Ever since diving the VT-100, I wanted to dive the Nakaya, the same Yard Mine Sweeper class of vessel but sunk at Porteau Cove marine park. It was designated YMS-420 before being sold to Harbour Ferries in 1970 and renamed Harbour Queen No. 1, then renamed Nakaya in 1980, and finally sunk in 1992.
Firstly, to find the Nakaya was dead easy. A lot easier than what my research uncovered. The material I found was fairly vague, and had compass bearings and no travel times.
Directions to the Nakaya, starting from the stairs down to the water:
Swim to the very last and very far white surface buoy on the extreme right (closest to shore).
It is a long swim, about 320m using the ruler tool in Google Earth.
Descend along the line from the buoy all the way to the bottom (depth about 25m).
If you face a compass bearing of 30 degrees, and then turn 90 degrees to your left and start swimming, you'll run right into the Nakaya.
The Nakaya is not far from the line. Maybe 20 or 30 feet. If you miss it for some reason, return to the line and try again.
I had been planning this dive for a week or two, with several divers included but in the end only Jason could make it. To be fair, it was the Olympic closing ceremony day, and the big Canada vs. USA gold medal hockey game was on. It was an awesome sunny day for a dive, and I was able to participate in the celebrations after getting back, so I think I got the best of both worlds.
Gearing up for the dive was not as pleasant, since it was drizzling at the time. This cleared up though and it got very sunny. We didn't have too much trouble getting into the park, but there were traffic cones set up to prevent you turning left due to the Olympics. Once in the water, we started the long swim out. It was right around low tide, and the water was pretty slack so there was not much current. Once we got to the white buoy, we did what I thought needed to be done to find the wreck. We first swam on the surface along 30 degrees looking down trying to see the removed marker buoy. We had no luck doing this, so returned to the white buoy. We decided to descend there, and head along 30 degrees on the bottom to try and run into the bottom of the supposed line. We did that, but swam a long way without finding anything. Every minute I thought I saw something in the gloom, but it was always just my eyes playing tricks on me.
Eventually the bottom started turning into sharp rocks and looked like it was going up to shore. So I turned us around and we headed back along the bottom at 30m. This was the other way of finding the Nakaya, since we should in theory run right into it if we stayed near its depth. Luckily, it worked, and the bow of the ship loomed out of the gloom. It was tall! The ship was 40m long, so it was a big one. The bow was in great shape, not crumbling or anything. As we followed the hull along the starboard side, it started to show more signs of deterioration. There were holes in the hull near the deck level, and they gave it the appearance of a railing on a spooky ghost ship. On the other side, schools of shiner perch darted around in our lights. Half way down the hull, I looked to the east and saw a line. I figured that was the “missing” line that we had been looking for. Little did I know it was the same line we came down on! We had descended right beside the wreck, only to swim off and totally missed it until we came back.
We checked out the stern section which was really crumbling, and headed up to the deck level for a bit. There was no deck left really, just big holes into the hold. There was a lot of sediment accumulated in there too. Not a lot of life down in the holds. But the hull and the remnants of the deck had quite a bit. There were a few really big ling cod guarding their egg masses. There was also a lot of decorator crabs and coonstripe shrimps, along with a hairy crab and some squat lobsters. The highlight of the dives was a giant dendronotid, a red flabellina and a leopard dorid. We looked and looked for octopus, but there were none.
The second dive was much the same as the first, but we were able to spend more time on the wreck now that we knew how to find it. It really was a lot of fun to explore, and was a lot more interesting than the VT-100. This is the kind of dive where Nitrox comes in very handy to extend your bottom time, since it is quite deep. I was also very pleased that my air consumption rate had gotten a lot better too. It had been pretty high for a long time, and it was nice to see it improving. Less air consumption equals longer dives, something that I'm all for!
No comments:
Post a Comment