Dykkeren

As you might know, HEPCA has organized the setup of a mooring system on SS Thistlegorm.

The main reason behind the mooring system, is that a lot of diveguides, still attach the ropes from their boats to weak parts of the wreck.
While i was working as a guide in Egypt, i saw a ship that was tied to the train wagon that could fall into the wreck every day. Due to waves that day, it was moving up and down by about 1 meter, it is amazing it didnt fall into the wreck. Remember there was other divers inside the wreck at that moment.

Hepca has also made holes in the wreck, to let the air escape the wreck, the oxygen in the bubbles from the divers accelerates the rusting and decay of the wreck.

Unfortunately some diveboats, boat captions and diveguides, are not capable at tying to the mooring lines, and still attach their ropes to the wreck. The loops of the mooring system is at about 20 meters of depth, and the distance from the loops to the wrecks is about5 meters. I agree 100% with HEPCA that if a diveguid is not capable of diving to 20 meters to attach the rope, they should NOT be allowed to guide on the wreck at all. The same goes for every dive guest that cant swim 5 meters against a current to the wreck, should never be allowed to dive Thistlegorm.
Hopefully the boats/captions/diveguide breaking the rules will be prosecuted very hard.

Lets hope this wonderful wreck will still be open for diving in the future.

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Near Sharm El Sheikh, in the Straight of Tiran, there are 4 reef, Thomas Reef, Gordon Reef, Jackson Reef og Woodhouse Reef.
All 4 reefs are worth diving, but specially one of them is really nice, where i have had 2 very good dives.

The dive site I am talking about is Jackson Reef, what is so existing about this reef, is the canyon also known as The Thomas Canyon.

This canyon starts at around 35 metres of depth and continues down to around 100 metres. At about 40 metres, 55 metres and 90 metres, there is sort of an arch across the canyon.

One special thing about diving in a canyon, is the silence. Outside the canyon there is a lot of noise from the boats, the fish (yes they make a noise). But inside the canyon the only thing you hear is your own breathing.

I have had the please of going under the arch at 55 metres during a TDI Entry Level Trimix course, you need a lot of tanks to do such a dive, but the experience is GREAT.

In the following video you can watch a group of technical divers in the canyon.

Here you see some recreational divers in the shallowest part of the canyon.

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The Elphinstone reef is one of the great reefs in the Red Sea.

The reef is some distance from the mainland, therefore there is a good chance to see large animals, like Sharks around the reef.
In the southern end of the reef, there is a plateau at around 40 metres of depth, what a lot of divers does not know, is that there is a tunnel going through the reef, called The Arch.

In 2006 I had the great pleasure of diving though The Arch, together with out egyptian guide Muhammed and my good diving friend Frank.

Even though the nitrogen narcosis is quite high at 55-60 metres of depth, the pleasure was great. In the middle of the arch there are 3 large stone blocks formed like coffins. The fairy tail is that there is a Pharaoh buried in one of these ‘coffins’.

In may 2008 I am going back to Elphinstone, i really hope to get a chance to dive The Arch again.

Here is a video of divers using scooters going through The Arch.

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2 divers from GUE has set a new world record for longest cave dive.
During the 7 hour long dive, the dived 11,25 kilometre, while carrying 20 tanks with 7 different gas mixes. As a ‘bonus’ after the dive, they had to do 15 hours of decompression.

Other than being the longest cave dive yet, it is also the longest dive between 2 different entry points. The cave system they dived, is the 4th largest in the world.

National Geographic has also an article about this dive: here.

On the GUE website there is another here.

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According to this article (sorry in Danish): article we soon could run out of Helium.

Helium for trimix diving is already expensive as it is, but it does not seem to get any cheaper.

Therefore I am seriously considering getting a rebreather.
The model I want is the Sentinel Rebreather, but £5400 + extra for the course is quite a lot of money.

But I am ‘afraid’ i am doing it anyway

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