It was a long ride to get up to Alpena Michigan after work and with losing an hour on the road due to the eastern time thing, it made me wonder if they think they can change  daylight savings time, but they cant change the time zones?....move them a bit more east or lets just go back to the counting moons or something...silly president.  We got to Alpena around 2am and unfortunately woke up our other two dive buddies as we banged on the door to get into the cottage due to no keys.  opps..  

We woke a bit LATE and made our way over to the shop, got breakfast, and made our way over to the harbor to make our first two dives of the day.  The waves were about a foot by three feet and cloudy but optimistic conditions so it was a go.  We get on the water leave the harbor and as we are leaving the harbor the boat starts to run into some challenges. We ended up having to turn around in a plume of carbon smoke back to the harbor to assess the situation and begin the repair. After some disagreements and some challenges within the groups opinion on the assessment and the execution of the repair we decided to leave that behind and scope out some prospective dive sites.  After a while I was able to find a couple of shore dives in Presque Isle which were nice to swim out to and check out.

The first wreck is called the Albany which came to shore in the early 1900s and was quickly torn apart by storms preceding its resting place with no lives lost.  Her engine was salvaged a few years after her foundering. The next shipwreck was the North bay wreck which has some unique history in itself that includes a gentleman who was sawing up the shipwrecks wood for furniture.  He ended up getting arrested and the north bay wreck got its name.   I am sure that would have been a pretty penny for him back in the day.

This wreck was nestled in a super calm section inside of a bay in Presque Isle.  It was a nice place to not only swim out to and relax while enjoying the loons speaking to each other about the unusual human swimming in the frigid cold water.  Both of the wrecks were keelson remains, floor boarding, and parts of side panel and haul skeletal remains held together with fasteners.  

Its fun to swim out to the shipwrecks and check out what is out there as well as to learn about the history of the ships themselves to see how great the workmanship and time that was put in to build some of these boats.

The day itself turned out to be a good one as we were able to do two shore free dives and scope out some interesting places but the next day is going to be the main event as we are planning to visit the Defiance and the Typo.