It’s been just over six months since the USS Vandenberg was sunk. Our artificial reef is coming along nicely- not everything is stark white any more, but covered in growth at this point. We were out snorkeling and freediving recently, and the vis was about 80 feet. No current, and hardly any wind. Perfect Key West snorkeling conditions! Here are a few photos.
- You can see the growth
This guy blows bubbles with a net draped between two large sticks. He also makes bubbles with a long cord tied to two long sticks. Really big, beautiful bubbles! His dog circles the crowd wearing short shorts and collects dollar bills.
Fort Jefferson at Dry Tortugas
For locals in Key West, August and September are the quiet months, when fewer tourists are around, and even some year-rounders pack up and leave the island. It’s deep hurricane season, and some restaurants close up for a month. This is when local businesses are offering deep discounts on everything from Key West bracelets to Key West tour tickets. One of the best deals is the day trip to Dry Tortugas on Yankee Freedom. In summertime, it’s half price for locals. An amazing deal! I know someone who goes several times a year, during summer, and camps.
Dry Tortugas is actually seven remote islands, 68 nautical miles west of Key West. The National Park covers about 100 square miles and protects not only the island habitats but also the marine world that surrounds them. The largest island, Garden Key, hold historic Fort Jefferson, which you can tour and explore during your four and a half hours on the island before your ferry takes you back to Key West.
The ferry ticket buys you breakfast, lunch, water all day long, snorkel gear, a 40-minute guided tour of Fort Jefferson, and an excellent naturalist who rides along, giving talks on the way out, setting up a telescope on the beach to view birds on the other Dry Tortugas islands, and answering any questions that come her way.
Just after the explosions
Well, it’s over…the Vandenberg is sunk and today crews are out putting mooring balls on it and checking it. We saw a crew of Navy guys loading up one of the party fishing boats at Garrison Bight, which they must have chartered to take them out to the site. They had brand new shiny moorings with them.
The morning of the sinking, so many boats were heading out at 9am the seas were choppy all the way out to the site, from so many wakes crashing into each other. What a ride. One guy took out a jet ski! There were little boats, too, so they must have been totally covered in salt water by the time they got out there. We heard you would have to stay a mile away, but seems like we were a lot closer than that. Most of the boats came from east of Key West, from up the Keys or from Stock Island, looked like. There were some VIP boats allowed to go closer, most infamously the Key West Express. This behemoth ferry holding VIPS blocked the view of dozens of boats, according to the radio. Salty language filled the airwaves on Channel 16, minutes before the detonation. After it was all over, a very disappointed captain got on the horn and gave his feelings, “Key West Express, you pieceof s*%t”.
After the flare warning, there were some loud explosive noises, then dark gray smoke poured out of the ship. The smoke obscured the ship, and suddenly there was no ship. The sinking took less than two minutes. It was more like a magic trick, where something large disappears in a cloud of smoke, and less like the slow sinking of large ships you see in movies. Usually, sinking isn’t intentional. It happens when the hull is breached in one or several spots, but those holes are smaller than the ones caused by explosives. Intentional sinkings go fast and the ship stays upright.
This is big, really big. A 528 foot ship will be sunk south of the Cayman Wreck this month, to become the world’s second largest artificial reef. It’s the former troup transport ship from World War II, the USS Vandenberg. Everyone is excited, and here are some pictures of the ship, which is now docked at Truman Waterfront while workers clean out debris and make it ready for sinking.
