Scuba divers locate mysterious sunken boat

From the Pimlico Echo: Scuba divers locate mysterious sunken boat

Laboriously searching the cold, dark depths of Crowsnest Lake for a derailed train that rests on the lake bottom, a scuba dive team—comprised of Pincher Creek and Pass divers—recently stumbled upon and salvaged a sunken fishing boat.

For David Hartley, scuba instructor with Mountain Tide Aquatics out of Raymond, Alberta, the finding of the boat was exciting, but also quite mysterious as the sinking had never been reported to the Crowsnest Pass RCMP.

"It was an exciting find; usually you find a fishing pole or old bottles, but to find something nobody knows about, that nobody knows the back story, it's a little bit of a mystery," he said.

Twice a year, Hartley offers scuba diving courses in Pincher Creek and the divers who salvaged the boat had gained their dive certification after completing his course.

Basing their search off other divers' reports, Hartley and his team have been spending weekends searching specific areas off the lake's north shore in an attempt to find the train.

"While we were doing one of these searches to find the train, we literally ran into the boat under the water," Hartley said. "We came back and I phoned the RCMP, and I gave them a brief description of the boat."

According to him, the Crowsnest Pass RCMP had nothing about the boat on file and no record of it having been sunk. Hartley, who said the boat must have sunk two to three years ago, said he received the go ahead to salvage the find.

The 14 foot long fishing boat has yellow and black trim and was even found with lunches still in their shopping bags. Though the boat was old—made in the late 60s, early 70s—Hartley believes it had only recently sunk.

"That lake has a sulphur mineral in it and it crusts things over," he said. "You can tell by how much debris or crust is on there, you can get an idea how long it has been down. There is no crust at all; there's silt and dirt, but no actual crust forming."

Most of the salvage work was done in two stages on Oct. 22, he explained, saying they first flipped the boat, attached lift bags to it and floated it to the surface. Interestingly, Hartley and another professional diver sunk the boat again, giving his former students a chance to gain the experience.

The boat was pulled into shore, bailed out and still floated without taking on water. Though the engines are trashed, Hartley said if the original owner wants it back, then he will be paid a salvage fee.

On the other hand, if the owner does not want it back, then Hartley will polish it up and it will become a dive boat for his company.

"We'll keep diving with these same divers around here and it becomes part of the scuba diving legacy of this area; as more people dive and if we use that as a boat, they'll be able to say, I was one of the people who brought that up from the bottom of the lake," Hartley said.

Mountain Tide Aquatics will be offering courses at the Pincher Creek pool in November and another one in February of next year. Hartley hopes to offer a summer scuba lesson at the Crowsnest Community Pool in Blairmore.

The Crowsnest Pass RCMP detachment is working on finding the original owners of the boat and whether or not they wish to have it back.