01/07/2024 Ana Cecila & Danny McCauley Memorial Reef  8:00AM

The Ana Cecilia 9 amThe Ana Cecilia was put to rest on July 13, 2016 about a mile off of Singer Island, Florida. Her main deck is in 62 feet of water with the bottom at 85 feet making it easy to dive a phenomenal wreck with some great bottom time. The ship is part of a wreck trek called The Corridor, including the Mizpah, China Barge, Amaryllis and the Brazilian Docks.

The Ana Cecilia is a 170 feet long freighter weighing 629 tons. She was previously used as a cargo ship carrying humanitarian goods to Havana from Miami. The ship carried clothing, hygiene products, food and other necessities. She was the first to make a direct US to Cuba voyage since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Once the transport operation shut down in April 2013, the ship changed hands and took on a new job. The Ana Cecilia made headlines for the second time in September 2015 when she was seized by the US Government for smuggling 413 kilograms of cocaine from Haiti, reported by the Palm Beach Post.

The Danny McCauley Memorial Reef has been deployed in less than 80 feet of water just north of the Lake Worth inlet. The tugboat sits in 74 feet of seawater with the deck in the 50-foot range. This 110 foot World War II vintage tugboat, formerly called the M/V Pocahontas was built in Ontario, Canada, in 1944. The M/V Pocahontas now lies in 74 feet of water less than two miles northeast of Lake Worth Inlet. This area is home to other artificial reefs, including the first vessels sunk by the county in the 1960s, large concrete pieces from the old Royal Park Bridge, several barges and a small tugboat.

The M/V Pocahontas will provide a stepping stone between the older reef placements to the south and the Royal Park Bridge materials to the north. After several delays due to Coast Guard inspections, mechanical failures, and weather, the decision was made to sink the tugboat the morning of February 22, 2013. The choice of this date was unintentional but somehow fitting. It was the anniversary of the passing of 16-year-old Danny McCauley in a tragic automobile accident, in which the site is named after.

Danny “Daniel” McCauley was an avid fishermen and diver whose life was cut short at the age of 17 in a tragic automobile accident while on the way to school in 2012. Many of his classmates at Palm Beach Central High School knew and loved him for his good nature and camaraderie as a member of the varsity wrestling team. But his family and friends knew that the ocean was what Danny loved most.

As a mean to celebrate his life, the McCauley family donated $10,000 to the PBC’s Environmental Resources Management (ERM) for the acquisition of a new artificial reef, which the Diving Association was currently working on at the time. With the combined efforts of Palm Beach County’s Environmental Resources Management (ERM), the Doitfordanny.com fundraiser (where the McCauley family funds were derived), along with the PBCDA’s own non-profit Artificial Reef Fund (ARF), the objective to create a new dive site was made a reality. In addition to this tremendous initiative being shared by all parties, the decision to rename the wreck after Danny McCauley was equally unanimous.