Written by Mike Ward
To be perfectly honest, I don’t much like my alarm clock. It sits by the side of the bed like some malevolent imp, counting down the minutes until it can scream a call to wakefulness. At least, that’s how I usually feel about it. On the days when I’m heading for the Red Sea things are a different and I get my revenge by waking up early and switching it off just before it’s due. I shouldn’t imagine it cares much, but it makes me feel better.
I felt even better still when the railways failed to let me down and delivered me safe and sound to Gatwick an hour early. Plenty of time for a cappuccino and a muffin and I could still make it to the front of the check-in queue and scope the luggage labels for TBS tags and a sneaky first look at this weeks guests.
Soon enough we were coming in to land at Sharm el Sheikh airport, with the pilot cheerily announcing that gale force northerly winds were blowing. I usually take what airline pilots say with a pinch of salt, but the amount of wing-waggling and general re-alignment on approach suggested this one might not be exaggerating, and the tarmac was windswept and forlorn as we transferred to the terminal building.
Climbing aboard Typhoon with a week of liveaboard diving ahead was good, though, and this week it was a Brothers Wreck Special, which meant long steams between dive-sites and the potential for some truly extraordinary sightings.
The boat briefing is the first real opportunity for guides and guests to meet, and this week the guides were Sergio and Shaun and we had a small group from Kingston and Elmbridge BSAC, a larger west-country group (Sort of, they were pretty diverse) and one or two solo travellers, with a mix of Red Sea first-timers and serial visitors. They seemed like a great crowd, and enthusiastic to get going as soon as possible. But only after the beer run, obviously. There was a small hiccup getting the crates aboard, but I’ll say this for the guy who slipped, even when he looked most likely to end up in the oggin he never let go of the booze!
Our check-dive was at the Alternatives, and then we crossed over to Abu Nuhas. The wind wasn’t anywhere near as bad as the airline pilot had suggested, but it was still a bit much for one or two of the guests and there was a certain amount of thankfulness in the air as we moored up in the lee of the reef ready for our first zodiac transfer, to dive the wreck of the Chrisoula K.
Winter is often unkind in the Red Sea, and Chrisoula K is starting to show signs of both age and wear. The port side of the forward hold collapsed outward in the winter of ‘06/’07 and the bow area in general seemed to be more broken and damaged this year. Toward her stern the gentle run was making the huge flap of deck overhanging the access to her rear holds flex up and down through a good four feet, though underneath the plate it was still possible to enter the hull and see the huge pallet loads of floor tiles, all marked Made In Italy, conveniently in English. On the other hand, the vis was very good, we were the first divers on her that day, and I was able to get some nice pictures.
For a complete contrast we did Carnatic next, and the fact that these two wrecks featured heavily in my first evening’s presentation was pure coincidence. Carnatic sank over a hundred years before Chrisoula K, yet her cast-iron structure has been far less affected by the salt-water and she’ll be around long after CK is nothing but rust and memories, a memorial to the endeavour that made the British Empire what it was (I was humming Land of Hope and Glory as I typed those words…)
Then it was time for the long steam south, arriving off Big Brother around 3am. The wind was northerly and pushed us merrily along, making the passage as smooth as it’s ever likely to be, but it was churning the northern tips of Big and Little Brother into white water, and that influenced our decision to dive Aida first.
Aida was the original lighthouse supply vessel, and sank in 1957 after striking the rocks near the landing point. Ron Failla, one of our guests for the week, was the great-grandson of her first Chief Engineer. Personal contacts like that are a great part of the whole experience.
Next up was the wreck of the Numidia, and she’s two dives in one. Seen from the reef she’s a profusion of hard and soft corals completely smothered in fish. Seen from closer to, or even inside, she’s an intact freighter with a large, impressive triple-expansion engine sat in her engine-room. Leaving the wreck at around seven metres, reef to the left, brings you round the tip of Big Brother and onto the engine of the Aida, another completely intact triple-expansion engine, this time fully exposed where it fell from her hull during the wrecking. There’s no point trying to see this when you dive the rest of Aida, the prevailing currents make it easier to simply go with the flow along the reef rather than fighting to make a vertical ascent.
Gren came up from that one with some excellent footage, but minus his computer, which is currently making a solo saturation dive somewhere off the western face of Big Brother, and presumably by now has given up trying to attract the attention of the diver it thinks it is attached to.
Our afternoon dive was the eastern face of Big Brother for (Whisper it, or they’ll hear you and hide) …sharks, and Sergio, known to everyone as Sharkbait, had guaranteed their presence. It’s the sign of a man who’s been too long at sea in my opinion, guaranteeing anything on a dive trip, but he found sharks, one hammerhead and a pair of grey reefs to be precise.
As we rocked gently in the swell I nipped across to Whirlwind to do the daily presentation for her guests as well, whilst a good few of Typhoon’s guests headed to the island to climb the lighthouse. There’s an original Victorian cast-iron beacon on the southern tip, and the present imposing structure was built to replace it in 1888. The mechanism was supplied by Chance Brothers of Birmingham, and in the olden days the lighthouse keepers spent their day winding a weight to the top of the tower, where it could be released at night to run slowly down and turn the light. Today, there’s a mechanism to perform the job, presumably bought by the lighthouse keepers from the profits of their t-shirt business. They sell a lot of t-shirts, using the simple technique of blocking the door with their display table and not letting you out until you’ve paid for one.
Day Three was Little Brother. People come from all over the world to dive on Little Brother, which seems a bit pointless as there isn’t a wreck. I suppose they look at the fish and coral and stuff. Takes all sorts, but if you’re thinking of wrecking something that’s a decent size, why not consider Little Brother in your plans?
Crossing back to the mainland was fun, and then we were on the wreck of the Al Khafein, ex-Liverpool to Belfast Ferry, renamed Poseidonia, eventually sold on to Egypt and sunk as she was coming south to start her new life. The crew of fifty eight abandoned ship after an explosion in the engine room led to a raging fire throughout the vessel, leaving her to drift south under the influence of the wind and currents until she chose to sink on Sha’ab Sheer, directly opposite where we moor for the night and in just twenty three metres of water. She’s so big her bottom is only seven or eight metres under. She went down just over two years ago and is relatively undived. She may or may not have found her final resting place, and is certainly going to be unstable internally after the fire, so we toured the outside. Let’s see in a year or so.
Salem Express is always haunting. She lies on her side surrounded by a debris field of burst-open suitcases, un-launched lifeboats and the remains of shoes. Her rear loading ramp has been shut for a long time, but someone has hammered the pins from their sockets and pulled the door off, opening her cavernous interior to easy penetration. The sight of kid’s toys and more opened suitcases was too grim a reminder for me to explore far.
El Miniya was a Russian built T-43 class minesweeper, one of a number bought for the Egyptian navy and each named after an Egyptian town. She was sunk by Israeli Phantom jets operating over Hurghada and still has guns on her. To be fair, the vis on her wasn’t great, but it doesn’t excuse Shaun getting so far lost he found a new wreck, which may have been a trawler. Of course, he wasn’t really lost, he was simply escorting a guest, and he wasn’t lost either.
Then we were back at Gubal in time to dive Ulysses, where Roger and I spent more than half our dive in three metres of water on the top of the reef in the most impressive aquarium you can imagine. That’s how it should be done, you see, a wreck on a reef. Ulysses is historically important for her connections with Alfred Holt, arguably the man who brought the modern steamship to life, and fishily fascinating for the profusion of Sergeant Majors, who lay their eggs on her and frantically attack any diver getting too close. Admittedly some of these little fish define too close as ‘anywhere in the same sea’, but they’re only four inches long so no harm done.
The following day started with Rosalie Moller, and was therefore automatically A Good Day. She’s my favourite Red Sea wreck. Deep, yes, and the vis can be a little lower than other places, but she’s intact. Even close up it’s easy to imagine her still sailing onward, endlessly plying her trade as a freighter. She carried a cargo of best Welsh coal on her final voyage, and most of it still sits in her holds despite the best efforts of Welsh Tim, who is attempting to repatriate the cargo piece by piece whenever he visits. At his current rate of progress I estimate it’ll take him forty-six thousand years.
Kingston is another wreck-on-a-reef, and is home to the Amazing F*rting Pipe, as first discovered by an Aussie dive-guide aboard Whirlwind. Ask your guide for a demo next time. Or even better, don’t. Just enjoy the reef, it really is second to none, and I say that as a dedicated non-reef diver.
That afternoon it was Thistlegorm, the most famous and most dived wreck in the world. Bobby, aka Roberta, asked me to dive the forward part of the wreck with her but didn’t want to do the night-dive so Roger was saddled with me again. Then something quite remarkable happened. Despite having already dived with me once, Bobby asked me dive with her the following morning, but she was careful to explain that she doesn’t like dark, enclosed spaces and wasn’t very experienced in wreck penetration so wanted to see the cargo without going too far inside. No problem, there aren’t many places on Thistlegorm that qualify as serious penetration.
And then all that was left was one dive at Ras Mohammed and the week was over. That’s another reef, you’ll note, which made five reef dives in the week. Of course, Ras Mohammed was home to the wreck of the Jolanda for a long time, but she plunged into the abyss some years ago and now lies in more than 120m of water. I’d have popped down if I’d had a pony.
Our last night was at the Bay View Hotel, and we went for a gentle chill on the roof of the Camel Bar to re-live some of the highlights of the week, especially Steve’s unfortunate mask episode, sighting a free-swimming hammerhead and wake-riding dolphins, almost but not quite getting back to the boat down the length of Shag Rock, Anne-Marie struggling into her wetsuit four times a day and breaking a fingernail, several people attempting to drink their own bodyweight in beer, surfacing amongst the snorkelling thong-fish at Ras Mohammed and lots more.
It was fabulous. Even if we did waste five dives. – all pictures © copyright to mike ward.
