It is another lovely day at sea. Partly cloudy but sunshine peeking through and calm seas. I have some great interviews today and information to share. We will not be able to reach all six sites over the course of this cruise. One day was lost to weather, so we will visit a site today and one last site tomorrow.
A little math for today. Last night we left the U-166 site and headed on a bearing of 50° It took us 4 hours to get to the next site.
Using Sonar to Define Wrecks
I wanted to share with you how using sonar really helps us better define the wrecks we are looking at. Here is the bow of the Mica Wreck. In the top view we see the mult-beam data recovered by flying over the wreck site. In the second frame you can see the recent color, sonar image we captured this week. Finally by marrying the two we can see lots of details in the bow.
Mica is a small wooden vessel only 65ft long and 22 ft wide. The stem is a smooth, spoon shape reminiscent of Cat boats in the Caribbean. The lower hull was sheathed in copper and we found that her planking was just about 1 inch thick. For those who
want to read more on the Mica Wreck see http://repository.tamu.edu/handle/1969.1/311 by Toby Jones.