I recently read an April, 2014 Coast Guard notice of three wrecks found during a hydrographic survey in the Chemainus area. The coordinates were at the entrance to the harbour. I looked at a satellite image and saw what looked like a floating barge or dock near this spot. I did an internet search including "barge" "sunk" and "chemainus" and found all kinds of news articles and indignant letters involving 5 floating drydocks (commonly mistaken for barges) that were towed here around 2006 to be used as a breakwater for a waterfront marina development. They were 77 feet wide and 110 feet long. The financing fell through and the drydocks were abandoned. Three of them eventually sank around 2012. One of the remaining ones was towed to Ladysmith where it raised indignation there until it was eventually dismantled. That left one drydock (they all actually might have been sections of a single drydock). The satellite image (from 2013) showed that it was still in Chemainus. It also showed that it was only about 150 meters from shore. Ignoring the likelihood of terrible Spring visibility I drove up from Victoria (May 23, 2014) to try my luck with diving them. The only public access to the water near the drydocks was at the Rotary Park boat ramp. From there, there was a short walk along the shore to a large pile of boulders sticking out into the water (part of the failed development). Looking out I could see that the last remaining drydock was gone so I couldn't use it as a reference for a direction to swim in. Instead I followed my compass out in the direction of Bare Point since the satellite image showed that the drydocks were in that direction. Visibility wasn't as bad as I thought even though the water was full of long, stringy clumps of plankton. I could see maybe 10 feet and when I descended past 20 feet deep, visibility was at least 30'. The bottom was a flat plain of sand. At about 30 feet deep a low gravel mound rose up. It was covered with orange and white plumose anemones. I swam down the other side of this mound. I reached about 50 feet deep and started to see debris on the bottom. There were metal pipes and flat sheets of something or other (plywood?). I kept swimming and saw the corner of a drydock rise up in front of me. It was about 10 feet high. The sand around the wreck was 60 feet deep and the top of the drydock was 50 feet deep. On the sand around the dock there were large concrete mooring blocks, chains and large tires. The "hull" and deck of the structure was made of wood. I could see another drydock in the distance about 30 feet away. I swam up to the flat top. The deck was covered over except at the ends where there were just bare beams and I could look down inside and see large pipes and valves. Below the pipes the bottom was obscured by a white cloud of something suspended in the water. The pipes must have been part of the pumping system. The floating drydock could be flooded with water to partially submerge it. A ship would be positioned in the middle and the water would be pumped out, raising the dock (and the ship). I think the beams were exposed on the ends because this is where the "walls" used to be rising up on each end. I read in a news article about the developer asking to remove these walls from the drydocks since they caught the wind and risked acting like sails, blowing the docks away from their moorings. The top of the deck was mostly bare. I saw lots of small plumose anemones starting to grow. There weren't many fish. I saw some kelp greenlings, buffalo sculpins, small copper rockfish and a small lingcod. I swam across to the second drydock that I had seen in the distance. There was a third one sunk right next to it. Looking down off the end I could see a plain of seapens on the sandy bottom. I swam down across it and found a "boom boat" on the bottom. These are tiny tugs used to push logs around (Chemainus has a large lumber mill). I was breathing from a 119 cubic-foot tank and I managed to tour all three sunken drydocks, but I didn't have enough air to explore too closely. I swam back to shore over the gravel plumose anemone mound and up through the swarms of lion's mane (or fried egg?) jellyfish.
