Cool Pics

So, a few weeks ago, I posted a story about a ship that sank right off the shore of Coronado Island in San Diego.

During prohibition etc, they used to anchor Giant Casino ships right of the coast of Coronado in front of the Hotel Del, (which was built to accommodate all of the political figures and celebrities from the Los Angeles area when the visisted). So, while the wealthy guests at the hotel stayed, they would be boated out to the Giant Casino ships to gamble, which was legal because they were not on land. About 74 years ago, during an El Nino Winter Storm, they left the Giant ship, with Concrete Hull anchored and the ship was buckled by storm surf and Sank right on the coastline. A few years later, in order to allow Naval Fleets to enter the then shallow San Diego Bay, they dreged the entire bottom really really deep and placed all of the San on “Harbor Island etc” So, where the San Diego Airport is now, used to be the actual bay. All the sand and sediment was pushed there and they turned it into the airport area… Anyway, over on Coronado Island, they also pushed a bunch of sand onto the island to make the North Island Naval base larger… In doing this, it must have been cheaper to simple bury this Giant Concrete Ship in sand and forget about it for ever, rather than pay to have the giant thing removed….

So anyway, over the past decade, when El Nino hits and we get a 20+ft week of surf, all the sand pulls off of this sunken ship and exposes it. It becomes a hazard in the water to surfers and swimmers… and usually, within a month, they pay about 1.4 million and cover it back up. I have heard of this, but never made it down to the ship at low tide to see it before it got covered up. I told this story to one of the servers at my restaurant about it. He is a professional Photographers and he was really interested. Anyway, he went down last week and took this photos. Pretty cool. Especially if you have been to Coronado Island before. Its pretty cool…. Thought I would share it with the rest of class =) Enjoy.

The Photographer's name is Steve O'Driscoll...