Straits of Mackinaw Trip Report

[Omicron]

A whole pile of us had a great time diving the Straits this weekend. If you've got a chance to make it up there sometime this year, go for it. The diving is spectacular. We dove with Abyss Dive Charters, and I can't say enough good about them. Their boats are great, the captains are great - a top notch setup.

We had 70+ degree weather, calm winds, sunny and flat seas. You couldn't ask for better.

On our first day, we dove the Eber Ward and the Maitland. The Eber Ward was fun - the mushroom anchor was definitely unique, and the wreck was a very fun and easy penetration. It was a great way to kick off the weekend.

Our second dive of the day was the Maitland. A neat wreck, but it wasn't extremely spectacular - nothing about it stands out in my mind really. It's not that it wasn't a great shipwreck - it was - but nothing too unique about it.

On day two, we started off with a dive on the Minneapolis - this is another great wreck. The boilers were definitely cool and it was a lot of fun poking around in all of the holes in the wreck.

Our last dive was on the Sandusky. The famed figurehead was neat to see, and I really liked the big anchors on it and all of the deadeyes along the railing. This was the perfect dive to end the weekend - great viz, fairly shallow (70-80 feet) and it was nice and bright and sunny. We had a lot fun playing around on this wreck - a few safety reels were unknowingly gathered from some people

Bottom temps were typically right around 44 degrees. There were some slightly noticeable thermoclines - the Sandusky had one right about about 70 feet or so. I think it was about 52 right above the thermocline. Viz was easily 30-40 feet on all of the wrecks. It was a great time!

I'm sure Chris and Todd will jump in here too - they were on a different boat up there with us, and saw a few different wrecks as well.

[Chris H]

We had some nice dives too.

We dove the William Young and the Cedarville Saturday, and the Eber Ward and the Sandusky on Sunday. Just under an hour of total run time on both the Young and the Eber Ward. Nice dives.