In spite of everything we had learned the past few days, there were still LOTS of work to do before we could even start surveying on "Le Dragon"! The dredge had to be prepped, buoys made, training on how to measure and how to use the geophysical equipment and our grid ready to assemble on site. Even with early morning starts and all hands on deck, time was still a challenge…
Bob and Brian spray-painting the dredge so it could be seen in the low visibility
In the immortal words of Dr Spooner:
“There are 3 kinds of time: British time, American time, and Dominican time. British time is always ten minutes early. American time might give or take 20 minutes. But Dominican time… you would be lucky if a few hours would suffice.”
And in our case, that’s exactly what happened. Our boat was delayed and there were some complications with work site logistics. Nevertheless we worked around some of the setbacks and soon enough things began to fall together. The boat was being delivered, the trash pumps for the dredge sorted and the geophysical equipment ready to be deployed.
The Team goes on their first dive to locate "Le Dragon" in the shallows
We had our first dive on site and confirmed that a storm had actually uncovered certain sections of the wreck, making our surveying work much easier in some places. In one particular case, the sea bed which previously buried starboard side of the ship had even been lowered by several feet!
While this was good news for the most part, we could not properly evaluate whether the site had also been damaged as a side effect of the storm. The true story would have to wait until the site was surveyed and partially uncovered.
Back at the ADMAT facility, there were some other chores to do with preparing the lab for future artefacts liberated from the wreck, and cleaning preservation and desalination tanks.