Wet your whistle (and everything else)
Shipwreck Park off Pompano Beach has new dive bar
ABOARD THE SERENITY – Getting wrecked was the mission and Pompano Beach’s newest dive bar was the scene of the spectacle.
It all went down Saturday morning, about a mile east of the city’s pier aboard the Okinawa, a 107-foot tugboat. About a hundred boats encircled the scene to watch the old military vessel’s last run to the bottom of the ocean to become the city’s newest artificial reef
And because a foundation in Pompano wants to put art in these artificial reefs — in this case a life-size sculpture of a whimsical bar with a mermaid bartender — plenty of drama hovered over the proceedings, along with camera-laden drones. Would the scuttling send the boat down straight or would it send the art flying willy-nilly?
“I’m always nervous after months and months of work,” said Dennis MacDonald, the sculptor of the scene.
MacDonald’s hopes for his first underwater exhibit and dive attraction were dashed in 2015 when a barge carrying 15 heads he had sculpted in the shape of Easter Island’s famous statues tipped over off Deerfield Beach instead of sinking straight down. The barge landed on top of his art.
Undeterred by that experience, a host of area businesses have joined with the city of Pompano Beach to invest in scuttling old boats with unique shipboard attractions, in the hopes of attracting sea life and divers to what has been a featureless underwater expanse just east of Pompano’s shore. They are calling it Shipwreck Park.
At 10:10 a.m., water began licking at the gunwales.
“Once it hits the sides, it’s five minutes away from sinking,” said Tommy DiGiorgio,