As a kid my two favorite holidays were Christmas and Halloween. I loved watching horror movies, but not the slasher & totally predictable BS they make today or really crappy movies like "The Cave," but rather the well-written gothic ones about haunted houses, curses, witches, ghosts, etc. My favorite classical authors are Edgar Allen Poe and Ambrose Bierce. I'm also an explorer by nature. I started snorkeling as a child and hiking through forests. Being underwater or in the woods were my two favorite places. I like wrecks because they provide that perfect blend of mystery, history, intrigue, challenge, and danger, plus they hold a romantic and even a gothic flavor at times. Going inside the dark and twisted labyrinth of a shipwreck is much like exploring a castle, an ancient ruin, an Egyptian tomb, or anything else you can explore and never know what you'll find around the next turn. It's also a chance to remember those whose lives few recall. We often pass cemetaries in our day to day lives and see people visiting the graves of loved ones or famous people. As divers, we have the special privilege of being able to see and appreciate the ships that were home to crews that perished in maritime disasters and remember them and have a greater understanding of their importance on shaping history through trade, warfare, transportation, and how shipping changed and contributed to the world we live in today.
It's awesome to float weightless and relaxed through all of this, knowing that you're risking your life to see a part of the world few people ever will. Those of us who penetrate are playing on game day and not sitting home as an armchair adventurer living vicariously through others. I really enjoy intact wrecks and my favorites are big wrecks in shallow water because you have far more time to explore inside them. I haven't always run line either so it's been thrilling at times to just get lost in the maze and have the high risk challenge of having to find your way back out. But, that was young man's foolishness as a teen and when in college. Now, I pride myself on being safe and I've just discovered a far better way to stage bottles inside wrecks as of two weeks ago. It involves gunracking bottles through an angle on the line so they are held far more securely and out of the way. I stumbled on it by accident while making a high to low tie off and I wanted to leave bottles inside the wreck. It worked so well that I'm going to have to teach it to all my students.
Just like any other avenue in diving, wreck diving can be as safe or as dangerous as you want to make it.
My ideal wreck dive would be to enter an ocean liner as it was flooding and sinking in a race to recover valuables (for myself), as the passengers were being evacuated, before it took the dive to the bottom. I think I just became flagged by the Dept. of Homeland Security and I won't be allowed in the same proximity as any ship that begins with "Q" and "E".
Trace
