Side-scan-sonar images of Echo Junior

[Diver1111]

Hi All,

Kicking around in Alton Bay recently. Decided to try and bag the Echo Junior on SSS (I practice alot on many different targets in New England that I have not dived-then dive them for various reasons, as I did today). Chop was bad from passing boats, as were swells because it sits near a marker warning boats of a shoal so they tend to come close in to the marker when passing by.

But I caught it then dove it, landing about 12 feet away-viz about 5 feet at about 40 feet and no thermocline either-something else I did not expect given my experience diving Winni. I had planned on dropping down in my wetsuit (vs. my drysuit) and hitting ice-cold water and taking the hit for a few minutes-didn't happen.

Wow-not much left-wood was mostly skeleton-like structure with a huge engine standing straight up in the water column about 4 feet off the bottom of the hull. Surprised I could even pick up the tattered wood frame. The engine I expected to see on SSS, but not the framing. This thing is long, too. Must have been a blast to drive.

According to a post I found on the Net about her a while ago:

# Loon Cove - The wreck of the Echo Junior lies in about 45 feet of water on the south side of the red buoy in Alton Bay. The 28-foot hull is still intact. It burnt to the waterline on its maiden voyage. The engine of the 1940s speedboat is a 12-cylinder Allison Aircraft engine.

Sorry the images are not clearer-this one was tough-as I said the hull was pretty much gone and what was left was Swiss-cheese. But the engine stands out nicely as a square with associated rectangular shadow from the sonar beam hitting it.

Image 1: Knowing I had a target to find in the area I decided this was it, and was right; You have to be creative in your interpretation of an image, coupled with experience-I knew there was something solid there; Image is nothing to write home about but was useful to me;

Image 2: Clearly a boat (at least to me), with what I correctly assumed was the engine standing up in the water column; I am still impressed I got a hull outline at all-this hull was toast; Note the shadow of the engine amid-ships;

Image 3: Quickie scan leaving the area-again you can see the engine standing in the water column but the rest of the image is pretty much useless, unless you were looking for something in this area; If that was the case and this was the first image I caught it would have been a major focus-point;

Image 4: Used the zoom-box to blow it up-suffers from pixelation though still useful to me; Image is warped (curved) because I was turning the boat a bit when I caught it-turning boats equal less-than-straight-line images of an otherwise straight object.

More to come as I get to them.