So there we were at 6:30am at the dock at Seville Harbor in Pensacola, FL. We were greeted by Eric, also known as Oriskany Divemaster, he is, by far, the best guide for the Oriskany, as he is to my knowledge, the only Professional DM for this wreck. We dove with Blue Water Adventures on the Y'Knot. Booked with Dive Pros for $150. Eric's services were $50, and well worth it, IMO.
We left the dock at 7am heading for the big O'. About 1 hour and 15 minutes later we arrive on site, there was 1 boat there already, so we had our pick of where we wanted to anchor! To our amazement, Eric freedove down to the ship to tie in the boat, I believe it was 62' and he was down for 2-3 minutes. He came up, we got our spiffy dive briefing and we all began gearing up.
Now, on to the report:
Dive #1:9:30am on the dot, I hit the water, back roll off the side of the boat, to perfection, per the DM. There was a stiff surface current, but there was a line driftin 20' behind the boat, so I snagged it and held on until the rest of the boat was unloaded. I looked down several times to see if I could see the boat, as I've heard you can see it from the surface, but, that day atleast, I was unable to see her from the surface!
Finally, everyone was in the water, so we headed to the front of the boat then down the line! 45' hit and there was, 20' below me! MASSIVE! The visibility however, was nowhere near the pictures I have seen, I'm guessing it was in the 30-45 foot range, there was alot of particles in the water that just made it impossible to see in some directions.
Before I knew it we were down to 90' looking around, there were quite a few fish on the boat considering it hasn't been down all that long. The boat is also covered with very small sea life as well, which I enjoy alot myself
There was one guy in our group that had a desire to touch the deck, so the group waited for him to touch down and he came right back up.
We were scanning the side of the ship at about 90' for quite some time, shining our light into windows, busted holes in the ship, and doorways. If your a techie, penetration on this wreck would be awesome I'm sure!
We made our way to what seemed to be some control area of the ship. Eric went in, so, I followed. We were inside the room, a small overhead, which had windows all around. I got stuck.. because someone kicked me in the head and it pinned me up against the wall. No biggie, Andy freed me from the beast and I swam out safe and sound!
We made our way around the tower atleast 2 times and I wanted to atleast get in a 100'+ dive so I dropped down to 106' for about 30 and headed back up. There is alot to look at on this ship, I just don't know the names of all the sections. We did however, swim about 40' from the ship and look at her to see how massive it really is. All I could see was, the tower (since the vis wasn't so great), but I'll tell you, the tower itself has 4-6 stories of rooms to it!
At this point, a few in our group were getting low on air, so we headed to the line to do our stop, I obviously, stayed at the bottom of the pack, because I'm not an air hog and can do that
Ended up with 0:24 bottom time at 63 degrees. Max depth 106'.
Dive #2:Entered the water at 11:08am, we dove the same areas of the ship, as this is a recreational dive and our depth was limited for obvious reasons. This time, we did stay closer to the ship so that we could see just about everything inside the nooks and crannies! I saw alot of what I would consider to be tropicals, as they were multi colored.
Eric led us at 90' into a doorway, which lead to the left and then had another door that led back outside the ship, everyone went through here, as he is a good DM and knows that people want to experience what the 'advanced' divers experience atleast once, especially on this dream dive!
Bottom time on this dive was 0:27m, 63 degree water temps, and max depth was 108', oops!
