A diver had to swim down about 35 to 45 feet Monday morning to get to a car that had plunged to the bottom of a Central Whidbey pond over the weekend.

Trooper Jesse Greene with the Washington State Patrol said the driver, a Port Townsend woman, slid the car into the pond Saturday morning on her way to the Coupeville ferry dock.

She was able to escape before the 2003 Subaru Baja sank to the bottom of the water-filled quarry.

According to Greene, the woman was driving south on Highway 20 and failed to negotiate the curve at Keystone Avenue.

She was unfamiliar with the area and the roads were slippery from an earlier hail storm.

The car slid across the road and into the pond. The woman swam ashore and called 911.

This wasn’t the first time that someone drove a car into one of the ponds in the area; Greene said he was told the last time it happened was four years ago. The deep ponds were once gravel quarries, he said.

The woman’s insurance company hired a diver to locate the car at the bottom of the pond and attach a cable to winch it out.

“The diver said it was colder than the ocean,” Greene said.