Date: 12-26-05
Time: 12:53
Location: Yukon, Wreck Alley
Dive Time: 23 mins
Surface waves: small
Surface swell: large: 5-7 ft. and spaced well apart.
Viz in Shallows: 15-20 ft.
Viz at Depth: 1-3 ft.
Max Depth: 92 ft.
Critters seen: the usual sessile, Metridiums, Strawberry anemones, orange and yellow sponges and numerous Serf Perch.
OK, OK, we probably should have known from the NOAA swell reports that those huge swells predicted were traveling West to East and were going be slamming straight into the superstructure of the Yukon, but we were just anxious to get wet and had decided to take our chances. You know how it is. We’ve all done it, right? You’ve been out of the water for a while and you just want to get wet.
In our defense, we did drive out to the breakwater at Mission Bay to check out the conditions firsthand, before motoring out, and to be honest, they did not look bad at all: sure, there were some small waves hitting the rocks, but nothing spectacular and the water seemed generally calm, considering what the reports had been saying about 7-10 breakers predicted for West facing beaches.
So, under sunny skies and cool breeze, Barbara, her son Hawk acting as ‘captain in training,’ Jackie and I motored out to Wreck Alley with hopes high.
These hopes were encouraged by the fact that, except for the swells we encountered going out, which were spaced well apart, the conditions above the Yukon were calm and the water looked clear, with just the occasional swell majestically sweeping by.
So, with spirits high, we suited up on deck and jumped in.
On the way down, our hopes for a good dive were raised even more, as the water column in the first 20-30 ft. seemed extremely clear and free of stirred up sediment.
As we neared the ship itself, below 65 ft., the visibility began to narrow considerably, but we didn’t think too much about it, this being a fairly common occurrence on the Yukon, until when we reached the stern itself, it had dropped to less than 5 ft. Nonetheless, we decided to proceed anyway, down under the stern and across the superstructure towards the Mortar Bay.
Going back over the video shot by Barbara, I see signs we probably should have caught: you can see the Gorgonians in some places on the superstructure being laid absolutely flat by the current; but for some reason we didn’t notice it at that point, most likely because by the time we began our traverse of the ship below the Mortar Bay at around 92 ft., the viz had dropped even more dramatically to around 2 ft. We could barely see our buddies 3 ft. away.
Still, we continued undaunted and unalarmed towards in the direction of amidships and the radio tower. We never made it.
As we were traversing the area below the Mortar Bay, about half way across, Barbara says she noticed something fairly ominous: as I passed near the opening to the Bay, my fins were projecting slightly above the metal flange marking the lower end of the Bay itself. She ended up doing a double take: she says that as my fins passed over the flange, she could see tips fluttering so fast in the current, they were a blur, as if caught in the ‘fire hose stream’ of a high speed current. At that point I hadn’t noticed anything unusual. Yet.
As we rounded the far end of the Bay, I turned around to see if Barbara and Jackie were still with me, because I noticed the viz had dropped dramatically and I wanted to makes sure we were still all together. As I turned around, into the current and took a breath, my regulator [and mouth] suddenly filled with sea water and I felt as if a giant hand had picked me up and slammed me into the deck. All this happened almost simultaneously……my brain had no time to react.
Well, if you’ve ever taken a breath at depth and gotten sea water instead of air, you’ll know it’s an extremely unpleasant experience. Luckily, no sea water made its way into my lungs, or I probably would have started coughing spasmodically and who knows what else. I had the presence of mind to do two things really fast: first, hit my purge button to get the water out and grab my secondary just below my chin and prepare to switch. Luckily, hitting purge cleared the second stage and a cautious second breath revealed no further water had entered. But, I kept a strong grip on my spare, just in case I had to make the switch. At first I thought I had had a primary regulator failure, but on later discussing it with my dive buddies, the opinion seems to be I had simply turned into this monster current sweeping over the boat at just the wrong angle and allowed some water to be forced into the second stage.
Further complicating things was the fact that the doubles I was wearing had, in effect doubled my ‘profile’ in the current, giving it more ‘grab’ onto and pin me to the deck with. Well, needless to say, it was at this point, I decided I was going to ‘call’ the dive until I figured out what the problem was with my regulator.
What I didn’t realize was that by this time, both Barbara and Jackie were having there own problems in the current. Barbara says when she saw my fins
doing the ‘funky chicken’ in the current, she realized that perhaps we were going to have to cut this one short, so she slowed to clip the camera to her BC and signal that we should start heading back. Jackie had seen the viz drop to nearly zero in just matter of minutes and also decided this might not be the best day to be on the Yukon.
Luckily, we all stayed close to one another, each person watching out for two other people and I went up to Barbara and signaled we were aborting the dive and she nodded enthusiastically agreement [no arm twisting needed here!] and we made our way back under the Mortar Bay, towards the stern.
We crawled our way, hand over hand across the deck, moving from one hand hold to another, as the current ripped over us. There were times when we simply had to hold on and let it pass over us–forward progress was temporarily impossible–and hope we didn’t get sucked into a hole. But, finally, after what seemed hours crawling across the deck, we saw the stern appear and began making our way up to the buoy line at the top. Whew!
It was here that I first noticed what I should have seen before: the Gorgonians at the top were laying nearly flat and all doing the ‘funky chicken’ in the current. Ahem……..Right.
Anyway, so we made our way back up to the surface in a nice leisurely manner, taking time for a deep stop at around 45 ft. and finally surfaced near our boat, feeling quite glad to be seeing the sun again.
So, some good lessons were learned, most of them in hindsight, unfortunately.
The first is: use caution on the Yukon when high swells are predicted for the beachs [duh!]. It means they’ll be rushing by the ship on the way to to the beaches!
The second is: look at the sessile [stationary life forms, like Gorgonians and Metridiums] on the ship as you pass over it. If you see them ‘flapping in the breeze,’ then make a note of it: if you haven’t felt the current yet, you soon will. We were thinking that being down near the bottom would protect us from most of the current. Sometimes that’s where it’s the strongest, depending on the direction the swells are coming from.
Thirdly, I should have noticed that the predicted swell models were traveling West-to-East, meaning they were not going to be blocked by San Clemente or Catalina Islands and were heading straight for the Yukon, packing considerable ‘punch’ and these swells often are much more powerful on the bottom than on the top, where the energy may have been dissipated. This is evidenced by the ‘scouring’ of the sand below the ship.
But, hey: the sun was shining and the skies were blue: how bad could it be down there? 
