Well, former Navy ship. This week the Ship, USNS General Hoyt S. Vandenberg, a 522 foot 17,250 ton former troop transport ship with a long career, most recently tracking missle launches for both the Air Force and Navy, was intentionally sunk about 6 or 7 miles off Key West in 140 feet of water. For those with GPS’s, the coordinates are: 24.27 N, 81.44 W, between Western Sambo and Sand Key, and south of Hawks Channel marker #32
The idea was to provide an artificial reef, mainly for reef research, SCUBA divers, and so they say, snorkelers, (in 140 feet of water, you have to have better lungs than I do to get anywhere close). Apparently, this is the second largest artificial reef in the world, and was 12 years in the planning. If you read the papers down there, this was a really big deal, almost as big as the scandal with the wife of the Supertendent of Schools.
Here is a video of the sinking, start to finish just over two minutes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwDdUpxqTzk. Other videos, including on-board footage can be found at www.sinkthevandenberg.com, and more at www.keysnews.com. The sinkthevandenberg.com site was planning to stream the proceedings live on the internet, but the demand was so great that it caused the web hosting company’s computer to crash. Luckily, I don’t have that problem here.
According to the coverage, the sinking was a total success, in other words the ship settled to the bottom keel-down, which was the plan. An earlier sinking a few years ago up at Key Largo didn’t go as well, with the ship landing on its side, but fortunately, along came a hurricane, I don’t know which one, maybe Rita, and believe it or not rolled the ship into an upright position. Clean living, I guess.