www.downtoolong.com

It is my great pleasure to announce the launching of downtoolong.com.

The new site should be a great improvement, and I hope to make it more than a blog, with more content, and (hopefully) more useful features. The blog of course will be continuously updated.

I was going to wait until construction was complete, but what the hell, I figure it's better to get feedback early on, so please, check it out, let me know what you think and if there is anything you'd like to see, and most importantly of all update your bookmarks ;-)

www.downtoolong.com

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The Independence does Long Island

Today, Team Independence headed off Long Island to dive the USS SAN DIEGO (almost) and the OREGON. With the weather acting up, our offshore plans were diverted to the north where we could tuck in the lee of Long Island and take advantage of the opportunity to visit some wrecks we don't normally get to. It was an all crew, all CCR trip, consisting of the usual suspects... Capt Dan, Frankie Pellegrino, Richie Kohler, Bill and Ginny Trent, Dave Oldham, Dan Martinez, and myself.

Our first stop was the USS SAN DIEGO which was an armored cruiser that sank in 110 fsw after hitting a mine in 1918. Danny and I were to tie in and the visibility was not that great. I found the bottom when I crashed into it. With only a foot or two of visibility we called it and headed 8 miles further east to the OREGON.

The visbility on the OREGON was much better at 10-15 feet. We were tied into the large winch near the bow. I ran my reel out a ways and found the remains of the kitchen which is indentifiable by the glazed bricks laying about. Coming back I found one of the many empty portholes was not empty and had a nice brass backing plate. It was still real solid and what interested me more was what lay inside. There was a piece of china and some other oblong obeject that looked interesting. I thought I might be able to reach the goodies so I gave it a shot. I inverted myself and stuffed myself up to the shoulder into the porthole and managed to grab object number 1. I pulled it out and when the surge and current cleared the black smoke I laughed at myself. It was an old axe that I assume someone working on the porthole had dropped inside. At this point Danny found me and when I showed him I noticed the china got lifted up when I pulled out the axe and was sticking up and easily reachable. I grabbed it and it was just a broken shard. I was getting cold at this point so I left.