The Presidents Corner by Mike Cassetta

Transcription

1 FAIRFIELD COUNTY DIVING ASSOCIATION March 2013 Volume 20 Issue 3 Inside this Issue The Presidents Corner by Mike Cassetta page 1 FCDA Donors I page 2 February Meeting Raffle Winners page 3 Events of Interest to FCDA Members page 3 FCDA Member Ads page 3 Beneath the Sea Dive Show and DAN page 4 FCDA Donors II page 4 Photo of the Month page 5 New FCDA Members page 5 FCDA Donors III page 5 Underwater discovery offers glimpse of 1850s trains by Edward Colimore pages 6, 7 Next FCDA Meeting page 8 The Presidents Corner by Mike Cassetta There is no March meeting because of Beneath the Sea. If you happen to show at the cottage on the last Friday of March, you may only have to wait 700+ hours as we will be there on Friday April 26 th. There are lots of diving events over the next few weeks. I hope to see you all in New Jersey at Beneath the Sea, the week end of March 23 rd. If you see Paul or Charlie, smile, as you may be filmed. Dr. Charash will be hosting the Diving Medicine Conference at Danbury Hospital on April 6 th. Last year s conference was very informative and he has again recruited an excellent group of speakers. Please see the brochure attached on website under events of interest. Our February meeting was well attended. It was our honor to have Capt Bill Palmer share video of the U-853. His new book The Last Battle of the Atlantic tells the story of the sub and its crew. If you didn t notice, our own Paul Gacek and Mel Rich were mentioned on the acknowledgement page. Tim Thomas will be our special guest April 26 th and will share video from the Sandy Hook Memorial Dive. Matt and I were both happy to be apart of the day s events sponsored by NUSAR (Newtown Underwater Search and Rescue). I will try to have some t-shirts available for $20 each. Proceeds go to the Sandy Hook Fund. April 28 th is our underwater Easter Egg Hunt. Although Easter is in March this year, it should still be a blast. Additionally, if you haven t paid your 2013 dues, the goon squad is on their way. Again, e-letters are an excellent option and you can print out as many as you like. See you soon..your most humble servant Mike

2 Page 2 FCDA Donors The business listed on this page has donated dive gear and dive services to help support the Fairfield County Diving Association. New England's Tech Diving Center! New England Dive Center 476 North Colony Street Wallingford, CT Fax Dealer for OMS, UWATEC, Oceanic, Mares, Dacor, C r e s s i - S u b, P o s e i d o n, Scubapro, Bare, O ' N e i l l a n d Henderson. P.O. Box 3005, Fairfield, CT Internet mail: fcda@aol.com Presidents 2013 Board Matt Rownin & Mike Cassetta Vice-President Mark Shannon Secretary Treasurer Charles Blanchette Paul J. Gacek The region's foremost source for scuba and technical diving gear, t r a i n i n g a n d everything for the r e c r e a t i o n a l o r serious tech diver. Draeger Atlantis I Rebreather training, certification and rental. New England Dive Center offers complete training for all levels of diving, from Open Water through the most advanced technical courses. Our instruction provides certification through SSI, PDIC, TDI and IANTD. Visit us on the Web:

3 Page 3 February Meeting Raffle Winners After a video presentation on The U-853 by Captain Bill Palmer, the club held its regular raffle to s u p p o r t o u r D A N P l a t i n u m sponsorship. The winners were: Save A Dive donated by New England Dive Center - Tom Thomes; Diving Bay Island Book donated by Orbit Marine Dive Center - Matt Rownin; Sport Flare donated by New England Dive Center - John Hill; Snorkle Bag donated by New England Dive Center - Jeff Susa; Scuba Max Weight Belt donated by New England Dive Center Maureen Cassetta; Surface Tee Shirt donated by New England Dive Center Maureen Cassetta; Safety Sausage donated by Orbit Marine Dive Center-Jim McAuliffe; Atomic Bag donated by Orbit Marine Dive Center Jim McAuliffe; H2O Bottle donated by Rex Marine- Mark Weston; USB Key Fin donated by Rex Marine-Paul Gacek; National Geographic Dive Log Book donated by Rex Marine-Charlie Blanchette. Thanks to New England Dive Center, Orbit Marine Dive Center and Rex Marine for donating tonight s raffle prizes for our DAN raffle. Remember, you can't win if you don't buy tickets and you can't buy tickets if you don't get up and come out to FCDA events and meetings! Events of Interest to FCDA Members March 22-24, 2013 Beneath the Sea - Meadowlands Exposition Center, Secaucus, NJ. For more information: April 6, 2013 Diving Medicine Conference - 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM. Creasy Auditorium - Danbury Hospital, 24 Hospital Ave, Danbury, CT (203) Registration Questions or Phone Registration - (203) gina.lacey@wcthn.org Space is limited. Please reserve your place early. FCDA Member Ads Hey - have you got a non retail-diving business that you d like to share with fellow members of FCDA? Get your business card size ad in the FCDA monthly newsletter Surface Interval for only $50.00 for one year. Give your business a boost and help support the production of our monthly newsletters. For more information, write to FCDA, P.O. Box 3005, Fairfield, CT or to fcda@aol.com.

4 Page 4 Beneath the Sea Dive Show and DAN Are you ready for America s largest consumer dive and travel show? Beneath the Sea Dive Show will be hosted at Meadowlands Exposition Center in Secaucus, New Jersey, on March Bring your DAN Membership card and photo ID to receive $5 off the price of admission for the exhibits and seminars! While exploring all the show has to offer, drop by the DAN booth (#342, #344 and #346), where staff will be on hand to renew your membership and insurance and show off the latest dive-safety products. You'll also want to ask about the NEW Annual Travel Insurance plan, an important staple for dive travelers. For additional details about DAN's presence at Beneath the Sea, check the complete schedule. Join your fellow divers for a weekend filled with exhibitors, workshops, symposiums and much more. For more information on the show, visit FCDA Donors The business listed on this page has donated dive gear and dive services to help support the Fairfield County Diving Association.

5 Page 5 Photo of the Month Send your favorite diving photo and story to be published in The FCDA Newsletter. FCDA Donors The business listed on this page has donated dive gear and dive services to help support the Fairfield County Diving Association. digital photos to; Charlie Blanchette at uncas297@att.net New FCDA Members Welcome aboard to the following individuals who have recently become new members of the Fairfield County Diving Association: Julie Hellberg 65 Riverdale Ave Greenwich, CT H: W: jhellberg17@gmail.com Wesley Horvath 126 Old Mill Rd Wilton, CT H: W: wezzleyh@hotmail.com Cherry & Kelsey Smith 5 Lycett Ct Norwalk, CT H: W: kdsahl@gmail.com Mark & Lee Ann Weston 52 Bungay Rd Seymour, CT H: W: kramcw@gmail.com Rex Dive Center Offers Technical Diving Classes Interested in taking your training to the next level? TDI Instructor George Sharrard (# 10270) is offering: Intro to Tech Advanced Nitrox Decompression Procedures Stop by Rex Dive Center to talk about schedules, class requirements and gear. Or, georges00z@aol.com for more information.

6 Underwater discovery offers glimpse of 1850s trains by Edward Colimore Page 6 The emerald-colored waters off Long Branch, N.J., were "gloomy and spooky" as Dan Lieb swam toward the two hulking silhouettes, sitting upright and side by side about 90 feet down. The objects were heavily encrusted with marine life, but Lieb recognized the unmistakable lines, the wheels and boilers of identical locomotives, 160 years after they fell or were cast overboard. "It looked like they were steaming across the bottom in a race," said Lieb, 56, of Neptune, Monmouth County. "You could imagine them on tracks at a station with steam coming out of the valves, and people and luggage on the platform." Five miles off the Jersey Shore, their presence is a mystery perplexing researchers. How did two pre-civil War locomotives wind up there? Did they slip off a sailing ship during a storm? Were they purposely dropped into the deep? Lieb, a technical illustrator, diver, and member of the Philadelphia Chapter of the Explorers Club, will describe the progress of the investigation at the club's meeting - open to members and guests - at 6 p.m. Tuesday at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. The event will be open to the public. Admission is $10. He is the director of the Sunken Locomotives Project for the New Jersey Museum of Transportation, a nonprofit educational organization that took legal possession of the engines - through a federal proceeding - about nine years ago. Research into the submerged locomotives also is being conducted by the New Jersey Historical Divers Association, said Lieb, president of the group. "We had the option of bringing them up, leaving them on the bottom, or bringing up of parts of them," he said. "We've been recovering pieces, examining them and trying to answer lingering questions." The 15-ton locomotives, Lieb said, are rare because they are Planet Class T models, similar to one called the Pioneer now on display at the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Museum in Baltimore. Like the Pioneer, each one has six wheels, a pair of larger wheels flanked by smaller ones in the front and back, but the sunken engines are heavier and more powerful, what Lieb called a possible "missing link in locomotive technology." "It's like the designers were pushing a specific design as far as it could go," he said. "There is no record of them being built and no journal or newspaper discussing their loss." One of the few clues to their origin came from Paul Hepler, captain of the charter boat Venture III, who discovered the (Continued on page 7)

7 Page 7 Underwater discovery offers glimpse of 1850s trains by Edward Colimore (continued) (Continued from page 6) engines while mapping the ocean bottom with a magnetometer in "I got a big mag reading and dove on it," said Hepler, 71, of Jackson Township. "I didn't know what it was at first because the water was dirty and the visibility was so bad back then. "Once I got a better look at it in later dives, I could see they were locomotives," said Hepler, who retrieved the bronze bells and whistles. An inscription on a whistle read "H.N. Hooper, Boston, #3." The bells each weighed 25 pounds and had ornate rings. Based on the markings and other information, researchers believed the engines were likely being shipped from a factory in Boston to a port in the Mid- Atlantic states, said Lieb, who had been invited by Hepler to dive on the site and has been back at least 20 times. "They may have been dropped there, probably in order to shed weight from a vessel that was stricken in foul weather, or they might have gone over accidentally," he said. "This was a time when there was no Transcontinental Railroad," Lieb said. "If you wanted a locomotive in California, and they were made in New Eng- land, you had to put it on a boat." Other pairs of locomotives were lost on the Great Lakes and the East and West Coasts, in the Gulf of Mexico, and on major rivers, according to 19th -century newspaper accounts. But few have been as old or exhibited such unusual features. "These were each 15 tons, but you could get a 35-ton locomotive at that time," said Lieb. "That's what's intriguing to us, because [the designers] were pushing these little locomotives as far as they could go. "They are solid and beefy," he said, carried their own water and firewood, and had no need of tender cars. The locomotives "are of a type that didn't get saved for posterity," said Nick Zmijewski, collection manager for archives at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania in Strasburg. "They represent a locomotive whose glory days were fading when they were built" in the 1850s. "This was the last gasp of that design before four driving wheels and four guide wheels became the standard," he said. "It's a significant archaeological find." The first up-close glimpse of the engines mesmerized Lieb in "I'm a trained technical illustrator and looked at the locomotives as a drawing on paper," Lieb said. "That's how clear the components were. "You see what the engineer and designer had in mind," he said. "The mechanical function came through the veneer of growth, incrustation, and rust." The wheels of the locomotives are still attached, and decayed remnants of the cowcatchers remain, though smashed after hitting bottom. The wood cabs also were shattered by the impact, and have since deteriorated and disappeared."i'm not a railroad buff," Lieb said. "I'm really a shipwreck investigator, but I've been fascinated by these locomotives. They're an important piece of our railroad history." Reprint from Underwater Times.com by Edward Colimore, Inquirer Staff Writer POSTED: FEBRUARY 18, 2013

8 Page 8 Next FCDA Meeting Friday, February 22, :00 PM Coast Guard Cottage, South Benson Marina, Fairfield, CT "Sandy Hook Memorial Dive" a video presentation by Tim Thomas Tim will share video from the Sandy Hook Memorial Dive sponsored by NUSAR (Newtown Underwater Search and Rescue Fairfield County Diving Association P.O. Box 3005 Fairfield, CT Address Service Requested