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Thread: Wreck Identified off San Diego Coast

  1. #1
    Senior Member Tyler S.'s Avatar
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    Default Wreck Identified off San Diego Coast

    After many dives the SDTechDiving.com team has finally identified a 110’ long, steel hulled vessel off Point Loma. This vessel is sitting upright and intact on the bottom in 165’ of water. After hours of bottom time we were finally able to gather valuable evidence to use to identify the unkown wreck. Al Bruton was able to provide some valuable insight into how the vessel wound up off Point Loma. The vessel in question, “Cape Charles” sunk in San Diego bay. It was slated to be re-floated and towed to wreck alley for disposal in the late 80s. En route to wreck alley the vessel capsized and sank in 165’. Her tumble is evident in the debris strewn around the wreck and the gash in the bow from the towline. Another link is the abundance of large inflatable “lift bags” to float the wreck in the bay for towing which are all over the exterior and even the interior of the wreck as well. After reviewing all of these clues it is our opinion that the wreck we have been diving is in fact a 110’ ft hulled vessel known as the Cape Charles. This is the perfect wreck for any technical training in the San Diego area. Several decks to penetrate and some very cool features such as the large intact crane on the aft deck, debris field and its unique placement just off the tip of Point Loma will make this a very popular wreck for technical divers.

  2. #2
    UTD Member limeyx's Avatar
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    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Tyler S. View Post
    After many dives the SDTechDiving.com team has finally identified a 110’ long, steel hulled vessel off Point Loma. This vessel is sitting upright and intact on the bottom in 165’ of water. After hours of bottom time we were finally able to gather valuable evidence to use to identify the unkown wreck. Al Bruton was able to provide some valuable insight into how the vessel wound up off Point Loma. The vessel in question, “Cape Charles” sunk in San Diego bay. It was slated to be re-floated and towed to wreck alley for disposal in the late 80s. En route to wreck alley the vessel capsized and sank in 165’. Her tumble is evident in the debris strewn around the wreck and the gash in the bow from the towline. Another link is the abundance of large inflatable “lift bags” to float the wreck in the bay for towing which are all over the exterior and even the interior of the wreck as well. After reviewing all of these clues it is our opinion that the wreck we have been diving is in fact a 110’ ft hulled vessel known as the Cape Charles. This is the perfect wreck for any technical training in the San Diego area. Several decks to penetrate and some very cool features such as the large intact crane on the aft deck, debris field and its unique placement just off the tip of Point Loma will make this a very popular wreck for technical divers.

    Coolio -- awesome to get to be the ones to ID a wreck.

  3. #3
    The Borg Queen LCF's Avatar
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    Now, there's adventure and exploration for you!
    "What other sport is there where a cute woman has trouble getting rid of her underwear?" Doppler

  4. #4
    Unified Team Diver ChickOfTheSea's Avatar
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    Default Yay!

    Congrats Tyler! So when we divin it?

  5. #5
    Senior Member cmalinowski's Avatar
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    Cool beans, man. Nice work.

  6. #6
    Unified Team Diver rogerbly's Avatar
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    Default

    nice work

  7. #7
    Renaissance Diver headhunter's Avatar
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    Hey Tyler,

    Congrats on finding that!

    It does sound like a great place for training at depth. Maybe someone could start their wreck training in a place like the Yukon and then move to this one as they get more experience and training for greater depth.

    Did they "sanitize" this wreck in the way that they did the Yukon or where they just going to drop this one "as is" instead?

    We'll be back in LaJolla for a Wrinkles Dive in May. Maybe we'll see you then and you can regale us with an account of the discovery in person!

    Hope to see you soon!

    Christian
    "People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid."
    - Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)

  8. #8
    Unified Team Diver Scuba818's Avatar
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    That is truely an achievment!! How does one get into a position that he...or she can be on an expedition like that? Did you know that it was in the vacinity or where you just searching.. this is all very interesting to me and I would love to hear more about it.. like the history of your expedition...
    Thank you sincerly!
    Josh Pellersels
    Grand Rapids MN
    The day that you quit learning about Scuba is the day you should quit diving.

  9. #9
    Unified Team Diver rogerbly's Avatar
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    Default

    Tyler set up a charter and invited several San Diego and LA tech divers to dive the Cape Charles last Saturday. Local CBS news (San Diego KFMB ch8) covered the dive. I shot the TV video and Tyler provided the studio interview.

    We hit it at slack tide and started dropping about 9am. Vis on the wreck was about 15'. Temp was 50F. 25-30 min bottom times, 60-75min runtimes. Lot's of rebreathers, but still several of us open circuit holding down the fort.

    KFMB doesn't have the broadcast video on their website, but here is the raw video (not including Tyler's studio interview):
    http://rogerbly.s3.amazonaws.com/vid...les_iphone.mp4

    (NOTE: this video is 100MB, 10min. Can be viewed in Quicktime, VLC, Totem, or any mpeg-4/AVC/H.264 player. In Quicktime, best to use File->Open URL... with the above URL. That way you can watch while it downloads.)

    Cheers,
    Roger Bly

  10. #10
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    Do I get royalties on my 3 second appearance???

    (Oh - and thanks for editing out my bum )

  11. #11
    Senior Member Celt5494's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by rogerbly View Post
    Tyler set up a charter and invited several San Diego and LA tech divers to dive the Cape Charles last Saturday. Local CBS news (San Diego KFMB ch8) covered the dive. I shot the TV video and Tyler provided the studio interview.

    We hit it at slack tide and started dropping about 9am. Vis on the wreck was about 15'. Temp was 50F. 25-30 min bottom times, 60-75min runtimes. Lot's of rebreathers, but still several of us open circuit holding down the fort.

    KFMB doesn't have the broadcast video on their website, but here is the raw video (not including Tyler's studio interview):
    http://rogerbly.s3.amazonaws.com/vid...les_iphone.mp4

    (NOTE: this video is 100MB, 10min. Can be viewed in Quicktime, VLC, Totem, or any mpeg-4/AVC/H.264 player. In Quicktime, best to use File->Open URL... with the above URL. That way you can watch while it downloads.)

    Cheers,
    Roger Bly
    Yeah slack tide and "slack" upline...Shhhigh had to adjust 5 more minutes onto my deco schedule because of that. All in all good diving with everyone and amazingly enough all my beer was not gone by the time I came up...........
    MMMMMMMMM..... Beeeeer! -Homer J. Simpson

  12. #12
    Unified Team Diver rogerbly's Avatar
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    right, just be happy I had time to quick edit. ;-) it was nice to finally meet you andrew.

    Posted using a wireless device: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A102 Safari/419.3

  13. #13
    Senior Member breals's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Celt5494 View Post
    amazingly enough all my beer was not gone by the time I came up...........
    We're good guys, we saved you one of your beers.
    - Bill
    Personal Website: www.reals.net
    Scuba Blog: www.divedown.com


  14. #14
    Senior Member mwhities's Avatar
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    Default

    LOVE the video. I think it's confirmed that I want to wreck dive for sure. Not sure about penetration but, I definitely want to dive them.

    If you have more videos like this one, with the same quality or better as this one, please post it. Love it.

    Michael
    No sig here.... yet.

  15. #15
    Senior Member Celt5494's Avatar
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    Nothing but Gentlemen............
    MMMMMMMMM..... Beeeeer! -Homer J. Simpson

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