13 June, 2010: The Yukon, Sand Diego CA

About this dive site:

Name: The Yukon
Location: San Diego, CA
Category: Wreck, Destroyer
Max depth: 32m/105ft
Dimensions: 360ft/110m Bow to Stern

Our dive today

Objective: Fun!
Attendees: Dave Harris, Jeff Seckendorf, Jim Carver
Avg depth: 24m / 80ft
Max depth: 30m / 100ft
Duration: 37min, 43min, 35min
Visibility: 15-20 m / 50-70 ft
Water temperature: 14 ° C / 53 ° F
Ascent profile: 40ft / 12m DS, ascending 1's and 3mins at 20ft / 6m to be conservative

Comments

Well what a fantastic dive today! An early morning drive down to San Diego from Carlsbad got us there and getting our gear together by about 7.30am and soon enough met up with Jim, the crew of the Marisa and a diverse group of divers coming along on the trip. We had rec divers, a padi wreck course a couple of rebreathers and a group out here for a while making the most of the Yukon, nice to see a UTD shirt in the group too!

Having been the only diver onboard not to have previously dove the Yukon the boat DM gave me a quick heads up on the wreck, everyone was expecting 10-15ft vis and a decent swell for the boat entry.

Gear up and into the water, the first thing to see is a diver from another boat making an ascent, 50ft away and clear as day. The water is warm and the tag line won't even float away from the boat. Perfect.

Dive 1 and Jim's taking the lead with jeff taking charge of the deco. Min deco as neither Jim or I are trained otherwise. We drop down the bow line through a thermocline then past the bow to around 90ft and head aft to turn at the funnel. The life around there was great, critters, crabs and fish everywhere though having that vis really was good to see whole sections of the superstructure and gave a great sense of exactly what you're looking at. We got to the upline after about 20mins on the wreck, way sooner than I would have preferred so I really hope to dive this again after doing some tec classes. Standard 50% stop then 1 min per stop on the way up with an extra couple thrown in at 20ft for good measure.

Dive 2 and Jeff's in the lead. Vis has dropped off a bit during the surface interval but still good, back down to the bow and we spent a good bit of time around the superstructure, just as before it's just not long enough to take it all in. Pretty much the same profile as last time, and a very nice dive.

Dive 3 was with me at the front, Jim decided to sit it out after a bit of cramp on the last dive. So this time the vis had again dropped during the SI and given it was the 3rd dive today we'd decided to keep it to 15 mins. Again from the bow we thought we'd go over the gunwale for a bit of a different perspective. The surge kind of pushed us about a bit though so back to the foredeck, around to the dolphin cut outs on the bow then finishing up with a nice slow ascent for the final dive.

So 3 nice dives, a great team and hopefully the vis will hold out and we can do the wreck again sometime soon! I'd recommend this to anyone coming past the area.

Hopefully Jeff will have the video to add for this one soon.

Dave

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Permalink Reply by Jim Carver on June 13, 2010 at 7:27pm

Great day, great team, fantastic dives. This was one of those magic days where everything was just perfect!

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Permalink Reply by kevrumbo on July 6, 2010 at 8:25pm

Sat 7/03 on the Humboldt Diveboat (Waterhorse Charters) 3 to 9pm: two afternoon dives on the Yukon, and one twilight dive on the Ruby E, with a nice mini-fireworks pre-fourth of July show afterward in Mission Bay. Double AL80's and buddy Greg C. had double LP95's, both of us with AL40 O2 deco. Yukon Plan was 30min BT at ave 27m depth, Air Min Deco algorithm.

Dive #1, starting at the forward guns, an external traverse toward the stern mortar well, entered through "high" starboard side opening, traversing back the entire length toward the bow thru Burma Road and exited via the bow "dolphin entries". Made it back to the forward upline/mooring line attached to the bridge at the 27min BT mark. Deep Stops: 1min/12m; 3min/9m; Oxygen switch 4min/6m and 3min/3m. SIT 45min

Dive#2, starting at forward guns, an external traverse all the way to the stern transom and entered thru transom opening at deck level 4. Traversed forward to the Gunner's electrical switchboards (bulkhead cutouts past the switchboards now closed-off with barrier steel plating to prevent engine room access?); exited thru starboard hull opening "4S5" and traveled back to mortar well. Entered high side opening of mortar well and traversed Burma Road to the bow again. Made upline/mooring line at 33min BT mark. Deep Stops: 2min/12m; 6min/9m; O2 switch 8min/6m and 6min/3m. SIT 45min

Dive#3 (Ruby E), external traverse to bow and back to stern upline/mooring line for 20min BT at ave 21m depth; 3min "safety stop" with optional deco on O2. Moderate current at depth forced flutter-kick fin technique at times to make headway.

Water temp 17deg C from surface down to 12m thermocline --bottom at 27m was 10deg C. Viz was 9m with fair clarity on the outside of Yukon, and maybe 3m with very poor clarity/murky conditions with the darkening ambient light for the twilight dive on RubyE.

Suunto Vytec RGBM 50 algorithm computer with deco gas switching mode was also utilized for backup and correlated well with Air Min Deco.

Yukon superstructure now becoming just as colorful with corynactis as the older Ruby E wreck. . .