I’m lucky, I don’t really have to play hooky to dive on weekdays, since I make my own hours. Diving “off-peak” is great - get up later, let the sun rise, no traffic, no crowds, no race with a hundred speedy little fishing boats to find out the spot you wanted is occupied. My advice to anyone who can is, work on Saturday, and go diving on Wednesday !

Mike Moore’s gang filled the boat with six divers. In addition, we had Captain Tony, Renee, and the hardest-working mate in the business, Tommy Donetz. The first stop was the Logwood. The visibilty continues to be better than usual for spring, 15-20 feet. The wreck produced quite a few lobsters and fish. There were also a lot of eggy lobsters, and empty “molts” lying around. I noticed for the first time the tree stumps that still remain from the vessel’s cargo.

The next stop was the “Blue Boat”. This is a smallish ( maybe 50ft ) fiberglass commercial fisherman in about 100 feet of water. No one has an id for it, but it is fairly recent, in the last 10 or 20 years I would guess. This wreck didn’t produce much that I saw, and I felt like six of us were stepping on each other on such a small site. Nonetheless, I overstayed, and racked up a bit more deco than I would have liked. All of us guys admired a large Monkfish near the stern, but didn’t mess with it. Renee went in to pull the hook, and took it with her knife. There’s probably some kind of lesson there.

After that, we spent some time trying to hook into a rock formation, with no luck. It seemed to be there on the depth finder, but the diver said otherwise. Sometimes that’s just how it goes. After the previous one, I was going to skip that dive anyway - not getting any younger. We eventually set off for the Mohawk instead. With the extra surface time, I decided to go too, and Renee said she had had enough for the day, so I sat out a little longer, and pulled the hook.

That had to be the nicest dive I’ve ever done on that wreck. As you might know, the Mohawk is about an acre of scrap metal. Usually, all you can do is run a reel and grub around in the bottom. Today, the visibility had to be 30 feet. For 25 minutes I just swam high and free over the whole wreck, from end to end. Seeing the entire intact bow made me see the wreck in a whole new way. For the first time I got the sense that this was actually a ship and not a junk yard. After an unworried swim back to my blinking strobes, not far from the boilers, I undid the hook and rode it in the current down most of the length of the wreck again. I wish I had brought the camera. Next time.

Back at the dock, I could hardly believe the pile of fish and lobsters that came out of the boat’s cooler. I thought I did ok, but I was clearly not pulling my weight with this group !