Whirlwind – 09/05/09 – written by Mike Ward

I happened to catch a movie on TV the other week.  It was made in 1934 and was one of those dramas where the characters hold intensely meaningful conversations full of long, important silences for the full eighty minutes, at the end of which nothing much has actually happened.  I only mention it because the movie was set aboard an airship flying across the North Atlantic, which the director clearly thought would make his film more interesting and exciting.  He was wrong, but it was fascinating watching the characters wander from the bar to the observation lounge, and even onto the outside balcony for an after-dinner cigar, all whilst over-flying the Atlantic.

It was as far removed from the modern package flight experience as you could conceive, but these days you can leave home at a reasonable hour and arrive aboard Whirlwind, docked at the Sharm International Marina, inside sixteen hours, which is simply astonishing if you ever think about it.

Twinset Mark on the check dive

You’ll recall that Whirlwind is the current holder of the Diver Liveaboard of the Year title, and it’s easy to see why.  Never mind the en-suite cabins with side-by-side beds, the spacious dining and upper deck saloons and the excellent food, the fact is that her crew are the same people they were four years ago.  Her skipper is still Mohammed Rageb, and her dive guides are Susie and Thomas, who have worked aboard her for a couple of years.

First dive of every week is always the check dive.  I love check dives.  There’s a moment where the giant-stride has gone beyond the point of recovery that’s simply unbeatable.  Everything becomes focused on the simple act of entering the water and submerging into the blue.  For the first time on the trip I’m weightless and suspended mid-water.  The dive could go anywhere and I could see and experience pretty much anything, especially if the baggage handlers haven’t been kind to my kit.  But they had been, so Twinset Mark and I were able to bimble around the Alternatives without a care in the world for fifty minutes.  We were briefed to do no more than forty-five, but we were first in and weren’t the last out, so what the heck, we were having a good time.  The water was cool but the vis was good, and there weren’t many other boats about.

The crossing to Abu Nuhas was rough.  At least, people said it was rough.  I don’t know for sure, I was asleep in the crossing position, which means flat on my back in the upper saloon, lying crossways to the vessel.  I want it clearly understood, however, that I was not snoring.  I do not snore.

Then we were into the wrecks.  Kimon M is at the far end of Abu Nuhas, and relatively little dived, but her stern is completely intact and Twinset Mark was up for some exploration so we may have done a bit of wreck-penetration.  We finished the dive on the reef in just a few metres of water.  The waves were rolling in above our heads and breaking on the reef-top and it was truly awesome to see the water heaving up and rolling over, our depth changing by three or four metres as the sea surged past despite us staying just above the reef.

The first night dive of our trip was on the reef beside Whirlwind, and, as required by tradition, my strobes weren’t working.  In fact, they didn’t work for the remainder of the trip but they’re fine now.  Maybe they just didn’t like the Egyptian air.  Shame, they missed a pair of mating cuttlefish and a nice little Spanish Dancer.

Thistlegorm starboard locomotive

Next day we motored out to Chrisoula K first, then Carnatic, and finished on Giannis D.  The stern of Carnatic has suffered some damage over the winter.  The top part of the gallery has broken away and now lies on the seabed, leant against the lower part of her stern.  It’s a shame, but ultimately the sea will claim her.  Like all ships she was meant to float and move on the surface, not sit on the bottom at an impossible angle and endure the power of the ocean.

We over-nighted again at Abu Nuhas, and I dived the satellite reef to which we were moored with Andy.  After a quick discussion with Sarah it was established that she was happy for me to bring him back, or at least to recover his torch and computer, so off we went into the lightless depths.  Andy spotted a clamdigger, which was mountaineering up the side of the pinnacle.  I’ve only ever seen one of these before in fifteen years of diving the Red Sea, and on this trip saw three, at different sites, which just goes to show.  Talking about climbing, we were discussing the effects of global warming post-dive, as you do, and it was pointed out by Dan and Andrea that when the Med dries up Malta will have gone from being one of the world’s great diving destinations to one of the world’s great climbing destinations.  Abu Nuhas itself is a pinnacle rising pretty much sheer from a bottom at 400m to almost, but not quite, break the surface.  I bet the skippers of all four wrecks would have liked to have known that.

Giannis D was our first dive of the third day, and we had her to ourselves right up to the safety stop, when five other liveaboard loads of divers dropped onto her.  There were so many people trying to get into the engine room they needed to take a number and form an orderly queue.  When they all exited the stern section, though, we were treated to a magical display of bubbles, making it seem like we were diving in a sparkling forest of silvery bubble trails.  ‘If you’ll excuse the use o’ poetry’, as Flash Harry once said.

Then we crossed to Gubal and dived Ulysses, one of Alfred Holt’s earlier boats, and named for the character from the Trojan Wars.  Twinset Mark had to put up with me yet again, and we had a lovely dive, only surfacing when our hour was well and truly over, and after exchanging the most unusual signal I’ve ever seen underwater.  I asked Mark if he wanted to ascend and he responded by vigorously pointing down with both thumbs, then put both hands over his head in the internationally recognised A-signal (Everybody hum ‘Whhhhhyyyy,M,C,A, though we didn’t have the camp costumes).  Apparently this was intended to mean ‘No, we’ll stay down a bit longer, I’m feeling at home here.’  Obviously it was.  Then he blew his DSMB from just 50cm below the surface, which was very entertaining if not desperately useful.  Fortunately it didn’t need to be, the zodiac was close enough to touch. Anyway, two dives on the barge followed, off-gassing ready for Rosalie Moller on the fourth day.

After deck of Rosalie Moller

She’s my favourite wreck, so I might have been a bit excited as I guided Ally-Twelve Marc, Nigel and Garry around her.  Twinset Mark had at last come to his senses and ditched me in favour of Ken and his 12l stage, giving them both redundancy and allowing for some serious penetration and a good bit of deco, both of which they achieved.

Two more dives on Rosalie Moller followed, and then a fourth the following morning.  The new airline schedules and the extra night on board make the itinerary very relaxed these days, surprisingly so considering the very small changes that have really been made.

For the second dive we crossed back to the Kingston at Shag Rock (Where Roxanne and I failed by a very small margin the swim the entire length of the reef despite a howling current, and where Sarah remembered she doesn’t really like reefs), to moor over Thistlegorm.

By then, Susie would ask ‘Does anyone want a guide?’ at the end of each briefing in the sure and certain hope of the answer being no, but not here.  Thistlegorm is not just the most often dived wreck in the world, she’s also the most anticipated dive of any wreck trip (Well, not by me, I like Rosalie Moller as previously indicated, but by normal people), so it was all hands to the pumps to show people around.  I sneaked off to get some pics for a project I’m working on for the Birmingham Dive Show, so if you’re into digital compact photography and wrecks it may be worth a note in your diary.

The final day of the week (Final day?  Good grief but it comes around so fast!) was an early dive on Thistlegorm, followed by Dunraven at Beacon Rock (Where I’d swear I was being stalked relentlessly by Rob and Terry) and finally Shark and Jolanda Reefs at Ras Mohammed.  That’s right, a reef dive.  I’m not a reef person, but it’s a stunning dive, though just the one reef in the week was enough.

All in all it was a superb week, with some memorable dives and great company, but it wasn’t quite over yet.  After a last day in Sharm and as we were waiting to board the flight home the conversation turned to dive-gear in general and computer driven BCs and the weight of lead weightbelts in particular, whereupon Ian and Colin jointly came up with an idea that I think has legs (Well, longer legs than Ian’s micro-generation of electricity by installing turbines in the down-spouts of house guttering to use the potential energy of falling rain, anyway).  What we’re going to do is develop a material that becomes denser, and therefore heavier, when wet.  By carefully choosing the properties of the material we reckoned that you could have a suit that weighs next to nothing out of the water but acts as its own weightbelt in the water, and if we get it right it, nanotechnology could even ensure it responds differently to salt and fresh water, providing perfect neutral buoyancy in all conditions.  Then all we need do is link it to the appropriate sensors and to a scooter and it could be pre-programmed to take you around the dive site with zero user-input, and that means no fast ascents, no running out of air and divers who actually follow the dive plan.  No, you’re right, it’ll never work.

Anyway, fantasy diving aside, thanks to all on board, thanks to the crew and skipper of Whirlwind, thanks to Susie and Thomas, and I look forward to seeing you again.

Mike is escorting a Brothers Wreck Special trip on the 20th June – read more here