It was a good time for calm seas early in the week. The Good Fortune took advantage of this to do some scanning of an area of interest. We had a special guest pilot for the SeaSearcher as we scanned a large area in between where we discovered the two wooden features. Just when we were about to scan another area of interest, we determined there was a large barge that had parked itself right over the top of our planned spot. No worries though. It’s just the beach reclamation barge and will be gone in a few days. It has been moving slowly up and down the beach all winter. They are not taking sand from our area, but it is pumping sand onto our beaches from the cape area. After a bit of piloting, Kyle took a trip out on the Discovery to help them with some bottom exploration as they work multiple target sites. By this time, the seas were not so friendly. But, they continued to explore until the sun started setting.
The next few days were a little rougher. Here you can see the Good Fortune heading out to the site as well as one of the divers prepping to go in the water. They wanted to search an area where they got both a magnetometer and a sonar hit at a shallow depth. The divers descended and began to search in the target area. Visibility was not bad for what was raging above. When we explore, we first use a metal detector and then use a sea scooter to gently blow the top layer away to expose any target find if it is shallow. Within about 8’ of the drop location, they uncovered a 4’ long iron spike buried just below the surface. As spikes go, this is about as big as they get. This is the kind of spike that would have been used to hold large hull sections together. It is being examined in the Wet Storage Facility now and we will let you know what they determine. From this spike, we may be able to determine beam size and approximate use.