Christine Yugay

Motto of the day:

If there is anything more insulting for a college educated person in her thirties than loosing a game of Pictionary, it is losing to a seventeen-year-old.

In the Monday night Pictionary competition, Blue Thunders, among whose most brilliant players were Max and Young Adam – both high-school students, defeated my team - Dirty Monkeys - by a landslide. But, in spite of the bitter disappointment and the unbearably hot atmosphere of Floridian August, I slept soundly and woke up early Tuesday morning: there were some very exciting discoveries waiting to be made.  

After a simple breakfast and a short squabble over on which one of the three boats the bag of Oreo cookies should travel, all twelve students of the field school led by the unsinkable Drs. Sheli and Corbin left for the Slobodna shipwreck site. Once again, we passed the beautiful mangroves and a net of corral reefs whose strange dark shapes resembled giant sea monsters lurking under the turquoise surface of the sea and, thirty minute later, arrived at the site. 

At the site.

It seems that the natives of the reefs are beginning to get used to our presence. Or, perhaps, it was the exceptionally beautiful day that made thousands of parrot fish, snappers, blue chromis, goatfish and even a large sea turtle come out of their hiding places and snoot around the shipwreck.

The remains of a deadeye. The strap around the deadeye has deteriorated, leaving an impression in the sea floor.

The day before, we had mapped most of the shipwreck pieces scattered in the vicinity of the mast. Thus, today, we expanded the area of the site up to a hundred feet. Swimming such a distance several times back and forth can be hard even in the calm crystal clear waters of a swimming pool, but when done against a strong undercurrent, it is absolutely exhausting. No wonder, the two forty-minute dives left even the most experienced of us dead beat, lightheaded, hungry and longing for the dry land. Yet, they produced pleasing results: two more dozens of artifacts were sketched and recorded. Hopefully, these new finds will help us to reconstruct the tragic events of March 16, 1887 with more precision.

Another artifact mapped -- a mast fitting.

As I write this, my friends and fellow-divers are stooping over the desk that occupies most of our living room. On the desk, there is a map of the Slobodna shipwreck site. When we started putting it together Monday afternoon, it was barely one foot wide. Now, it measures over seven feet in length and nine feet in width and is growing with each passing hour, as new pieces of paper are added to all four of its sides and new finds are drawn on it.

Washing the dive gear at the end of the days is a tedious but essential task. Master Jack seems not to tire of it, though.

The work will continue until after sunset. Afterwards, the four teams comprising our group will discuss what other sections of the site should be surveyed and what pieces of the ship should be mapped tomorrow morning and what can be left till next season. With only one dive left, we must make the most out of it.

In conclusion, here is an interesting philosophical observation:

Ships are not like other man-made things in the sense that they seem to possess an ability to unite people. The construction of Slobodna, for instance, took combined efforts of hundreds of men. During her life, however short, the ship housed several dozens of sailors. And, today, sixteen people from all over the United States, Europe, Asia and Australia are gathered together to uncover her mysteries.