HMCS McKenzie, Victoria, BC, Canada

Hi all,

This past weekend myself and three of my friends from the Dir Project conducted a dive on of the artificial reef the HMCS McKenzie .

The most important aspect of diving this particular wreck is that it was sunk in the area that has very unpredictable currents. Generally speaking artificial reefs are put in protected or at least predictable waters. In the case of the McKenzie nobody at the time of sinking knew that this particular area is susceptible to back eddies. The implications are that even though the tide table will call for slack the wreck itself could still have enough current to make any dive challenging.

We arrived at the dive site exactly when the slack was suppose to be happening, but judging by the horizontal buoy that was obviously not the case. We waited about 25 min before we decided to jump in. The current was still going so maintaining contact with the upline on our descent was necessary. The visibility was at best 10 feet.

In light of the conditions we decided to run a line from the upline. After about 50' of running the line we realized that we were swimming around the bow. We decided to keep going and after another about 75' we entered the wreck. The vis was even worse inside than outside the wreck. We proceeded extremely carefully dropping tights every 10' or so. The wreck is filled with sediment and the plastic wall coverings are peeling off from all directions making the penetration more of an exercise in line protocols than actually seeing anything enjoyable.

We've turned the penetration after 75' retrieved the line and spend about 10 min around the upper deck before starting the ascent.

Here is the dive summary: gas: 25/25, deco: 100% oxygen, max depth: 95', average depth: 80', bottom time 45 min., deco: first stop at 60'-1, 50'-1, 40'-1, 30'-1, gas switch at 20'-7, and 3 min up.

Overall a very good training dive for adverse conditions with some line work and penetration.