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Wednesday, May 27, 2009

USS Vandenburg becomes new artificial reef

A quick update on a previous post, by the time you read this (and lets not hope for any Spiegel Grove calamities) the USS Vandenburg should have become a new artificial reef for scuba divers.

Regular readers will remember back in February the story about plans to sink another to decommissioned US Navy warship in Florida. Well hopefully the 160m-long former Second World War missile tracking ship, USS Hoyt S Vandenberg should now be resting at the bottom of the sea some six miles off Key West.

The plan was to sink the ship today at 10am (EST).

No word yet on whether it has gone ahead. While we wait for video of the sinking which I'll bring as soon as its available, here's some earlier footage of the sinking of a replica at the Stevens Institute of Technology's Center for Maritime Systems test-sinks a scale model of the USS Vandenberg.





Once on the bottom the USS Vandenburg will join the USS Spiegel Grove and USS Oriskany as a diver's playground and the local economy and the attraction will benefit to the tune of an estimated $6.2 million a year.

For more, log on to www.sinkthevandenberg.com/

Thanks to Neutral Dive Gear blog for the heads' up. Live. Dive. Thrive is the author's moto. Doesn't get any better than that. The blog is certainly worth checking in with and the clothes look great too.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Video. Here is a video of the USS Gen. Hoyt S. Vandenberg which is getting sunk tomorrow and becoming a reef! Move over USS Oriskany, the USNS Hoyt S. Vandenberg will be sunk a mere 140 feet of water off Key West, creating the world’s second largest artificial reef after the Oriskany (Pensacola, Florida).
The ship is just over 500 feet, and the water is stunning and clear.
Says Joe Weatherby, project organizer at Reefmakers, in charge of tomorrow’s sinking...
The video from the scene:gen. hoyt s. vandenberg-video-online

Absolutmark said...

Aser, cheers for a link to the video. Great viewing. Looking forward to diving it.