Lake Michigan Trip Report

[Omicron]

This weekend I got to dive the E.R. Williams and the Jennibell (Jenny Bell) in Lake Michigan.

The E.R. Williams is one of my favorite wrecks and the visibility at this time of year was phenomenal. It was pretty foggy in the morning when we left the dock, but by the time our GPS/radar were telling us we were close to the wreck things were clearing up nicely for us. We found the buoy for the wreck pretty quickly, which was really nice, and tied up to it. We geared up and dropped into the water. Temps were 37 to 39 on the surface and about 41 on the wreck itself. Visibility was excellent - for those that have dove the E.R. before, you could just about see the wreck from the end of the mast. We spent about 15 minutes total on the wreck - we stayed up a little off of the wreck to get better bottom time.

Next, we moved to the other side of the peninsual due to a pending gale. We decided to try diving the Jennibell as we had heard there was good visibility on the bay which is a rarity. We found the wreck on the depthfinder and eventually we found the yellow rope that is tied to the wreck. There is no buoy on the wreck but there is a floating rope that marks the wreck. The first pair went over into the water and down the wreck and we followed a few minutes afterwards. At about 60' or so the water was very dark, very green and pretty much no viz. We met the other two on the way down the line. At about 80' or so we decided not to fight the viz and the current and we headed back up the line. The other pair said the wreck was neat but I'm just not into diving in pea soup and neither is my dive partner.

Overall, not a bad weeekend at all. Saturday the temps were nice and it was very sunny - luckily we didn't get the bad weather that we were supposed to get!