Diving Lake Michigan

[fishchaser]

Dean,

Thanks a lot for your insight, as well as looking up that charted wreck. I suppose with so many other (undestroyed) wrecks in the vacinity, no one cares about the shallow ones. I've heard there are many shallow wrecks in Door County as well, but some of them look like giant toothpicks due to the surge action and rolling around on the bottom.

I will probably start my wreck diving by taking the PADI specialty course through my LDS in Kenosha. I'm not sure what wrecks they visit for this class, but I know they like diving the Wisconsin a lot, but not much bottom time due to its depth, right at the limit of recreational, and no nitrox. By going on the charter with them, I'll pay special attention to how they do things, and will try to duplicate their professional courtesy when I take my boat out.

Back to the GPS coordinates, I have looked around, and seems like the best source is the Wisconsin Historical Society Shipwreck Database but their data is suspect in some places. As far as I can tell, their coordinates are listed in dd.mm.ss (such as the Willie listed at N 43.01.36), but then some of their data has seconds in excess of 59, such as the Dredge 906 listed as lat N 42.57.92, and the Norlond as lon W 87.48.69. I don't know what to make of that. An error of 1 minute in lat is as much as 3652 feet off, or 0.69 st. miles. That's a lot of area to be crusing around looking for a bouy (if you're lucky) or watching the graph to find a lump on the bottom. Anyone care to share their confirmed lat/lon?