Trip to Platform Elf and Bluewater on the Marco Polo - September 16-17, 2016© Photos Posted by Mark Miller © Hi-Res Source
This was a Bluewater Trip on Kendall Terrell's 23' Sportsman, the Marco Polo, to the Elf Platform, also known as Matterhorn. It's located at 28°44.472'N and 88°49.572'W in about 2800 feet of water about 30 miles southeast of South Pass, Mississippi River. It's the largest Mini Tension Leg Platform to date. The center cylinder is 84 feet in diameter and drafts 104 feet. It has 3 floatation pontoons that are 42 feet tall at the rig and taper to 27 feet on the ends. The pontoons give the rig an overall diameter of 359 feet. Scuba Diving and Freediving are ideal with a depth of 115 feet underneath and 70 feet on top of the pontoons. The 9 wells penetrate the seabed to a depth of 8,165 feet and have been in production since November of 2003. A Dive was also made on the way out on Pompano Platform VK-989 in 1290 feet of water and on Platform MP-289c near the Salt Dome in about 400 feet of water on the way in. We caught some great live bait at Platform MP-236B North of Block MP-133. However, the tuna were finicky and we did not have the fuel to go any further. Although our mission to catch Yellowfin Tuna failed, Omar and I got in some great scuba diving as you can see in the videos below. We left out around 12:30pm from Pascagoula Point on September 16, and returned at about 6pm on September 17. Also onboard was Omar Vasquez who speared the only fish we brought home.
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