The Cali, a 220 foot steel schooner, was built in 1900 as a four-masted
sailing ship. In 1926, she was fitted
with two giant diesel engines. The ship spent
the next 22 years transporting freight across the oceans. Then, in January of 1948, the Cali began
taking on water. She ran ashore at
George Town with a cargo of 30,000 bags of rice.
Today, you will find the wreckage of the Cali in 20 to 30 feet of
water about 40 yards offshore along Grand Cayman’s North Church Road. The ship lies as a dark mass amid a seascape
of wave-sculpted white sand and roving schools of showy fish.
Interestingly enough, one of the best access points for snorkeling
the Cali is from the outside eating deck at Rackam’s Waterfront Restaurant and
Bar. Rackam’s not only allows you to
snorkel from their deck, they encourage it. They have even provided a ladder for accessing
the water from the sea wall of the establishment.
The ocean waters immediately below Rackam’s deck teem with a
variety of fish—including French-fry-eating tarpon.
The other day, all six of us ate lunch at Rackam’s. After pitching the last of our fries into the
water for the Tarpon, I, Bill, and Larry slipped into the aquamarine water
alongside three and four-foot tarpon.
The tarpon were not at all opposed to swimming with us. A variety of other smaller and more colorful
fish (I am still in the process of learning names) also swirled around us.
We soon swam away—over something of an underwater escarpment of
sand and then into water turning deeper and darker. At the edge of the darker water, Bill and I
saw one giant fish, fat and bulky as an anvil (but much bigger), lurking along a
white sand incline. There, we also found
the collapsed heap of the Cali spread across the sand below us. At one point, we even found divers swimming
and bubbling below us.
To date, this was my favorite snorkel adventure
on the island.
The photograph of the ladder I am posting today will give some
indication of the size of the tarpon swimming the waters around Rackam’s.
Tarpon
Tarpon below the
ladder at Rackam’s
Me at the end of
visiting the Cali
Short Cali Video
from YouTube
—Mitchell Hegman
Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5QKqOLarqs
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