November 16-22, 2003

By Heather Knowles

The Bianca C trip was the result of a crazy idea born at the 2003 Boston Sea Rovers show. Hanging out and talking with our pal Lee Livingston, Dave and I discovered that he and his wife Marge were really interested in diving the wreck of the Bianca C. So were we – its been on my list for a while and Dave had been there many years before and was eager to return. Interestingly, Dave and I had just bumped into Evelyn Dudas who was planning a trip there for the fall. She handed us a stack of flyers and said to let her know. Dave, Lee and I laughed about how great it would be to dive the Empress of Ireland, the Andrea Doria and the Bianca C all in the same year – completing a tour of the three big world-class passenger liners sunk along the Eastern Seaboard. We ran back over to Evie and told her she could count the four of us in.

The season whipped by at an astonishing rate – and we did some great diving along the way. First the Empress back in June. The conditions were outstanding with moderate current, good weather and decent visibility. Out of 14 planned dives, we got 12. The Andrea Doria, as always, was a little bit more of a nail-biter. The weather had not been good and a blow out seemed probable. Heavy wind and seas were undoing most trips and those that made it were hampered by extreme current and poor visibility, in addition to the seas. Our trip ran but we were beat up badly on the overnight run out. In the end, we managed 1 1/2 out of the three days planned, pulling off a few arduous dives on the wreck and recovering a few planks of teakwood to boot. With two out of three down, the Bianca C was within sight – we felt good about making it, especially since barring a hurricane, the weather in Grenada, West Indies aka the Caribbean is almost always good.

The Bianca C is often referred to as the “Titanic of the Caribbean” – it is the largest wreck dive in the Caribbean and truly a wreck diver’s wreck. The ship was last owned and operated by the Costa line but her story began long before that. She was built in 1939 at a yard called La Ciotat on the French South Coast between Marseille and Toulon. She was christened the Marechal Petain but was launched before completion, which was most likely due to threats resulting from the war. Indeed, while en route being towed to Port Bouc in June of 1944, the German’s sank the incomplete ship.

The wreck was renamed "La Marseillaise", and in 1946 she was raised, towed to Toulon and returned to La Ciotat for completion. There she was then refitted as a cruise ship for Messageries Maritimes of Marseille. At last, the ship was completed in July of 1949 and she successfully made her maiden voyage from Marseilles to Yokohama having only sunk once before!

In 1957 Arosa Line of Panama purchased the ship and renamed her "Arosa Sky ". The Arosa Sky was refitted to accommodate 202 1st class and 1030 2nd class passengers, eliminating a third class altogether. Her maiden voyage under new ownership was from Bremerhaven to New York. However, her career as a with the Arosa Line was short and just two years later in 1959 the Arosa Sky was sold to G. Costa du Genoa, an Italian who ran a family-owned line, known as the "Linea C". The Arosa Sky was renamed the "Bianca C" after a daughter. The Linea C refurbished the ship and increased the tonnage to 18,427 GT. She ran the Naples - Guaira (Venezuela) route, which involved stops in the Caribbean. The island of Grenada was the last stop on the return leg.

On October 12th 1961 the Bianca C left Italy on what would be her final voyage. On October 22, 1961, while anchored in St. George’s, Grenada, she caught fire after an explosion in her boiler room. The flames spread rapidly throughout the rear portion of the ship and it was clear nothing could be done to stop it. The result of quick action on the part of the crew and with the help of small boats and yachts, nearly all passengers were rescued. Out of 673 passengers, 672 were rescued. Out of that number there were 12 crew who were severely burned and one later died bringing the total number of fatalities to two people.

Upon hearing the news of a burning ship, the British Frigate Londonderry sailed from Puerto Rico to Grenada to provide whatever assistance they could. When they arrived on October 24 they found ship afloat and still burning. They cut the anchor chain and towed the ship out of the harbor, with the intent of beaching the Bianca C on the other side of Point Salines in shallow water. While towing the ship out, the rudders jammed and caused the towing hauser to snap – nothing could be done now. The Londonderry, along with a large portion of the population of Grenada watched the ship sink to the bottom, just a short distance off Grand Anse beach. The ship settled upright in about 165-170’ of water on a sandy plain. Other than the salvage of her propellers in the early 1970s and some brass being recovered and sold for scrap, she was otherwise undisturbed.

Soon enough November rolled around and the timing for our warm-water trip to the wreck could not have been better. Lee, Marge, Dave and I aka “the Boston group” flew down to Philadelphia from Boston to rendezvous with Evie and the Dudas Diving Duds entourage. From there, it was a simple 4 or so hour flight into Grenada. Arriving in Grenada it was very hot and sunny and after moving through customs we were picked up by our cab driver for the week, Selwyn, aka Tony. We were wisked off to the Siesta hotel in two vans crammed with people and dive gear. Once we were checked into our rooms, which were little apartments with, in some cases, the air conditioning and TV cruelly separated into different rooms. Fortunately our AC was located in the bedroom along with the TV. The one wrinkle was the two single beds instead of one King size bed. We went back down to the front desk and asked for a room with a large single bed. They said, “No problem, we’ll set up a King-size bed in your room.” I thought to myself, “How the hell are they going to do that?” Well, when you push two single beds together, apparently that equals a King size bed. Okay.

We made plans to meet in the early morning to head over to the dive shop and get set up. We would only have time for one dive on Sunday given the time needed to organize. We set out for dinner with the group, the first stop on the “Little Shop of Horrors” dining tour was “the Chateau”. To be fair, the food there isn’t really that bad it’s just that I am not into adventure dining. I like to know what I am eating. The food at the Chateau was ok but the real winner there was the “Chateau Surprise” – it was a crepe filled with cinnamon ice cream and smothered in chocolate sauce. It was probably the only thing I ate that didn’t make me feel ill.

Early the next morning we piled into the van and headed over to the dive shop. The first hour was a circus of chickens with their heads cut off running around pulling gear from the shelves, putting tanks together, finding weights, fixing stuff that the airlines had broken when they so carefully hurled our gear into the plane and finally clearing out the recreational reef divers.

Technical diving in Grenada is not popular. The operators are set up mostly for recreational diving and truth be told, they don’t want the tech divers down there. And they can make a lot more money running recreational trips than they can with technical dives, especially given the overhead invested for a shop to be set up for technical diving. They aren’t interested in fishing bodies out of the wreck or adding trimix blending stations into their set ups. At least one operator was pretty clear about that. So, if you’re going to dive the Bianca C, you’re going to have to deal with doing it on air with independent doubles. Large cylinders of O2 are available but they are not cheap. Most operators are not set up to make nitrox, at least not without possibly blowing something up. The compressor pumping our air didn’t have much in the way of filters – and you could tell. For example, in order to make EAN 50, we had to transfill from AL 80s into the stage with O2.

While the decompression is certainly better on trimix compared to long air dives with O2 the conditions are nice enough that narcosis is kept to a minimum. The depth of the wreck is still well within reasonable operational limits of air – the Bianca C sits in about 165-170’ of water, comes up to within 90’ of the surface and most diving is in the 125-150’ range. There are some deeper parts inside but there isn’t necessarily a reason to go that deep.

After our doubles were set up, we were ready to hit the water. We had two AL 80s banded with the OMS travel bands. I was actually quite impressed with the quality of these bands. They were heavy-duty nylon with cam bands and aluminum brackets. They were light and sturdy, two important features. We were careful to break them in before the trip – setting up all of our gear ahead of time and soaking the bands each night and cranking them down on tanks to stretch the nylon. We were also diving our plastic plates to keep the weight down and this worked out nicely. Wearing a 3-mil wet suit and a plastic plate, I only needed 12 pound of weight. I probably could have done with less but when the current is ripping, it is good to be a little heavier in the shallow water.

Loading the boat was interesting. Grand Anse beach is where it all happens in Grenada. Several operators run off the beach. The boats are tied off close to shore with a sand anchor / breaches buoy kind of set up. You wade into the water and pull yourself into the boat. The local boys who work at the shop load all of your gear. They carry your doubles into the water and load them onboard. This is a nice way of doing things especially given that when a ground swell is running, as is typical of the area, rough surf can be rolling in on the beach. With a set of doubles on and your feet sinking into the sand, it can get a little sketchy. Once our gear was onboard, we headed out. The wreck is about a 5-minute boat ride from Grand Anse – the closest point of departure. While in the past trips have run out of True Blue Bay Marina, near the end of the island, most operators are now on Grand Anse, which despite the inconvenience of loading on the beach, is the fastest and most protected place to leave from. Coming out from True Blue, it’s a longer ride and you are exposed for to open sea for a while and have to sometimes slog through choppy seas.

Arriving on the wreck, the current was slack – always nice for a first dive. Like a dinner bell ringing, everyone scrambled to get into the water. We decided to hang back and wait for the masses to clear out. There was no rush, especially since the shorter the interval between divers entering the water, the more congested the 20 and 10 foot stops would be later. We had some advantage in this regard as we were diving VPM-B tables (+2 conservatism, no repetitive considerations, same schedule each dive). With much longer stops beginning around 80 feet, we had less time to spend at 20’ and 10’. Most others on the trip were diving the Nitek III computer and whatever schedule it spit out.

Dave and I hit the water and from about 20-30’ I could see the wreck – the visibility was easily 70 feet on the surface and probably closer to 100’ on the wreck. I was astonished. This was my first real warm water, good vis trip besides North Carolina in ’94 – I actually could just float down to the wreck, still see the line and the wreck at the same time. Amazing. We hit the top of the wreck in 90’ of water and dropped our stage bottles. We were tied in right on top of the bridge, which is still relatively intact, though sunken in some. The entire upper structure has collapsed and all the upper decking is stacked like pancakes and caved into the middle. The wreck is huge and can be quite overwhelming, especially when you peer down the giant hull to glance at the inviting white sand below. The first dive is always kind of check out dive – get down, look around, orient yourself and make sure everything is cool. So we did just that. We swam aft, over the remains of the swimming pool to the break in the wreck. In 1992 a severe winter storm actually tore the stern off and rolled it over on its side. It is really amazing. I couldn’t even imagine what that must have been like when the wreck was literally torn off! We investigated the break and then penetrated the wreck, heading up a companionway along the port side of the ship. We went in about 100 feet, ambient light visible most of the time from the portholes lining the hull.

We were mostly just trying to take it all in and get oriented to the wreck, mapping out the hit list for upcoming dives. With our planned 30-minute bottom time up, we turned the dive and began our ascent. Diving independent doubles was not too bad – I had not dived this way before but it was pretty straightforward. I started the dive breathing off my long hose, right post, as usual and when I hit one third, switched to the other, repeating the process by thirds. The only snag the first day was the weird fills – 2600 psi in one tank and 3200 psi in the other. I was told there would be no math on this vacation….

Back on the boat we headed in and stripped down our gear to re-fill and prep for the next day. We would do two dives a day, with the last dive being Friday morning for a total of 10 dives.

The days were going to be long – diving was an all-day affair. A typical day involved rising at about 7 am, making the first dive of the day by 9:30 am, re-filling, eating and prepping gear between 12 and 3 pm, and hitting the wreck with about a 4 hour surface interval around 4 pm. Back at the beach by 5:30-6 pm. We’d do it all over again getting ready for the next day. If there is one thing that is true about Grenada, it’s that no one moves fast there. You can expect a three-hour time commitment just to eat dinner. The service is unbelievably slow and those who weren’t passing out at the table completely trashed on Carib beer were still nearly passing out in their mystery soup just from shear exhaustion.

It was a little touch and go with “Boston group” and some of the PA folks for the first few days but Evie did a good job of keeping everyone happy and to be honest, it was truly entertaining. Especially Bob’s “Weekend at Bernie’s” impression at the end of each night. But by the end of the week everyone mellowed out and things become laid back. We had promised to be on our best behavior, at least on the surface…

Our second day on the wreck was when the real hard-core diving began. The first dive we decided to swim all the way to the tip of the bow and back. We were tied in right on top of the stack so we had a little over half the ship to cover to get there. The bow is really awesome – the whole wreck is really. But the bow has lots of intact portions still and you can really get a sense of what you’re looking at. We swam forward past the two huge holds plunging down into the darkness. They just seemed like they went forever. When we reached the foredeck area, Dave dropped inside, pointed that it was a swim though and indicated that I should meet him on the other side. I couldn’t see where his exit was but figured I’d see him somewhere. I started swimming and swimming and couldn’t find his exit. I swam right off the tip of the bow. I turned around and looked back – it was incredible. The white sand below me reflected brightly as the massive ship rose up, the bow sweeping up to the deck. It was intense! I then realized I didn’t know where Dave was and that I should start looking for him. I dropped down under the flair of the bow, peering into some holes where hull plates had fallen out. I thought to myself, “Nah he isn’t coming out there”, not really wanting to go looking for him in there. I rose up over the top of the wreck and started swimming back. I saw bubbles coming out from cracks in the hull and followed it until Dave appeared. I had overshot his exit by quite a distance. On the return, I swam through the passage and noticed mostly what appeared to be tabletop stands, sort of like what we saw on the Empress this year.

We worked our way back, shooting video and marveling at the outstanding visibility. We returned to the mooring with a few minutes to spare and milled around the midship area before picking up our stage bottles and starting our ascent. Our tables had us starting our decompression at 80 feet – just 10 feet above the wreck. The nice thing about this kind of visibility and deep stops is that you can spend lots of time looking back down at the wreck, getting in a little more detail before its out of sight.

The second dive on each day did not usually have as good visibility. The water turned a deeper blue since the sun was lower in the sky and lights were needed a bit more depending on where you were on the wreck. Most of our second dives were investigation dives – setting up the dive for the following morning. With run times of 70-90 minutes per dive, twice a day, the big dives were usually planned in the morning. On one of our second dives we spent nearly all of our time checking out the remaining upper structure that was torn off in the winter storm back in 1992. The hull is torn open allowing penetration both fore and aft into machinery spaces. Slipping under a hull plate at 160’, it is possible to enter a passageway leading to the engine room. The line was long to get in there, especially with the guys shooting video so we found other areas to play in. Evie attracts a good following of good divers – there weren’t any clusters on the boat, everyone was solid and most were overhead (cave) trained. So, the visibility inside was kept pretty well despite several teams moving through, though Mad Dog was also on site and diving the same areas so things eventually got murky in some spaces.

Off the starboard side of the wreck is the crumbling upper structure. It’s a really interesting area to play around in. We dropped down to about 150’ and entered some of the deckhouse. There wasn’t too much in the way of goodies there but was really picturesque nonetheless. Especially swimming back up as on one side the massive hull is rolled over and on the other side, its upright.

The 600’ long wreck kept us busy all week, exploring new areas, revisiting others. There is so much to see – 10 dives just barely scrapes the surface. On out second dive one afternoon, Dave and Lee recovered a large brass window that Dave and I had discovered on a previous dive.  The window weighed easily 50-60 lbs and the three of us swam it to the line from the opposite side of the wreck - Dave and Lee carrying it with me swimming along side holding the reel tied off to it in case the lift bag holding it neutral decided to head for the surface.  A few other windows and portholes came up over the week.  Our big dive was yet to come but the planning went into the works a few days prior. Evie had found a room – a first class galley – deep inside the ship. She ran her reel in and left it in there. There were some real prizes – mint silver platters and bowls. However, they were fused together and needed two people and some prying to get apart. Each platter weighed several pounds and 10 were fused, sitting on shelf.

Lee volunteered to enter the room with Evie but when he reached the line, which started about 30 feet inside of the wreck, his Sartek light failed. He decided not to continue the penetration without a primary light. Evie went ahead and retrieved some items. On the next dive, Lee and I decided we would enter the room, Dave donating his Sartek light to the cause. We discussed the plan and were set up to go.

We hit the water on the second dive of the day and planned to go straight to the entrance. We had to enter the wreck from the portside hull through a cargo door, drop down an elevator shaft one deck, swim down a corridor only as wide as your shoulders and then pick up the line for another 150’ through several rooms to the galley. This was a serious dive. We would be in the wreck for nearly 20 minutes. We began swimming towards the cargo door but Lee had turned the wrong way and we missed it. We spent 10 precious minutes getting there. When I had finally reached the end of the corridor, 13 minutes had elapsed on my timer. I wasn’t going; this wasn’t in the plan. I had a planned 30 minute bottom time and this did not give me the air reserves or time reserves I wanted for this penetration, especially for the first look. I backed out of the corridor until the light from the shaft finally appeared over my head since it was too tight to turn around. Lee proceeded to get a quick look to get oriented before exiting also.

We surfaced and regrouped. Tomorrow we would try again. The plan now was good and Lee knew where we were going and what we would do. We discussed everything down to the most minute detail – the order of entry, exit, where we would position our bodies, making sure we were both oriented before touching anything in the room and lastly, that if either one of us thumbed it, we were out of there no questions asked. We both agreed that above all, we wanted to be back on the boat at 11:30.

We arrived on site and the only wrinkle was that the current was now rippping – really ripping. We had enjoyed moderate current earlier in the week but that was all over now, as the tide clock had shifted each day. This changes everything – would we get there with enough gas to proceed, would the current be too strong to venture out along the hull? We would just have to see. We hit the water and pulled ourselves down fast. We dropped our bottles at the stack and headed directly to the entrance. At ~3 minutes we were hovering outside the cargo door. We were a-go. If all went, we would be in the wreck for about 20 minutes. This would leave enough time for contingencies and a return to our bottles for our ascent at 30 minutes.

With these kinds of dives, it isn’t uncommon to have a lot of things going through your head – one thing both of our cave instructors described to us were the “chattering monkeys” – the little voices you must keep quiet in your head when doing real spooky dives. You just tell them to "shut up" as you do your thing.  That seems to work well.  Hank Garvin dives independent doubles and has told me on many occasions that when doing penetration dives breathe one tank to the entrance, switch to the fresh tank when entering and inside the wreck and switch back upon exiting (as an aside - Hank recovered the bell to the Bianca C back in the late 1980s).

Lee and I both paused to swap out regulators, now breathing off of full tanks. We exchanged “okays” and moved forward. We entered the wreck Lee swimming first and dropped down the shaft and carefully swam down the corridor. It was only as wide as our shoulders – too narrow for a frog kick. We did a modified flutter of sorts until we reached the doorway where the line began.

We took a hard right turn though a narrow door – and there was really no turning back now. Most of the swimming was very delicate with some pull-and-glide. We entered the room and followed the line as it bended around a corner, passed through a door, headed across a room, took a hard right, a hard left, ran down a narrow corridor with what appeared to be large dishwashers on either side before finally terminating in the galley off to the right. The galley was about 150’ deep. There were really only two places one could turn around if you wanted to abort – the destination and about halfway where a room opened up a bit. Lee had given me a good description of what to look out for – there were lots of snags in there from sharp edges and narrow passages.

We did an excellent job of not disturbing the visibility on the way in – going out is another story of course when you are carrying heavy things. There was a lot of silt in there and it was quite tight. There was only about 3-4 feet of vertical clearance at times. There has been considerable collapse in the wreck over the past few years and parts that were once easily accessible are not very tight squeezes – or are no longer accessible. Indeed, the interior is very fragile and collapses just from bubbles or gently touching something is not uncommon.

When we arrived in the galley we did what was planned. We swam to the far side of the room, turned our bodies around, aimed at the reel. Lee went to the right side of the shelf where the goodies were resting and I centered myself on the end. We gave the oks and went to work. Immediately upon pulling things out, the visibility was reduced to zero in the room. I could not see Lee even though he was about 1 foot away. Heavy orange silt and rust blinded us. I managed to look at my pressure gauge but that was about it. Lee told me that once the visibility went down the only way he could tell I was still there was that he could hear me breathing. I filled my bag with silver bowls as Lee passed them off. To reassure myself, occasionally I would rise up and squint to see the reel sitting on top of the shelf. After bagging the bowls, I moved to the left of the shelf so Lee could work on prying apart the platters. The visibility was so bad I didn’t know what he was really doing. I decided to move towards the exit to get some clear visibility, having to swim over a thin pipe running across our path to get there.

I cradled the bag, trying to keep it up out of the silt and from snagging the line. It was not easy to maneuver over the pipe to get to the exit but once I was at the door, I looked back and could see Lee’s light behind me. The big OK circle came at me and I knew were good to go. I turned down the narrow corridor, keeping my eyes on the line and the bag up. It wasn’t easy to swim out with the bag and I knew Lee had an armful of stuff too. Swimming for what seemed like forever, taking our time to negotiate the tight spaces, I followed the line until it terminated. I knew then we were at the corridor, I took a hard left and saw the blue light of day – oh yeah – and headed for it. We exited the wreck and bagged up the rest of our haul for the ascent. We did well. We got some nice stuff and as we were told, we did not get greedy. We were pumped. We rendezvoused with Dave and Marge who were off doing other stuff on the wreck and headed up. It was a great dive. Others wanted to film the space and Evie had to pull her reel so Lee made one additional trip in before the others had a turn. It was cool, everyone was very good about working together in this way.

Back on the food front, I was beginning to lose the war, however. Grenada food and adventure dining is not for me. I will swim deep inside a wreck any day but I was truly afraid when we arrived at “Patrick’s” homestyle restaurant. North Florida has nothing on this place. We got to Patrick’s and they seated all 14 of us underneath a house on stilts. There was maybe six feet of clearance under the house where picnic benches were nailed down. The bench seats were about 8 inches wide – I don’t think anyone could feel their legs after two hours of sitting on these seats. Patrick was an “interesting” character – I will let you draw your own conclusions there but suffice it to say that it was close call as to what was scarier, Patrick or the food.

The way the dining worked at Patrick’s was that the food was brought out in big platters – there was no menu, you just ate what they brought. It was everything from road kill stew to seafood surprise, to mystery chicken and pork X. He would whip the stuff out and quickly tell us what it was. And he didn’t repeat things – he was only going to tell us once. I listened intently for safe choices but it seemed that whenever I had taken the leap to eat something I thought was chicken, somebody would go, “Oh that’s not chicken, its ____”. My imagination then took over and that was it – it became a Fear Factor episode in no time at all. I was waiting for the cat brain to come out next… Someone kept telling me to go look at the kitchen – yeah like I wanted to see that. OHSA would have quarantined everybody the place if it were in the US. Let’s put it this way, you needed really detailed directions to differentiate between what was the bathroom and what was the kitchen… After a bite of something I just couldn’t handle that was it. I was done. I knew we had a bag of Doritos at the hotel room and that would get me through until breakfast.

By Thursday I had all I could take of Grenada food – my only salvation being the trusty “Chateau Surprise” to keep me going.

Our last day on the wreck was Friday. We would do one morning dive, break down our gear, settle up tabs and start packing to go home on Saturday. We had planned to take the video camera for a really detailed tour of the stern section and perhaps some of the engine room. But after I saw Tim U’s excellent video of the engine compartment, I knew we weren’t getting there. It was a long swim, about 150-175 linear feet at a depth of 160’ to reach the telegraphs - and I wasn’t going in there without a line. The line had been pulled earlier in the week and it was way, way too far to swim trying to shoot video and set a line all in the same dive. So, we scrapped that. Next time. Instead I wanted to swim off the stern, shoot the name and the debris off the starboard side of the wreck. When we got on site the current was out of control. The mooring ball was underwater it was ripping so badly. New plan. Not one camera went in the water on this dive – Tim, Evie, Dave and I left our cameras right where they were. Getting down to the wreck was the new plan.

We hit the water and hauled ourselves up to the down line. Pulling hand over hand we climbed down the line to the wreck. There was still a decent current running on the wreck, though it was a little less than the surface current. Around 50 ft it had backed off a bit. We decided swimming off the wreck was not going to happen so we spend most of the dive in the lee of the current down inside the break and inside parts of the wreck. There was a lot of pull and glide to move around in some areas near the open water. We enjoyed our last dive – a little bummed that it was our last dive and that the current was so strong but we had fun anyway.

Up on deco the current surged. It was so strong it would tear your mask off your face if you turned your head. We were clipped into our jon lines and as negative as possible to stay comfortable. The current would frequently “gust” and you could feel it surge as it tried to tear you off the line. We did a nice comfortable decompression though and I did a short surface decompression on O2 at the back of the ladder before climbing aboard just to be safe, especially after hauling myself in the current over to the ladder on the surface.

On our last night in Grenada we went to dinner down at the Carnage – a waterfront row of shops and restaurants that lines the harbor where the cruise ships dock. We were all wearing our expedition shirts and looked quite official. When we walked to the entrance, the doorman asked if we were off ship – we said, “Yeah sure, were crew from a private yacht.” They responded by wisking us inside, setting us up in a private room and giving us a crew discount. Not too bad! Rusty and Tim handed out the trip awards, which included gems like the “Living on the Edge” award for Evie, the “Diversity Appreciation” award for Lee and the “Lack of Implement of Destruction” award for Dave, who had not brought any tools with him. The excitement over a dog collar and leash set up for Chase and Mark resulted in all of us getting just a little too much information about what they were going to do with that later. In fact, there was an awful lot of TMI on this trip – especially on the morning when Mark explained that Chase was running late because she has been taking high fiber supplements and was still in the bathroom. Thanks Mark! We really needed to know that.

All in all it was a great trip – the Bianca C is an awesome dive and truly a world-class wreck. Evelyn put together an excellent trip and we met some great people – our new pals Rusty and Tim T. will hopefully make an appearance up our way. There is a lot of detail we have edited out of this trip report to protect the guilty – or is that the innocent? – but suffice it to say we have some great stories for a long time. We made some contacts and inroads for a Bianca C 2005 trip so think about it, this wreck is worth it!