The ship named Fireball

8/13/2018 PM

With the AC cranking we ate the sandwiches we brought with us while sitting in the Jeep, the intent had been to find a shady spot but after the first boat ride and tickets already purchased by Mary, while I found a place to park, I lucked into one close and we only had about 1/2 hour before it was time to get in line.

The second tour was not a spur of the moment decision as we had discussed doing both trips in the same day but didn’t want to buy tickets in advance and risk $$ for 2 bad boat rides.

Anyway, we took a glass bottom boat ride in the afternoon. Again the weather was still good, calm wind and bright sunshine. It was a great day for viewing sunken ships. We toured over 2 wrecks.

The cold water preserved the wrecks even in shallow water, I think she said 8 ft deep. And while not crystal clear, you could definitely tell what you were looking at.

The first one was on one side of the bay, as we were cruising along, again, we grabbed some choice seats, we could see the glass while we were moving and every so often you could see the bottom of the lake, sometimes it was sand, other times, boulders or bare rock shelf.

The boat, Fireball, has two levels, so the lower level got to stand around the glass for a pass, then we sat down and the upper level came down and we passed over the wreck again.

On the way to the second wreck we buzzed much closer to an old light house than we did with the Pictured Rock Tour, then the young captain really showed off her boat handling abilities as she maneuvered the boat into this small rock walled cove or inlet, not much longer or wider than the boat, once in the cove which was about as deep as the boat was long she proceeded to do a 180 with the boat with the rock walls were not more than 6-8 feet from the boat on 3 sides at any time.

Then it was on to the second wreck, this one caused by getting off course at night in a snow storm and hit a reef that was 8ft deep, the boat drew 11 feet of water…….. oops, not funny I know.