Finnie Mooring and New Barge Update

[Ian]

July 29/09—Tyson Morelli, Jack Skala , Barb and myself went out with Spencer to do some work on the Finnie’s mooring. The mooring was snagged by a freighter a couple of years ago and everything was lost from the block up. The rebar had been pulled right out of the concrete. Since then, the mooring has been attached to the windlass. When I last saw the block last fall, it was sitting on what I thought was a hard bottom in the middle of a crater. The plan was to go down and dig under each end of the block and slip on two choker chains that Jean- Francois Pelletier had welded up for us.

Spencer and Tyson did the first dive, each descending with a small shovel, gardening trawl and 10’ of chain. After locating the block, they found that it was on a sharp angle with only the top edge of one side sticking out of the bottom. After digging for several minutes, they decided that the low corner must be almost 5’ below the mud bottom and gave the attempt up as a lost cause. All was not lost, however, as they did have a few minutes left to do a tour of the wreck that neither had been on before. They returned to the surface with everything they had taken down.

Jack and I were already geared up awaiting their return. Our job was to have been to remove the chain from the windlass and place it back on the block and to attach a new bottom tag line. As it turned out, we had a short pleasure dive.

At this point, we will leave the line attached to the windlass, as there is no sign of any damage being done.

The upside to the whole day was that we all had a fair bit of air left so we stopped off at the mystery barge on the way back. When Steve Rodgers and I dove it for the first time last fall, neither of us had a tape measure but we had both guessed the dimensions as about 115’x20-22’. It’s a wooden barge with a sulphur cargo and my research last fall had narrowed it down to about 5 possibilities. Over the winter, I narrowed it down to just two and was hoping today’s measurements would let us identify it. Not to be the case. Our original estimate of length was way off and the barge is 35’ longer than we thought. She’s very narrow for her length, at only 21’10 x 152’. She is wood with a total of 7 holds with sort of a reverse V bow. It’s almost like pontoons, with the outside edges extending 5’ beyond the center. Jack and I ran a tape down the length and got about 40 measurements. Spencer and Tyson swam the length taking about the same number of measurements abeam. Should give me enough information to do up a basic drawing.

I’ll post it when I get it done.

[Jean f]

yeah Ian that the way i found the block back in 2007 . the last time I went to blow the moring up on it. We would need to get a new block out to it .

Let me know next time you heading out to that new barge i would love to dive it. Do you still think its the america scout or sailor ?