Going To The Red Sea

[Haydn]

Just thought I post this so all you people out there could have a go at me for going back on my cold water diving roots :D :D

I'm off to the Red Sea in May but I am on a specialist trip- wreck diving from a liverboard (I suppose we'll have to do a few reef dives, but never mind ;) ). My understanding is that I'll need a wet suit (5mm) how will I cope without a suit inflator to maintain boyancy and no thermal undersuit <_< . My cold water regs will have nothing to do BUT I will be able to use nitrox :P

Haydn

[Frogfone]

Hi Haydn

Any idea how deep the wrecks are?. We where going to 30m when there in Sep/Oct (egyptian winter!!!!) the surface water temp was 28oC and did not drop of much at depth. We where using 3mm shorties and some people where diving in t-shirts/vests (molly and some mad german). If the wrecks are deep then you might want to take a 5mm steamer and a 3mm shortie or see if you can hire shorties on board.

HTH


Roddy

[spottydog]

Have a great time, while you're enjoying the warm water wrecks I'll be enjoying the cold water wrecks of the Clyde.

What wrecks are you doing? Over Christmas we did the Salem Express, Giannis D (one of my favourite ever dives) and El Minja. Unfortunately we didn't get to the Carnatic as the sea was a bit rough (although still totally flat compared to the UK).

As the sea will still be warming up after Winter I would certainly take a 5mm, plus it's safer for you when going in the wrecks (most of us were rather dirty after the Giannis D).

Anne

[ahoy]

I've just got back from Sharm this Monday and the water temperature was a constant 24oC (warmer than normal for this time of year) and I was easily warm enough in a 5 / 4mm steamer. I was there in June last year and it was 25 - 26oC, and a 3mm shorty sufficed. Personally, I don't feel the cold too much but would opt for a steamer on your trip as you'll probably do many dives >20m and if you're doing 3 or 4 dives / d, you'll be subject to more cold than normal.

Enjoy the trip: how will you manage to suffer the misery off the odd reef dive...?
S.

[Haydn]

Hi

Because we are taking the whole boat the itinery is flexible and down to us (with consultation with the skipper) so at the moment I'm not sure which wrecks we'll dive. However, there are at least three 40m+ dives :D plus we will be exploring some potental sites ther skipper knows and which have not been dived on :lol: :lol:

Anne believe it or not I'll probably not even think of you in the Clyde ;) although I jealous I've never dived there.

Haydn

[Cam]

Hi Haydn,

If you want to comdine a wreck and reef dive that I would suggest the Yolanda at Ras Mohamed. There is very little of the ship left as it slipped off into deep water but there is loads of debris and cargo. I was carrying Ideal Standard baths and toilets and there are many still to bee seen. There is one particular loo sat upright with a seriatopora growing out of the pan!!! The reefs at Ras Mohamed are some of the best diving in the world.

For a reef only dive try Ras Ghozlani just down the coast, you'll find some of the largest table acro's you will ever see there, some must be 15-20 feet across :o

We also dived another good wreck off Tiran Island in only about 5m of water. I'll try and look up the name for you when I get my log book out.

Have a good time, you will NOT be dissapointed. However I hope that there are no lasting effects from the recent plane crash. Here is a text from an e-mail that a diving instructor friend who work at Sharm sent me. I may well post this as another thread too.

Dear all

You would have heard about the plane crash in Sharm el Sheikh long by now. It is a very sad place to be as the reports of findings are coming in. So many children missing. There are pieces of luggage stretched over a vast area and also lets just say some pieces of other bits being found on dive sites from Ras Mohammed to Tiran.

The plane went down 1/2 a km from my flat and another 1/2 km from Tony Blairs accomodation. The plane is in 1000m of water and of the so called survivors they didnt stand much of a chance. The plane did not blow up as such but broke up and sank....any survivors in the water would have had about 2 hours of treading water in oil, fuel and other fluids. Needless to say there were no survivors.

The concern we have now is how is this going to affect the diving etc as we are certain there are prob a few who would be victim to the deep feeders and in turn may well bring in the nasty pelagics which are going to give us tourism problems but we will see. We have only just seen the last of the big Tiger sharks from last year.

You cannot describe the shock here and to sail across the area was really moving, my self and all my collegues are all well and none have us have been called in to take part in any major clean ups as of yet, for which we are all very grateful.

Harvey

Cheers,

Cam.

[Haydn]

Cam

Thanks for posting that it is really moving- I have dived Sharm on two or three occations, when I saw the report on the news it bought a lump to my throat and my thoughts are with all the people who lost their lives and the families who have been left behind.

Haydn