Day #6. Diving the Wexford.

Well here we were--a year later but going out on a charter boat, the Sylvia Anne, owned and piloted by Captain Gary Venet, formerly of Macomb County Sheriff's Dept. (Hell, I knew he was my kind of guy from the first minute I shook his hand.) We motored out of Port Sanilac onto Lake Huron and after about an hour and a half, moored over the bow of the packet freighter Wexford, lost along with her entire crew of 22 during the great storm of 1913.



Undiscovered until 2000, the 250 foot freighter now sits upright and intact in about 80 feet of water and we'd lucked out in that the weather was great and water visibility was fantastic. As Aaron and I dropped down the line onto the bow, I was amazed to see the Wexford's massive steel prow materialize out of the murk. Her anchors still hang in her hawsepipes, and over the bow, her open and empty cargo holds beckon.



As the picture shows, the amidships pilothouse is mostly gone but the hull is complete and intact. On this dive, we entered the forward holds and swam around a bit, making it as far astern as the boilers. Returning to the bow, we exited the water. Our next dive took us down onto the stern and this time we made it forward to the bow and swam in and out of the superstructure and around the boilers before finally ascending to the surface again. It was a great dive on a real piece of history that was only discovered relatively recently. View some other Wexford photos here and here and read the Shekel Blog about our dive here.

(Please note that in his version, he had us arriving at the dock in plenty of time. He neglects to mention that this was only because I took over driving and ran the two-lanes at a more expedient 70-80 mph to make up for his earlier rather sedate 35-40 mph pace.)