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S E P T E M B E R 6th |
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Disaster struck today. As we were securing the ship above a 5th century BC wreck, our windlass broke. The windlass is the small winch with a 3 hp engine that raises and lowers the anchor and its iron chain. As Tufan spun the rear of the ship toward shore, the pin securing the windlass broke, leaving the chain loose, and the ship at the whim of the winds and current. We were going to raise the anchor with air balloons, the same kind used for underwater excavations, but none were large enough. It would have taken hours. Instead, we tied a rope to the chain and ran the line to shore, securing it underwater with a weight. We will return to Sigacik, take the windlass apart and bring it to Izmir, the largest city in the area. Hopefully, we can find someone who can repair it quickly and return to retrieve our lost anchor. | |
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We did get to dive over the sunken ship, called the
Tektash Wreck after the small island that you can see just above the Virazon. Tufan
piloted the Virazon away from the rocks as the dive team descended. They would later
be picked up by the dinghy. The wreck is amazing. At 38 to 45 meters, amphoras from Mende, an island in the Aegean, line the steep slope of a submerged rock cliff. Archaeologists believe the wreck to be from 450-425 BC. This is the Golden Age of Classical Greece, the time of Socrates and the beautiful sculptures of Pheidias and Polideitos, the building of the Parthenon. Playwrights Sophocles and Euripides wrote dramatic works that still influence modern drama. Herodotus and Thucydides wrote volumes on history that today are invaluable to the reconstruction of the past. We know so much about the internal workings of ancient Greek culture, but very little about their contact with other nations. The Institute of Nautical Archaeology will begin an excavation in 1999, hoping to find out what kind of contact the Greeks had with their Mediterranean neighbors. I've just been told that we finally have service on the cellular connection. I'll write more later. |
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C O N T A C T U S A T v i r a z o n @ d i v e t u r k e y . c o m |
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