The Acara lies 1,500 to 1,800 ft offshore, in 25 ft of water. She is quite broken up, with wreckage spread over a wide area. Still, there are one or two sections with 10 feet or so of relief. Brass fittings and other artifacts are still being found.
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Also known as the Italian Wreck, the Ajace was sunk at 4:00 AM on March 4, 1881. At the time, she was carrying a small cargo of scrap railroad iron and 2,040 empty petroleum barrels. While bound for New York from Belgium, the Ajace was caught in one of the worst storms of the year and ran aground off Rockaway beach. Many sources report that Captain F. Morice, seeing that all hope was lost, opened his private supply of brandy and shared it with his crew. Soon after, the crew became badly beaten from the pounding of the waves and drunk from the brandy.
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The visibility on this site varies. Average is 10-12ft. This site offers two wrecks which lie in 25 fsw. A British WWI two-man reconnaissance submarine and an old wooden barge. They are both within swimming distance from each other. The marine life is fair around these wrecks. There are a few car tires between the two wrecks and you may find an occasional lobster hiding inside them. To locate the barge take a compass heading of 330 degrees from the pilings located on the east side of Greenwich Ave. It takes about 50 kick cycles to reach the wreck. To get to the submarine take a compass heading of 30 degrees from the same pilings. This can be reached in about 30 kick cycles. Both of the wrecks are not intact but make for a good dive.
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Dozens of jetties up and down the coast have been cut-though at the base like this one, making them inaccessible to fishermen, but not divers !
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The dive site is between 8th and 9th Streets (marker at upper-left)
Atlantic Beach bridge at right, inlet and ocean to the left (west)
In Queens borough, New York City!
East Rockaway Inlet is also known as Deb's Inlet, while New Yorkers optimistically, or perhaps ironically, call the Beach 8th Street dive site Almost Paradise. (Actually the name of a long-defunct dive shop there.) It is also referred to as Beach 9th Street. If that's not enough names for the same place, the waterway is officially called Reynold's Channel. So I suppose you could make six different entries in your logbook.
Beach 8th Street is the only part of the inlet that is accessible to divers, the rest is either private property or state park land where diving is prohibited. You can zoom, pan, and maximize the map above. The inlet is off to the left, marshland to the right, and Kennedy Airport above.
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