Last weekend I had a great weekend of diving in the Northern Lower Peninsula of Michigan. We began the diving Saturday early afternoon in Charlevoix, MI diving the wreck of the Keuka. An old timber framed boat that had been used as a speakeasy during prohibition, some of the equipment and gauges still in place. The Keuka rests in 45 feet of water in Lake Charlevoix with the deck at 25 feet, and the bottom at 45 feet. The wreck is open and easily penetrated with proper training and equipment. Visibility on the wreck was about 25 to 30 ft and temperatures of 64 on the surface, 57 inside the wreck and 54 on the bottom outside the wreck.

Our second dive on Saturday was at the Torch Lake Public Dock. Visibility here was again 25-30 feet and water temps about 64. To the south of the docks are several fish cribs and throughout the area there are numerouse logs from when the area was logged.

On Sunday we began our dives with a drift dive of the Boardman River in Traverse City, searching for old bottles. Visibility was 10-15 feet and temps in the 60’s made for a pleasant dive, in which the group found 30 to 40 old bottles ranging in age from 20 to 50 years old.

Our final dive of the weekend was at the Haserot Beach "Junk Pile". At the junk pile we had Caribbean like visibility of 50 foot or more and temps above the thermocline of 64. At the junk pile we found 2 old cars, 3 boats and several logs that had been sunk for fish habitat by the locals. The area had numerous perch, and bluegills and was a great dive that I would highly recommend to anyone traveling to the area to dive. The best resource for area diving is the Grand Traverse Bay Underwater Preserve website www.gtbup.org and the two local dive shops Scuba North and Great Lakes Scuba, both of which run charters to the offshore wrecks within the preserve.