6-29-12

At 165 feet in length and nearly 55 feet in height, the Coast Guard Cutter Mohawk will make for a fantastic reef destination offshore Lee County. This weekend TISIRI's Joe Kistel and Ed Kalakauskis will travel south to Fort Myers to participate in the artificial reef deployment scheduled for this Monday, July 2nd. The Mohawk will be sunk in 90 feet of water in an area known as Charlie's Reef which is roughly 30 miles West of Sanibel Island. Project crews will tow the cutter Mohawk to the Charlie's Reef location on Sunday, the day prior to the sinking, to properly situate the ship and make last minute preparations. On Monday, at 11 am, explosive cutting charges will be detonated creating large holes in the ship's hull below the waterline. This will allow water to rush into the Mohawk, sinking her to the Lee county sea floor within minutes.

TISIRI's Kistel and Kalakauskis intend to film and photograph the deployment process and if conditions allow investigate the nearby Hopper Cars reef. Make sure to check back to the TISIRI web page to see pictures and video of the Mohawk sinking Monday afternoon.

For those of you that are interested in viewing the Mohawk Reef deployment by boat TISIRI has provided a map below with the GPS coordinates of the center of Charlie's Reef and other existing reef sites in the area including a sunken vessel and a railroad cars reef. The Mohawk will be deployed in the Chalie's reef site and we would recommend boaters to head towards GPS coordinates 26°33.20N 82°43.20W (Charlie's Reef center point) until they see the large Mohawk on the horizon. Once on site please be aware there will be a .5 mile clearance distance from the vessel.