddy who usually runs shorter bottom times (he doesn't like the cold). Since we didn't have a floatline, I signaled him that I'd leave with him. We left the wreck along the thin jug line and a third diver joined us. Since my buddy would no longer be alone on deco, I headed back to the ship and loitered around by the wheelhouse for a while then left with the rest of the team. I shot a liftbag and cursed at my drysuit which no longer was. I finished my deco soaking wet and handed my reel to one of my buddies, then surfaced and boarded the boat. I got out of my drysuit, dumped a small aquarium of water out of it, and hung it up to dry as I squeezed as much water as I could out of my thinsulate so I could dive the Skye Cliffe that afternoon. While everyone finished deco, I had a chance to talk to the captain who was a little freaked-out by the idea of having to track several lift-bags across the ocean. He's new to Florida diving and being used to northeast procedures, the techniques we use here were unnerving to him. Up north, the poor visibility makes free descents impossible and since most of the dive sites are well offshore and in cold water, drifting deco under a liftbag is dangerous. We can do this in Florida because the water is warm, there's deep water near shore (three miles offshore it's 500 feet deep) and the weather is usually excellent. When everyone was aboard, we picked up the jug and ate lunch on the way to the Skye Cliffe for the second dive of the day. Although my drysuit turned into a wetsuit, the rest of the dive was wonderful and I had a great time diving the Ande.