A short piece aired near the top of 11pm news Sunday night on Channel 8 here in San Diego, ca I have not been involved in discovering or researching this, I involved in the video shot.

The wreck is the Cape Charles (previously referred to as the “workboat” by some). It was discovered in January 2007 by Ray Arntz and Gary Fabian while they were searching for the nearby TBM Avenger (http://ub88.org/avenger.html). Tyler Stalter and other divers found the wreck shortly afterwards and have done several dives on the wreck to establish its identity.

Tyler Stalter says:

“After many dives the SDTechDiving.com team has finally identified a 110’ long, steel hulled vessel off Point Loma. This vessel is sitting upright and intact on the bottom in 165’ of water. After hours of bottom time we were finally able to gather valuable evidence to use to identify the unkown wreck. Al Bruton was able to provide some valuable insight into how the vessel wound up off Point Loma. The vessel in question, “Cape Charles” sunk in San Diego bay. It was slated to be re-floated and towed to wreck alley for disposal in the late 80s. En route to wreck alley the vessel capsized and sank in 165’. Her tumble is evident in the debris strewn around the wreck and the gash in the bow from the towline. Another link is the abundance of large inflatable “lift bags” to float the wreck in the bay for towing which are all over the exterior and even the interior of the wreck as well. After reviewing all of these clues it is our opinion that the wreck we have been diving is in fact a 110’ ft hulled vessel known as the Cape Charles. This is the perfect wreck for any technical training in the San Diego area. Several decks to penetrate and some very cool features such as the large intact crane on the aft deck, debris field and its unique placement just off the tip of Point Loma will make this a very popular wreck for technical divers.”

Dive Report:
We dove it Saturday morning at slack tide. Vis on the wreck was about 15′. Temp was 50F. We dove trimix due to the depth. 25min bottom time, 70min total runtime with deco. Some people dove rebreathers, some dove open circuit doubles plus deco gas.

VIDEO:
KFMB doesn’t have the broadcast video on their website, but here is the raw video (not including Tyler’s studio interview):
http://rogerbly.s3.amazonaws.com/video/cape-charles_iphone.mp4

(NOTE: this video is 100MB, 10min. Can be viewed in Quicktime, VLC, Totem, or any mpeg-4/AVC/H.264 player. In Quicktime, best to use File->Open URL… with the above URL. That way you can watch while it downloads.)

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