Extreme Makeover: Hurricane Dennis Edition

Here is a hilarious story.

Apparently, there had been efforts for some time to manufacture a man-made reef off the Florida Keys, to encourage sea life that would entertain divers in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.

Reef creating is fascinating in and of itself, and it seems that part of their efforts to build the reef included purposefully sinking the USS Spiegel Grove (510 feet long, and "the largest vessel ever deliberately sunk to form the backbone of a coral ridge"--which alone is one of the funnier sentences in this story).

Anyway, back to the point. The workers building the reef screwed up. They were aiming to sink the ship upright, and slowly...but something went wrong and the Spiegel Grove capsized...eventually coming to rest with significant parts of the boat's underside sticking up out of the water.

And I know what you're thinking: "Oh, that's horrible. Capsizing accidents involving Cold War relics are the bane of the modern reef builder." And you're right...they are.

But never fear. As I'm sure you've guessed, the crew got a much needed (and highly improbable) helping hand from Hurricane Dennis this past weekend. Twenty-foot waves caused massively powerful currents in the water...the end result being that the ship was flipped over and landed in "perfect" position to form the basis of the reef.

The story quotes one of the workers as saying that "nature took its course and put it (the ship) where it belongs." And I think that's a naive viewpoint.

Clearly, to us enlightened folks, it's abundantly clear that ABC--with Ty Pennington's help--was pulling the strings behind the scenes, guiding and directing the storm so that this would happen, all part of an extensive grass roots marketing campaign for the next big thing in makeover-related reality tv.