Dive Report: Cruz del Sur Date: Sunday, September 9, 2000 Boat: Miss Conduct Captain: Conrad Nix By: Mike Rodriguez Three Association of Underwater Explorers (AUE) divers and three other local divers arrived at the boat for a ride out to the Cruz del Sur Sunday. I'd been trying to get a ride to the wreck for over a year but none of the Miami area boats seemed interested in doing any technical charters, so frustrated, I set up the trip on the Miss Conduct out of Pompano Beach which is a long way from the wreck. The German freighter Cruz del Sur (Spanish for Southern Cross), was 260 feet long and was built in Germany in 1956. It was seized by the U.S. Coast Guard and eventually sunk as part of the Dade and Broward county artificial reef program in 1986. The wreck now sits upright in the sand at 240 feet and has a large crane that reach up to within 145 feet of the surface. There is an interesting engine room and portholes with glass still intact. On this dive I breathed trimix 16/45/39 with 50% oxygen and 100% oxygen for decompression. After loading the boat, we all settled down for the 90 minute boat ride. Fortunately, it was a beautiful, sunny, flat day with the air temperature in the upper 80s. When we finally arrived at the site, we found a moderately strong north current. The gang got ready as the captain set us up, then I grabbed the floatline and all six divers splashed in together. The surface temperature was about 84F but dropped to 76F on the bottom. The visibility was around 60 feet throughout the water-column. When I arrived in sight of the wreck, I saw the drop had been slightly too far aft and to compound things, the current was moving us farther aft at a pretty good rate. I swam hard toward the bottom and just managed to reach a loop of thick mooring line floating about 20 feet off the stern of the ship before the current swept me past it. I quickly tied into the loop and about two seconds later, the light went taught as the current took out the slack. My two buddies who were following the line down were able to grab the floatline and pull themselves the rest of the way to the wreck. I waited for them to arrive, then we took off exploring. I took a look at one of the scuttle holes in the starboard side of the hull near the engine room, then I swam forward in the cargo holds. The ship is a typical freighter. The holds were mostly empty. At the bow I hung around holding onto the wreck and enjoying the current, then I dropped to the sand on the port side and swam aft. Several hermit crabs walked around in the sand by the hull. They retracted into their shell as I passed by. Amidships I swam up to the deck and aft to the wheelhouse. Under the wheelhouse there are several bulkheads with interesting corridors to explore, but I didn't go inside on this dive. Before the dive, the captain asked me to bring back a lead fishing weight or two if possible. The wreck is littered with fishing tackle, so finding a big, heavy lead ball was easy. I picked one up and put it in my pocket then headed back to the line. A head count confirmed that my two buddies were there, none of us ever saw the other three divers. I swam forward of the wheelhouse for a final look around for bubbles, but there were none. I drifted aft again and unhooked the floatline then held on as the three of us were yanked off the wreck by the current. Decompression was uneventful and pleasant in the warm bathwater near the surface, and we were back on the boat a while later where I was disappointed to find out that the three other divers missed the line on the first drop and were unable to pull themselves down against the current on a second drop, so they gave up. On the way back home, we stopped to look for lobsters at a 90-foot reef but we found none. We finally made it back to the dock in the afternoon. Although three of the divers missed the wreck, at least everyone got a chance to dive a pretty reef and enjoy a beautiful day out on the ocean.