Barge & Crane – Holland
Last Sunday (May 30) 4 boats and 6 divers set out from South Haven to investigate the new wreck site. The wreck location is about 6 miles west of the South Haven piers in ~125 feet of water. We got a good reading the first time passing over the GPS coordinates and we threw the anchor out. Weather conditions that day were about perfect, no waves, a slight breeze and air temperature in the low 80′s. All 4 boats anchored close to each other and instructions were passed on to use my anchor line since it should have been the closest to the wreck. Kirk and myself were to be the first down where we would place a line on the anchor and use the reel to create a path to the wreck. Visibility was excellent, I could make out bottom details when I was at 45 foot depth. We followed the anchor line down and found that the anchor had landed right on top of the wreck. The wreck is a small (about 40 by 20 ft) barge (not self-propelled) that has a crane built into the topside of the barge. The wreck is laying upside-down at about a 45 degree angle. There is a small protective deck house that is open on both ends where the crane controls and pulleys are located. The crane gantry is pointing off at a 30 degree angle from the barge deck and disappears into the silt about 20-30 feet out (we didn’t check to see if it ended there or went further under the silt). The entire wreck is covered with zebra mussels. There is an open hatch on the topside of the barge that allows you to see inside; the inside was empty, nothing to see and the hatch is too small to get through with tanks. There is no obvious signs of damage or indication of why it sank other than the open hatch. Conditions down below were very good, visibility was 60+ feet and water temperature was about 41 degrees. I did not see any sign of debris at the wreck site other than the wreck itself. It is situated on a flat plain at a depth of ~125 feet that has a fine silt covering about 6 inches deep (very easy to stir up).
