SETTING MOORINGS WRITTEN BY CAPT. DALE BENNETT

6/10/2009 by Capt. Darrick Lorenzen | 0 Comments | 407 Views

Attached is the first installment in our new feature which will highlight guest bloggers under “Captain’s Blog”. Captain Dale Bennett has written an interesting piece on setting moorings at shipwreck sites and the importance of maintaining a good watch by both recreational and commercial marine vessels. Noted in the blog is the Fin Seeker, a fishing boat that sunk last year in Lake Michigan off of Waukegan Illinois. Captain Dale has written an article about the sinking and the dramatic Coast Guard rescue. This installment will soon be Published under "Featured Articles". It is a very interesting and exciting story!

Setting Moorings

 
Last Saturday morning, the beginning of the Memorial Day weekend, found me at Waukegan Harbor.  The weather was beautiful and I was meeting some of my crew to go out on Enterprise, my charter boat, for an early season shake down cruise.  I had some new crew members to introduce to the boat.  Brett, Joe, Andy and Frank met me at the boat at about 9:00 in the morning and, after a short orientation, we set out south from Waukegan Harbor.  We planned to do a little training, get used to the boat and make sure the moorings on some of the wrecks that we go to are in serviceable shape.  The wreck of the S.S. Wisconsin is our most popular wreck but since I had heard that last week there were two useable moorings in place on Wisconsin, we headed first to the wreck of Lady Elgin. 
 
Brett took the helm out to the first wreck site and Joe made the first dive.  We located Lady Elgin’s boilers and Joe went down and floated the mooring by adding air to the buoys that support the mooring line.  We went on to Lady Elgin’s bow section that lies about a half-mile south of the boilers.  We floated that site’s mooring in the same manner and all the divers made a short dive for fun.  From there we turned north and headed to the wreck of Fin Seeker.
 
Fin Seeker was a 39 foot fishing boat that sank almost one year ago.  It is a fiberglass boat so I was not sure that would be in the same place it was last summer.  Fiberglass boats are not that heavy and they sometimes can move during the winter storms.  There were several boats fishing in the area as we motored over the wreck site and dropped a marker buoy as a reference.  We started doing a search pattern around the marker buoy while looking for the wreck on our depth sounder.  While we were doing our search, one of the fishing boats made a trolling pass directly at our marker buoy.  I moved Enterprise out of her path and watched, surprised, as she proceeded with six trolling lines deployed, directly for our buoy.  I had to hail her on the loudspeaker and point out the buoy before she reacted and abruptly changed course.  So close did she come that I was actually surprised when she did not snag the buoy.  I wonder why it is that so many fishing boats cannot watch the water in front of them and avoid such things.  I have given up on trying to keep a mooring on the Grain Barge because of the vast amount of fishing gear that it accumulates. 
 
We did locate Fin Seeker in the same place she was last year and we repaired the mooring, extending the end and putting a new float on it.
 
The next day, Sunday, we had a morning charter for a dive on S.S. Wisconsin.  The weather was not ideal (2 to 4 footers) but we had all very experienced divers so we headed out.  When we got to the wreck site, we found Captain Dan on Lockwood Explorer already there.  He hailed us by radio with the news that there were no moorings visible.  He was motoring over the wreck, hoping to spot one of the sub-surface mooring buoys.  We did the same for a short time.  Because of the high waves, the logistics and time it would take to get a new mooring placed I decide to call the dive and we turned Enterprise back for home.  Captain Dan remained and he called me about three hours later to say that his crew had been able to re-float one of the moorings.  He said that they had found the mooring line intact but sunk under the weight of fishing gear snagged on it.  When will boaters learn that it is to their advantage, as well as every other mariner, to keep a proper watch?