SITE OF THE NEW CARISSA — Not a speck of the wrecked stern of the New Carissa is visible from land anymore. It’s gone. Kaput. Bye-bye.

But for Titan Salvage to complete its contract with the state, it must clear the other debris left in the ocean — basically, three large pieces below the waterline — away. The plan was to cut those pieces off even with the seafloor bottom.

Divers tried to do that Wednesday, but weather and equipment malfunctions prevented them from obtaining their goals. They did remove one small piece.

The day started out perfectly: blue sky, patchy clouds, no wind, calm seas with barely a ripple on the water.

But by noon, it turned ugly. The south wind picked up, ocean swells out of the west arrived every seven seconds or so and were between 4 and 6 feet tall. Rain prompted the Titan dive crew — the tenders, anyway — and the barge crews to put on their foulweather gear to stay dry.

For more than four hours, two divers worked on two separate pieces of the New Carissa.

For about three hours, they were warm.

The last hour, the water heater that sends heated recirculated seawater down to them to be pumped into their wet suits, quit working.

“It’s like sitting in a hot tub all day long,” diver Billy Stender said.

So much for that idea. He worked for at least an hour in water that was around 55 degrees. He was close to getting the piece rigged to be picked by the crane. He didn’t want to quit, but Salvage Master Shelby Harris made the call with one quick motion of his hand and thumb: Get him out of the water.

By the time Stender got out of the water, into the dive basket and onboard the Karlissa A barge, he was shivering. Salvors gave him a heavy blanket to put on and Harris had a high-powered heater waiting for him on the deck of the Karlissa B. The heater in the lunch room also blasted to the extreme. Stender’s hand shook uncontrollably as he carried a cup of coffee to the break room and huddled in front of the heater.

After working past 10 p.m. two nights recently and past 8 p.m. another night in an effort to get all the pieces out of the water, before the bad weather hit, Wednesday was a comparatively easy day. Salvors tried to fix the water heater in an effort to get other divers down, but there were too many problems to fix it easily.

By about 4:30, Harris, sitting in the lunch room and laughing with some of the other crew, was obviously disappointed with not making more progress. He picked up the mic on his portable radio.

“Crate it up. Shut it down.”

Not 10 seconds later, the generator shut off, the lights in the lunch room went dark and the crew headed for the cable car.