Random Holidays

The first trace on the Decca screen was simply unbelievable. We passed over the objective from side to side and I stared in disbelief at the image before me. It looked like one of those child’s drawings - a “V” shaped hull with a box representing the bridge and a funnel on top. For a moment, I thought someone below decks was feeding a computer image onto the screen - but then it was gone.

Excitement mounted as this information went out - but we had nothing to throw into the water to mark the spot. Then Geof Loe came onto the bridge. He and his wife Trudy were the second pair of technical Divers and, having spent 15 years in the Royal Marines, Geof was quite expert with GPS and Decca. With Geof and Chris working together with the Skipper and Ali Baba how could we miss. Very quickly our two hours were up - though we carried on with comments like “but we’re almost there.” Unfortunately, more than a little discontent was beginning to appear amongst some who were not taking part in the search. Then we passed over the shipwreck again and once again we were astonished by the picture on the screen. This time the trace was from end to end and another child-like drawing appeared - a long object on top of which was a box and a funnel. Our boat was barely moving. Chris punched-in the co-ordinates, the Captain scanned the horizon for transits and I took bearings on various distant points and then, yet again, it was gone again - but now we had a plan.

I was visiting the Red Sea as a guest of Diving World and spending a week on board their luxurious live-aboard Diving boat “Miss Nouran.” Our Dive Guide was that very popular Instructor Ali Baba who explained that, with prevailing winds being generally “onshore,” our Skipper - Captain Mohammed Hassan would carefully lay out two anchors onto the sand and allow the wind the push the boat gently back towards the Reef - thus presenting the dive platform right above the wreck and avoiding any contact whatsoever with the Corals.

I was very impressed with the way in which these two experts worked together - always taking great pride in getting each separate set of circumstances down to a fine art - but then they regard both the corals and the wrecks as far too important to damage!

Located just to the west of Bluff Point, the Ulysses lies “up” the Reef with he stern at 27m and her bows in very shallow water. The main body of the wreck is now on it’s port side and most of the decks have rotted away revealing a framework of iron girders - not dissimilar to that of the Carnatic on Sha’b Abu Nuhas Reef - in many way a very similar vessel and lost in 1869.

It was another good dive on a site maybe no one else had seen before, although being the only safe anchorage for some miles, I think not. Still, it was a good and thoroughly enjoyable relaxing late afternoon excursion.

The east wall was similar in look, but perhaps slightly more interesting. Starting at the northern edge the wall descended quickly into a steep slope full of sea whips and small coral outcrops. A massive globular formation followed, but apart from a crashed alien space craft overlooked for hundreds of years, I couldn’t imagine what had formed it. It contained nothing but sand and encrustation, so I left perplexed. Immediately after, the reef returned to its normal routine of slopes, shelves and indentations. A host of coral species litter the sea floor all shrouded in antheas, butterflyfish, angelfish and groupers - the usual suspects as it were. A small group of barracuda flitted past, but again, there was nothing exceptional. Nothing to really get our socks off. The group was all very experienced divers who craved pelagics preferably with teeth, but they were eluding us.

Perceptory overload is not a phrase I care to utter often. But when you mix three species of shark, two species of ray, humphead parrotfish, and perfect visibility all in dive, one’s mind gets set upon by unheard of concentrations of neurotransmitters and it finds it difficult to cope. This was the very feeling I had two days before starting to write this article as our group discovered a plateau of immense beauty and what’s more, as far as we could tell, it had never been dived before.

As I write, everything is north - Red Sea diving-wise anyway. Even what most people consider south his still north. Reefs with names such as Elphinestone, Zabagad, St Johns are so far to the north they may as well be at the pole. Even the exceptional Sha’ab Rumi and Sanganeb are north. That’s because if you had a map of Sudan, found Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast and headed southwards you’d come to Suakin, now a ruined town, but once the area’s main trading port.

Bluff Point, however, is only an hour’s sailing from the general search area for the Rosalie Moller and, with this in mind, Ali Baba invited me to join him and Captain Mohammed Said Hassan. Captain Hassan is widely regarded as the second best Captain in the entire Red Sea. Not that he minds being second best - everyone acknowledges his father as the outstanding figure in this regard - and he located the Thistlegorm in 1963!

Captain Hassan handed me a chart and asked me to plot a certain position. Where he got it I do not know - but it was right on the edge of the general search area. He smiled “We go tomorrow” he said and at 0630 hrs the engines coughed into life. This normally provides an early morning call for all those on board, but today there was an added element of excitement and few were still asleep. Most of us were checking we had a “good fill.” Every time Ali Baba looked at me he smiled and said two words “Rosie Muller!” - and somehow, I suspect the ship will eventually become known by this slightly altered name. By 0800 hrs we were searching.