Patrick McHugh

Charlie McGurr reef
Type:
artificial reef, tugboat
Built:
1951, Matton Shipyard, Cohoes NY USA as Edward Matton
Specs:
( 85 x 23 ft )
Sponsor:
Ocean Wreck Divers
Sunk:
Tuesday September 12, 2000 - Axel Carlson Artificial Reef
GPS:
40°02.473' -73°59.599'
Depth:
80 ft, top at 60 ft

This must have been a very decrepit old hulk of a canal tugboat when it was selected for use as a reef. The hull shows rust damage far in excess of what could have occurred in such a short time on the bottom, and the whole thing just looks beat-up. It is very similar to the Spartan, with the engine room roof cut off, and the engine removed, and the movable pilot house lowered. The washout under the stern is cavernous, with a large rudder and propeller.

Charlie McGurr reef
Charlie McGurr reef
The pilothouse. The spray-painted name Charles J. McGurr, for whom the reef is named, is barely visible, soon to be overgrown.

The interior of the ship is easily explored. The wheelhouse can be reached from the inside by squeezing down a narrow companionway. The vessel was completely stripped, but many of the interior fittings, including restored lamps and portholes, can now be purchased from www.TugBoatBrass.com.

Two-story wheelhouse

Built in 1951, by Matton Shipyard of Cohoes, New York (hull #301) as the Edward Matton. She was then acquired by the Morania Oil Tanker Corporation where she was renamed Morania No. 9. The tug was later sold and renamed Patrick J. McHugh.

tugboatinformation.com


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The "Regulator Tax" and the Buddy System

You should probably just skip this section

The scuba industry has successfully convinced the diving public that annual servicing of regulators is essential for your safety. Actually, at $50-$100 per regulator per year, annual servicing of regulators is far more essential to their bottom line than it is to your safety. Am I so cheap that I would risk my life to save less than $100? Not really.

All this is mixed up in business, economics, liability, and the fallacious buddy system. As you know, in the buddy system your buddy is theoretically your backup emergency air supply underwater, insuring not only against out-of-air situations, but also against equipment failures, and therefore you need only one tank and regulator. In keeping with this theory, you are sold a wholly inadequate breathing system with no built-in redundancy at all. Then, to try to reduce the inherent danger of diving with such a system, or perhaps just the legal liability in promoting it, you are then "required" to have it "serviced" at least once a year, whether it needs it or not. In fact, this is the icing on the cake for the industry, since such servicing is far more profitable than sales! The real purpose of all this is to lower the entry cost of diving by several hundred dollars, expand the customer base as rapidly as possible, and maximize revenues, and all this is done at the expense of true safety. In an industry that professes to be obsessed with safety at all costs, this hypocrisy is almost beyond belief. ( I'm not saying your local dive shop is evil, but he'll go right along with the industry-standard because everyone else does, and he needs to make a living. )

Printed from njscuba.net