Munising - Alger Preserve

[Omicron]

Got to go dive Alger Preserve in Munising this weekend. Me, Al, George, my girlfriend Tina and Al's girlfriend Vicki all went and camped on the Munising bayshore and dove some great wrecks.

Our first morning out was a little frustrating, as we were expecting the wrecks to be buoyed and we didn't have coords for the wrecks. The wrecks hadn't been buoyed yet we were a little frustrated with that. We went back to camp and dug up the coordinates for the Smith Moore out of Chris Kohl's book The Great Lakes Diving Guide. Lets just say his coordinates aren't completly accurate. We then went back to Pete Lindquists shop and lo and behold, there were the buoys on his dock. He gave us VERY good sighting directions as well as coordinates to the Smith Moore.

With accurate directions we found the Smith Moore in short order on our depthfinder and dropped anchor and marker buoy. Tina and I had a very enjoyable dive on the wreck even though the viz was only around 15' or so. George and Al shot a lift bag on the buoy rope and we buoyed the wreck when we came up from the dive. A very nice dive!

Next was the Stephen M Selvick. We went out a little farther and used our GPS to find the wreck. We made a couple of passes and we quickly found the "lump" on the bottom that was the Selvick. Anchors away and Tina and I were once again the first down the anchor line to the wreck. We had a LOT of fun playing around with all the tools and hardware that are scattered around the lake bottom near the stern of the wreck. We were playing drums on the rocks with a couple of bolts! We dove the wreck, penetrated the pilot house and watched a huge burbot hide underneath the wreck. George and Al came down the anchor line and I was going to join them in penetrating the wreck, however my dive light died.

That night we dove the abandoned pier behind the Munising high school - saw some huge carp, lots of crayfish and a couple of yellow perch. A fun dive though - I feel like I'm cruising through a pine plantation on that pier....very neat.

The next day (Sunday) we took off for the Bermuda. Tina and I dove the Bermuda while George, Al and Vicki freedove/snorkeled the wreck. I like this wreck because you can really get up close to the rudder and the rudder control on the stern, and you can swim through the cargo holds in this wreck pretty easily. A fun wreck as usualy.

Next, we took off over to Miners Castle. We were going to snorkle near the cliffs in that area, but Tina forgot her snorkle, and we were still in drysuits....so we just threw our scuba units back on and dove the area for a half hour. Had lots of fun just fooling around in shallow (~10 feet) water and we dug up a lot of quarters and a buffalo head nickel from 1906.

Overall, it was a GREAT weekend with some AWESOME diving. The only regret of the weekend was that we couldn't spend more time in such a beautiful area with good friends.

Thanks again Al and Vicki for the trip!!