Trip Report - Bedwell Bay Mystery Wreck
2011-04-10

On 2011-04-10 our team returned to the site of the shipwreck we discovered in March of this year in Bedwell Bay. Originally the plan was to conduct a full blown survey that would involve every member of SET from the lower mainland, as well as a few Vancouver Islanders. However, as the date approached we realized that the water was going to be at high tide during the planned morning dives, and so the survey was reclassified as a technical dive (being greater than 100' in depth).

Nonetheless five divers met at the shores of Bedwell Bay on a very rainy Sunday morning. We had two Marks, Guy, Dirk, and I. Our abbreviated survey goal was to: lay a baseline; take two width measurements at each bow, amid ship, and stern; take the measurements of the ships frames; look for any distinguishing features; and also to document the wreck using HD video.

Mark, Guy and I entered the water first and began the long descent, down the virtually flat slope, to 105'. As seems to always be the case in Bedwell Bay the visibility deteriorated dramatically as we moved deeper, until we were left with between 5'-10'. We turned our scooters right and using a combination of compass and depth gauge, began to follow the nearly imperceptible slope northwards. We first hit the debris field, then the wreck. We shot the SMB and made the initial baseline tie-in by minute 12. The dive was relative uneventful, and by minute 50 we had finished our survey work and began scootering up the slop to our first deco stop. One special note is that I had left a length of cave line on the wreck, which will act as a place holder for the baseline on all future surveys. However, in the middle of the wreck this line is 4'-5' above the wreck. As a result, in the poor visibility, it can be very easy to carelessly pass under the line. In fact this happened to me personally a number of times - adangerous entanglement hazard to be sure. Please be careful of this line. We intend to weigh it down at our next opportunity.

Back at the surface we were greeted by Dirk and Mark on shore, who hads become over eager and began their dive before waiting for the SMB to surface. As a result they were unable to locate and video the wreck (having only one scooter between the two of them)...and our SMB (which had been left for this sub-team) was still in the middle of the bay. Enter Randy and John. They were on site diving the wreck of the VT100 (lucky for us). They volunteered to dive the wreck (which was now at around 100') and retrieve our SMB.

Back at home we plotted the survey data, and also put together a preliminary site diagram. Running the additional information by Jacques Marc reaffirmed his belief that we likely have found a wreck that was sunk in the early 20th century. This wreck represents the first shipwreck that SET has located in which we participated in the initial research, search, discovery, and survey! Much, much more work on this wreck is needed and we look forward to getting back in the murky waters of Bedwell Bay.

Trip Report by, Chris Fenton