Hard work climaxes Sunday as ship sinks
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By Mark Corbett
Daily News
February 3, 2005
The Harbour City’s tourism inventory is about to get a major boost as the Nanaimo Dive Association embarks upon last-minute preparations before sinking the Rivtow Lion Sunday in Departure Bay.
“This will really compliment our already fine diving products,” says Jerry Pink, General Manager of Tourism Nanaimo.
“It will open up more diving opportunities for novice to expert divers, and entice more people to come to Nanaimo to dive.”
The Rivtow will be towed out to the site, located near the northwest corner of Newcastle Island, Friday afternoon. It now sits heavily laden with water, tied to five tonne blocks of concrete on the ocean floor, awaiting its destiny.
When the Rivtow makes its final descent to the bottom of Departure Bay, nearly two years since it was acquired by the NDA, it will begin its new tour of duty as a shallow water artificial reef and training platform for novice wreck divers.
“This is the cherry on the cake,” says Ian Hall of the NDA. “It’s been exhausting getting to this point, but it’s also very exciting.”
Sinking the Rivtow marks the completion of phase four of Project Reef. The first three phases saw the creation of two world-class artificial reefs (the Saskatchewan and Cape Breton wrecks at Snake Island) and a mooring program so that boats can safely tie up and dive the sites. The final phase of Project Reef includes the creation of a covered, on-shore diver access site with showers and wheelchair accessibility somewhere along Nanaimo’s coastline.
For those who want to witness the Rivtow slip below the surface, it can be viewed from shore starting at about 10 a.m. Sunday morning.
“This is the preferred way to watch it go down,” says Hall. For those who want to watch from the water, “the Port Authority will erect a perimeter of buoys around the ship and are asking boaters to stay on the outside of that perimeter.”
Hall expects a fairly good showing of spectators, including a lot of Americans who are coming just to watch the sinking.
There will be no explosives or pyrotechnics used to sink the Rivtow – it will simply be flooded with sea water using large hoses.
“Once the decks are awash, the reserve buoyancy of the vessel will be lost and at that point, she’ll sink quite quickly,” he adds. Hall estimates it will take approximately two hours to sink the vessel.
Once it’s reaches the bottom, divers familiar with the vessel will go down to do a survey to make sure all the barriers are still intact and to ensure its stable. “It should be open for diving by the afternoon,” says Hall.
“The NDA would like to thank all the volunteers who worked on the Rivtow as well as the donors, especially Ocean Construction for the donation of the storage berth.”