Cornelius Hargraves 7-3-15

What better way to celebrate Independence Day and our Freedoms than to go diving all weekend.  My dive weekend kicked off with a dive to the Cornelius Hargraves on the Dina Dee.  On my way to the boat I saw the most beautiful red sunrise that had me in such awe that I quickly parked and ran up to the beach to take in it for a few minutes.  What a tranquil moment it was for me and it filled me with such peace.  I arrived at the dock to a fully loaded boat, Ahh Haaa...here are all the divers, it has been a long time since I was on such a loaded boat and it was nice to see.  We were destined to the Viscaya but when we arrived there was a fishing boat on it so we went next door to the Cornelius Hargraves which sits in 80' of water.

                                         
 The Cornelius Hargraves was a four mastered schooner that collided with the Viscaya on October 30, 1890.  Schooners are one of my favorite types of wrecks to dive and I am always on the lookout for  a dead eye..the one artifact that I yearn to find.

Since the boat was loaded, I opted to wait it out, let all the divers go in, and I would go in last so that it would be less crowded on the bottom.  Once I splashed the ever present pea soup green water with limited visibility remained on top but it opened up nicely to about 20' of visibility on the bottom.  We were tied into the stern at the highest piece of the wreckage.  I swam around the high piece and noted the abundance of sand dollars.  This year seems to be a year where they are in abundance for some reason.  Then I chose a line of ribbing to swim down in search of anything that resembles a dead eye. This wreck however, is mostly filled in with sand so without some major digging, there would be no dead eyes for me.  I swam down three different sections of ribbing and saw a ton of sea bass, tautog, and a lone lobster claw.  I did not see a single flounder.

Such vibrant colors!

The bottom temperature was 52 degree and towards the end of my dive I got quite a chill.  So happy I had my heated vest to warm me up!!  I ended up with a 45 minute bottom time and shot quite a few pictures.  Since there was particulate matter in the water, a lot of the pictures were not crisp.  I spent time taking pictures of the wooden structure of the wreck, I think that it is sooo cool to see the wood still intact even though its been under the ocean since 1890 (125 years)!  That is a long time.  There was quite a few sea  bass speared, one flounder, and lobsters too.  Captain Roger got a real nice lobster!!!

I decided not to do a second dive since I knew I was going offshore on the 4th to dive a deeper wreck. I do like these Friday dives...nothing like leaving at 7AM and being back in by 12 ish...It leaves plenty of time to still get some work done after the dive!!

The weather kicked up and blew out my 4th of July dive but, there is always next weekend!!

Happy 4th of July!!!