Phil Giboney concentrated on sales and accounting as a business student in the early 1990s at Highline College in Des Moines, Washington. In 2014, he became the owner of Trojan One Properties, a property management company serving the greater Seattle area. An avid enthusiast of all things maritime, Phil Giboney enjoys boating, salmon fishing, and scuba diving.
One of the most popular forms of scuba diving is wreck diving; that is, diving to and among the ruins of ships that have sunk. One of the best-known wrecks in the Seattle area is the Diamond Knot, which was lost in the fogbound Strait of Juan de Fuca in the early morning hours of August 12, 1947.
The Diamond Knot, a 320-foot freighter, was bound from Alaska for Seattle with a huge cargo of canned salmon representing about 10 percent of Alaska’s annual output. Another freighter, the Fenn Victory, sliced into Diamond Knot’s starboard side, plowing more than 14 feet into her and locking the two ships together. Fenn Victory was able to limp back to port after being extricated, but Diamond Knot was taking on water too rapidly and finally sank in about 135 feet of water.
Nearly every inch of the Diamond Knot wreck, which has become a huge artificial reef, is now covered in some form of marine life, including sea anemones, barnacles, scallops, sponges, and numerous fish. However, diving the Diamond Knot can be hazardous due to the constantly changing currents in the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the ever-changing visibility, and it should be attempted only by advanced divers. Some divers have been pushed far to the west while ascending from the wreck, sometimes floating for hours in the Pacific before being located and rescued.
