Winnipesaukee Wreck Site List

[Diver1111]

After long consideration I have decided to post a number of wreck and some non-wreck sites for Winnipesaukee; Senter Cover Guy is responsible for some of the entries and helped me decide which to post because I still have reservations about doing so. The attached spreadsheet lists them.

A few things you need to know:

- For various reasons I have not posted all of the wrecks and non-wrecks of interest I have found; there are about 70 +- wrecks total to date; these include but are not limited to very old cars, 9 sections of the old Mt. Washington and old wrecks with beautiful features, with hull and hardware still intact including red/green running lights, steering wheels, lettering etc.; some are in places just too dangerous for many divers and I won’t post their location for that reason alone; how someone chooses to dive is not my responsibility but I still won’t do it;

- Some of these wrecks are deep and dark (as in no light at all), and the water can be ice cold, as in the mid to high 40’s; unless you’re well prepared in every respect for such conditions don’t dive them; some are not deep but are still very dark depending on site conditions (for example, Lees Mills and Moultonboro Bay can be the color of ice tea at the surface and near black out conditions at only 30 to 40 feet down, all normal conditions for the area); again-unless you know exactly what you are doing based on experience-my advice is don’t do it;

- I assume zero responsibility for any and all issues that may arise from anyone’s diving on any of these sites now or in the future; I am not trying to frighten anyone, just trying to get them to pay attention;

- For some divers it needs to be said: do not trash the wrecks; I can only ask of course, that you respect the wrecks;

- I do not use a hand-held GPS for finding anything because I have found my Garmin to be problematic (not accurate enough, probably because it’s 10 years old); instead I use the outstanding GPS that came with my Humminbird 1197 side-scan-sonar/chartplotter; it’s accuracy is remarkable; if you have trouble finding a wreck it might be your GPS or your boat is drifting too much as you drop a marker flag;

- Stay out of the path of the Mount and other such traffic; for example the ChrisCraft in Weirs Bay at about 72 feet down is directly in the path of the Mount as she comes through Eagle Channel to the Weirs and back out; anchor there at the wrong time and you are asking for big trouble; I carry the Mount’s schedule in my boat so I know exactly where she will be and when, and of course I don’t ever dive in her path knowing she will be passing by while I’m in the water or even getting ready to do a dive; in cases such as this I hope Marine Patrol shows up and takes control of the situation;

- One technique I came up with with Senter Cove Guy that has worked really well for us and adds a priceless margin of safety is described below; If you are in a wind that could drag your anchor, and even if you’re not in such a wind:

o Drop a dive flag on the wreck to mark it; generally you won’t hit the wreck directly but come close enough allowing you to find it once you’re on the bottom;
o Drop anchor nearby and back off the boat to set the anchor if it can be set;
o Put up a dive flag on the boat too; I use a 2’ x 3’ dive flag mounted on a 7 foot pole on the stern;
o Enter the water and clip a wreck reel with a heavy clip on the end, to the anchor line and swim on the surface to the dive flag/marker flag letting out the wreck reel line as you go; the heavy clip will go down the anchor line by itself under its own weight;
o Once at the dive flag descend to the wreck with wreck reel in-hand of course; if you can’t find the wreck at that point do a circle-search;
o When you return to the boat, reel in the wreck reel line by swimming on the bottom to the anchor to which it is clipped, remove the wreck reel from it, then ascend the anchor line and you will come up right at the boat not out in potentially dangerous water with no flag marking your position as you surface etc.;
o This technique worked for us quite well recently on a dive to 88 feet (46 degrees on the bottom); after setting the marker flag the boat was about 100 feet away from the flag, and the boat was clearly dragging a bit as we were gearing up for the dive; because of this SCG swam out to the flag with the wreck reel while I went down the anchor line to set the anchor; once on the bottom I encountered silt so deep that when I set the anchor into the bottom my arms went into the silt up to about my shoulders; I then followed the wreck reel line from the anchor on the bottom to SCG who was waiting for me on the bottom at the site we wanted to dive;
o This technique is generally not needed in really shallow water or water clear enough to see say, 20 feet; you probably still want to drop a flag on the wreck;

I don’t have a camp on the lake this year so I can’t spend as much time as I’d like on Winni. In the meantime I have been ocean diving and have some river diving planned. As I find new things in Winni I will give them due consideration and post them as I can for the public to dive. I have been up to Winni quite a few times this year scanning and diving and have a lot more to explore and search for.

If people have questions about a site or anything else feel free to email me at: info(at)sonarsar.com.

I will help you any way I can.

HH