Aloha & Effie Mae is a boat accessible fresh water dive site, located in Kingston, ON, Canada. This dive site has an average rating of 3.00 out of 5 from 1 scuba divers. The maximum depth is 61-70ft/19-21m. The average visibility is 5-10ft/2-3m.
Off Nine Mile Point, Simcoe Island, west of Kingston Ontario
In the fall of the year 1917 a schooner barge was being towed into Kingston’s
harbour in the midst of a troublesome
storm.. Heavily loaded with coal the old timbers, of a
vessel built in the late 1800’s, could take no more and the Aloha
was swallowed up by Lake
Ontario’s fury.. The tow vessel managed to pick up all the crew except the
Captain who
subsequently drowned.. The story does not end there
however.. In the 1960’s the Aloha was found again by a couple
of local Kingston divers... Then in
1980 the wreck suffered a great amount of destruction with the illegal removal
of a
large winch
from its deck... To-day the wreck sits in 60 ft of water offering a good second
or third dive or a warm up
dive for those who wish to hone their skills for deeper
water. In the summer fish abound, the water is warm, and visibility is
great. . Wreck is in OK shape. I believe right now they are about 48-50 ft down.
Beside her is the Effie May. She was an old dive boat that was scuttled by the owners. She is quite close and you can do both wrecks in a single dive.
Around the year of Canada’s 100th birthday a 40 ft wooden trawler hull was
started in Shelborne Nova Scotia.. The
craft was being built for Ken and Lois Jenkins of Port
Credit Ontario. The hull was brought to Port Credit and
completed in their back yard. In
1968 it was launched.. The completed boat was christened The Effie Mae..
Around
1980 the
Effie became the first live aboard dive charter boat in the Kingston area. In
1987 Ken sold the Effie to Ted
and Donna Walker. Ken succumbed to cancer and died the
following year. Ted and Donna started in 1987 to run
charters out of Kingston and
continued to the end of the 1992 season.. Ted was transferred out west. So the
Walker
family
decided to sell their beloved Effie.. Finding no suitable buyers and not wanting
their beloved Effie broken up or
just left to rot. They decided to donate the hull for
sinking to Preserve Our Wrecks Kingston. In the spring of 1993
they ran her for the last time to
the Metal Craft Dry dock to be made ready for sinking.
On Sunday October 17
1993
twenty five
years from the date of her christening the Effie Mae was put to rest beside one
of the historic shipwrecks
she visited so many times before. To-day she is a valuable
and much visited dive site sitting upright beside the wreck
of the Schooner barge Aloha. A
silent tribute to the two families who sailed and cared for her during her life
above the waves..
Local divers affectionately refer to the wreck of the "Effie" as "Ken’s wreck".
Ken Mullings, a very active member
of Preserve Our Wrecks provided most of the work getting
the authority to sink the ship, provided most of the labour
to get her ready for
sinking, worried, paced and fretted until she was finally put to rest.
"Well Sort of put to rest" It seems he didn’t like the first place the Effie
landed. So he convinced a number of divers
and a charter boat captain to help him lift the
hull gently off the bottom and pull her to exactly the right spot. This
was accomplished with no damage.... Ken is now Happy!!!!
The site is moored by POW Kingston
YouTube;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiHskZmxqJg