This 300+' dredge was enroute to the scrap yard in Texas
when her hull gave out in lumpy seas on December 7th, 1987. She lies in about
175' if you look for a hole but there's plenty to see on the decks at 140' to 145'.
Penetration opportunities abound but the old girl requires a bit of caution as there
are a few sections that aren't as stable as they should be.
of bottom time and nearly 70 minutes runtime.
bottom which isn't bad at all for December. The profile was planned at 30 minutes
on 21/35 trimix and we used 50% nitrox starting at 70' for decompression.
Here's my favorite charter for diving the Hydro Atlantic - click here
with 50' viz. We did some light penetration into the wreck and had a
planned bottom time of 25 minutes and used 50% nitrox for deco with
planned runtime of 60 minutes. The only problem on this dive was my
back-up mask I was using (I lost my primary mask on Memorial Day) and
it was leaking badly. I think I cleared it 100 times on this dive....
Avid Diver Charters, June 5, 2005 - We got to the Hydro Atlantic about 930am and
did just over 25 minutes BT. She's a 300' dredge that was enroute to the scrap yard when
she sank while under tow off Boca Raton (rat's mouth!!) in 170' of water outside the inlet.
I saw the most beautiful FL regal sea goddess nudibranch on this dive.
http://snipurl.com/felb (for reference)
Outside of that, this wreck is very colorful and has a ton of growth. It's got as much
fishing line draped on it as any wreck I've dove in this area too though.
Total runtime of the dive was 56 minutes.
