Bunker Hill

S.S. Bunker Hill

September 2007

It was Monday morning, Labor Day, and a few friends and I had decided to meet at their house in Marysville at around, well I can’t remember because it was damn early. The drive up there was nice though and the sunrise was stunning!

Running late already, I had to fight the urge to pull over to take some photos, so I just snapped some shots as I drove.

Paul, Rob, and I loaded up all our gear in one truck and headed up to Anacortes to meet up with Ron Akeson form Adventures Down Under and Mark Theune. There was only going to be five of us on this trip so we would have plenty of room on the boat. I think, if I remember the plan, we were to meet at the dock at 8 am, and leave by 9 am. Getting there early, we had plenty of time to load our gear and eat a bit of breakfast Phil the captain had put out for us.

The other two got loaded up and we were underway right on schedule.

We decided to dive the bow section of the boat, since there seems to be more to see. She is on the bottom in 280 feet laying on her side, so it is a bit difficult understanding what you are looking at at first. A few have dived this before, so we all did the usual bantering on the trip out.

We decide the teams, then went over dive schedules. My team, which consisted of Rob, Mark, and myself planned on doing max 25 minutes on the bottom at 280 feet. We decided against scooters early on just because visibility in Rosario Strait is USUALLY bad. AND I had just gotten a report from someone diving there, 2 days prior, that vis WAS in fact bad. Rob would reel out his guideline, while I documented the wreck with video, and Mark wouldn’t be loaded with a task except enjoy the dive.

While going through all the formalities of a dive like this, we were once again reminded, by an unexpected visitor, why we do this.

It was a Minke Whale. I know, it looks like a porpoise, but it’s not. Really. That was pretty amazing. I had never seen one of those before. At this point, I knew it was going to be a good day.

We got out to the site real quick and we waited for slack to come. Also a good time for more eating and good chitchat.

Time was drawing near, time to grapple the wreck, and set the decompression station up. This can take anywhere from 15 minutes to a couple hours, the latter usually ending up in a “no dive” scenario. We got it on our second try.

Still waiting out slack...

...And Waiting...

Finally, it looked to be moving pretty slow at the surface, so our team decided to go for it. When we jumped in, it definitely was moving faster than it looked. I HATE being without my scooter, swimming sucks!!

We started descending, and while fighting the current a bit, I noticed the fantastic visibility. Could it possibly be like this on the bottom?

We hit the bottom after about 5 minutes, or actually the side of the hull on the bow section, but it being covered in silt it looked like the bottom at first. The first thing I noticed besides the GIANT Metridium, was the excellent visibility, Around 30 feet!!

We tied off and proceeded to follow the anchor chain down to the bottom of the top deck (which is now vertical). There is just a mess of ripped metal and girders and machinery everywhere. It’s very hard to actually determine where you are at any given point. This would have been a PERFECT scooter dive because of one, vis was extraordinary, and two, you get a much better feel of a wreck when you can see the whole thing on one dive.

The current seemed to subside a bit down there. We continued to reel out line and peek inside large holes that were created in part from the explosions and the two pieces of the ship being ripped apart. With vis being so good you could really get a feeling of how absolutely huge this ship was. As we continued down the top deck, I kept looking up and seeing overhanging metal from deck equipment and other large structure. It was truly amazing to see! The metridium continued to outline the structure and every so often we would see large spots with no growth and the bright red from the rust just glaring back.

It still amazes me the size of the Rockfish we see on these wrecks! They are absolutely huge!!

I'll tell you, 25 minutes is just not long enough for a bottom time, but it was time to head up. What a great dive!!

Courtesy T2 Tanker page