15 - 08 - 2001.  SOA

After five days of guarding SOA's isolated base camp, Bridget, Orkan, and Ken were glad to see the small light of Huseyin's boat approaching across the wine-dark sea. It was after 9pm when the full team finally assembled on 'the rock', a wind-swept cape that will be SOA's home for the next month.

The following day, work began in earnest. Tufan and Ken made dives in the cove below our camp to set up a mooring for Millawanda, the INA catamaran that will serve as the platform for our diving operations. Incredibly, we were able to take Millawanda to Cikil Burun for the first acclimation and reconnaissance dives the same afternoon. Tufan and Ken did a swift tour of the main shipwreck sites while Guzden led Orkan and Kerem on check-out dives. Berta, Bridget, and Gokhan Bey (our government representative) made an acclimation dive and marveled at the warm, clear water. Swimming over a shallow plateau and down a steep rocky cliff, they came almost immediately upon the great tumbled monoliths of the millstone wreck. These huge stone wheels, still stacked as if on the deck of a cargo vessel, present an awesome sight rising up out of the sand in the deep blue water. It is a spectacular wreck by anyone's standards, and just a foretaste of things to come...