Caribbean Encounters: I’m a Wreck Diver!

Hello all, once again! Not too much here to report for this past week. Chris had to work most of the weekend, but we did find time to do a dive that we have been aiming to go to. This dive is called the Wit Shoal II and it is, more often than not, a inhospitable dive site due to being in a convergence zone where the north shore swell meets the south shore currents and which create choppy conditions. However, luck was on our side and it was a near perfect day to go to the Wit Shoal.

I may have reached a personal diving milestone in that, during both dives that day, I felt very comfortable down there and actually spent more time enjoying the surroundings than thinking about what may go wrong. I loved swimming around the ship wreck and also got a thrill out of seeing a few nurse sharks. One of them had to be at least a 6 footer. While nurse sharks are actually one of the most benign sharks that you can come across, our captain informed us that they are the most common shark species to bite humans. This is because they are so unthreatening that people often try to pet them! And that, to those who might not already suspect this, is a bad idea.

A little history on the Wit Shoal II:
The WIT Shoal II / LST 467 is located a few miles southwest of the St. Thomas airport, near Saba Rock. The WIT Shoal was originally a warship, known as LST 467. LST stands for Landing Ship Tanks, and she was built in 1943 to land up to 20 Sherman tanks onto the beach in the Allied invasions of Europe and the Pacific during World War II. LSTs were designed to run right up onto the beach to land the tanks. The bow of the ship has large doors which open outward, and an inner door which lowers down to form a ramp for the tanks to drive onto the beach. LST 467 served in the Pacific during the war.

After the war this 328 foot long ship was purchased by the West Indies Transport company, and renamed the WIT Shoal II. She was used as a freighter until she sank in Tropical Storm Klaus, on November 6, 1984. Today the WIT Shoal is one of the premier diving wrecks of St. Thomas.

The shipwreck sits upright in 90 feet of water, but the top of the observation tower is only 35 feet beneath the waves. There are 5 levels of decks for divers to explore.

That’s it in a nutshell! We hope to try to do one more dive before we head on home in just a few weeks. I have posted a few photos below, though I found them on the web and did not actually take them myself.

Love to all,

Kasey