17 - 08 - 2001.  SOA 

After an early breakfast, the team boarded Millawanda for the 20 minute trip to Cikil Burnu.  In order to avoid wasting time on frequent journeys to and from our base camp (often through rough seas), we decided to spend the entire diving day on site, sustained by our emergency dive box (which contains a nutritionally balanced selection of cookies selected each morning by our Dive Master, Guzden).  This arrangement worked well, and the whole team completed two productive dives before returning to camp for a late lunch at around 3:00 pm.

While underwater, we continued the work of yesterday on the 4th century BC wreck, measuring, sketching, cleaning, and photographing distinctive artifacts that will later help us to understand the ship and its historical context.  For cleaning we used soft brushes, with the main goal being to expose diagnostic features of the artifacts for photography.  Some of the amphoras actually looked quite impressive with their leopard-like dappling of black sponges, and since these were rather stubbornly attached we gladly made the aesthetic decision to leave them be.  Guzden then tried out the digital camera underwater for the first time, with impressive results as you can see here.

On our second dive Bridget placed a grid square made of metal in the middle of the wreck so that  we had a visual reference and scale on the videos and still photographs that Tufan will use to construct a 3D model of the archaeological site.  On this dive we had the entire diving team in the water in a frenzy of activity, anxious to accomplish as much as possible during our last visit to the wreck (not to mention clean up all our little artifact markers and raise the grid at the end of it).  Much was achieved, but still the time seems too short; there is clearly a lot more interesting material buried in the sandy area below the main amphora mound that warrants further investigation.  However, that is a task for a full excavation team and another time.  More shipwrecks await!

One of the questions that is constantly in the back of our minds is how all these ships came to be wrecked or lose their anchors here, making what seems to be a protected anchorage into a kind of Bermuda triangle.  And the nautical bad luck associated with this place apparently lingers today.  During our first dive, Millawanda was approached by a local fishing vessel to request the help of our divers to recover a lost anchor from around the point.  Then, on the journey home, our dinghy broke free and had to be rescued while foaming waves crashed over Millawanda's bucking deck.  Then when we got back to camp, we had to say goodbye to our captain, Murat, who was unfortunately experiencing severe pain from a diving ear injury.  Is our luck starting to turn too? 

Well, that could be a matter of perspective.  With Murat's departure, Zafer was promoted to captain, Orkan to first mate, and Bridget was very pleased to rise to the coveted rank of ship's boy.