By Alan Treweek

We all met at Gatwick airport, 16 excited divers and 20 pieces of luggage, thanks to the lady contingent, and we were on our way with no delays. We were met at Hurghada by Diving World reps and shepherded to our home for the next week, the MY Miss Nouran. The boat was a great improvement on last year's vessel, MY Sheriff, which apparently sank in 200 metres of water two weeks after we came home.

We were introduced to our dive guide Geoff, an Marine diver. Some of our party had sailed on Miss Nouran before and we welcomed back by the crew with genuine warmth. That evening some of our number went ashore to sample the delights of Quayside Hurghada, others stayed on board and enjoyed a quiet evening sampling the beers in the bar fridge, myself included.

The next morning we set sail for our trial dive site, Ummgumar Island. This first dive proved to be somewhat disappointing, especially for first time visitors to the Red Sea. The visibility as you would expect was excellent, but the seabed appeared quite barren, almost like a moonscape. For much of the dive the fish life was sparse and remained this way until we had reached the shallows at the end of the dive. What we had seen was reminiscent of the damage caused by El Nino in the Maldives.

Later that day we moved up to Gottaeida Reef, this dive us a great improvement on the previous one with much more fish life and an abundance of coral. The varieties of coral were quite amazing; we saw Brain coral, Table coral, Soft coral, Fire coral and many more that I could not name.From now on the dives became progressively better and more exciting. The terminology used by our guide lucidly describing the prevailing conditions, blowing like a GIT or running like a bas***d. We soon adopted these phrases asour own.

Our next destination was Abu Nuhaas, a ships graveyard where we dived the GHIANNIS D, a relatively modem wreck, in good condition with safe access into and out of areas such as the engine room, some of the internal areas were inhabited by shoals of Glass Fish. The clarity of the water made wreck penetration that much safer than it would be in our waters, but could easily lead to over confidence. Fortunately there always seemed to be more than one way out, or other divers to follow.

By now, the fish identification cards were being feverishly studied, when it came to make log book entries, with some exotic observations being recorded. These included an Eagle Ray, Blue Spotted Rays, Large Morays, Very Large Wrasse of all types, Barracuda, Tuna, TriggerFish and Clown Fish in their Anemone homes. Martin claimed to have seen a Plethora Fish, I didn't see that one, but there certainly were a lot of them.

We had a good rummage through The Carnatic, and saw evidence of why it is referred to as the wine wreck; lots of broken bottles down in what were the holds. Being a relatively ancient wreck, it is covered in coral and is on its way too becoming part of the reef. There were also plenty of extremely large sea urchins with six-inch spines, as well as Lionfish, which helped to focus your attention on where you were puffing your hands or knees. Whilst concentrating on what was in front of me I managed to give both Debbie and Dave a hefty bonk on the head with my fins.

The old favourite "Thistlegorm" was top on the list of priorities for Mike and Ray, they had a mission to explore a section of the stem which had been spotted the previous year. The rest of us were content to explore this fascinating wreck both internally and externally; we managed two dives at this site, and got to see the cargo in both lower and upperholds.

I was with a group of three other divers the leader being a very slim Russell Hurst, at one point during the internal tour he tried to squeeze through a gap about eighteen inches wide, leaving his three slightly tubbier buddies feeling distinctly concerned. Fortunately it proved too narrow even for him, and we all visibly relaxed again. Whilst waiting at the deco stop we watched Tuna feeding on Smallfry. Once back on board everyone wanted to know what Mike and Ray had found. Disappointingly, access to the area had proved too confined for safe access and they had to abandon the idea. Still if it is any consolation, as an ex merchant seaman I think they were trying to get into the potato locker, so you might not have missed too much lads.Whilst scrabbling around in the heart of the Thistlegorm, we came across the two Sues decorating the wreckage, this was a major surprise as Miss Letley had sworn never to enter a wreck, it says a lot for her buddy's ability to instil confidence. Our group's macho ego got dented by the fact that the ladies always seemed to surface with more air than us males.

As we continued our wreck explorations a strange phenomenon began to emerge, Ralph's trainers mysteriously appeared tied to the bottom of the line, this happened time and time again. It seemed to be a gentle hint, that the trainers were more environmentally friendly when immersed.

By now it was the middle of the week and all on board were becoming more relaxed in each other's company. Geoff the guide, Adrian and Ron were exchanging amiable insults, and in the evenings

One evening they were playing some quite lively Egyptian music, which got the feet tapping. Quite spontaneously it turned into a party, and the bridge house became quite crowded. the crew got together on the bridge and unwound in their own way.Sarah and Debbie's dancing so impresed the crew, that any entrepreneur in the group could easily have secured at least ten camels, I was assured of this by Abdul our steward, who appeared quite smitten. The weight allowances and quarantine Laws put a dampener on this idea though. As the evening wore on, we were invited to join in some traditional Arab dances; one of these involved a red shawl, which was draped around the waist of one of the dancers.
Two of our more macho colleagues really got into the spirit of this dance to the delight of us all, and put on a fabulous show. The crew were obviously pleased with the way we joined in, but it did appear as though the dancers in question were now regarded as something of an item, could it have been an eastern maritime custom? Strange things happen at sea, as they say. The Captains Hubbell-Bubble pipe was in great demand, with certain senior members of the club exerting their influence to claim ownership for the evening. We were assured that it contained honey flavoured tobacco only, but the glazed happy look of the participants made me wonder. I offered some Gold Block pipe tobacco, which was eagerly accepted but resulted in the skipper being ill over the side.

The highlight of the trip had to be the wreck Rosalie Muller, a 5000-ton cargo ship illuminated during the attack by German bombers on the Thistlegorm, and sunk the next day. Hardly dived by sports or leisure divers, she lies at 50 metres with her deck at 35 metres and her funnel and mast still intact. The guides fixed 2 lines and we made our first dive quite early. The swell was increasing and when the last pair were at their deco stop, the line snapped and they had to swim for the other line, but got back on board without further incident.As the swell began to increase the 2nd line went, and we had to relocate the wreck. The second dive was brought forward, and as we went in we wondered if there would still be a line to ascend when finished. My buddy and I were the 3rd pair in, but due to a free flow we had to get back on board for a refill, this now put us as one from last pair. We should have pointed this out to Mike and Ralph who unknown to us had been given the job of releasing the lines once the original 7th pair had ascended. As we ended our dive we could see the lads around the ropes and wondered what they were up to. Fortunately we were back on board before release or we may have inadvertently taken up body surfing. There was something surrealistic about this wreck, and the surface conditions added to the excitement. The Captain apologised for the poor visibility, 15-2O metres, and was surprised by our comments that it was fine.

After this dive it was hard to imagine our being impressed by anything else we were to see, especially as by now we were heading back towards Hurghada. That evening we moored up at Bluff Point and were invited to dive the mini wreck, max depth 15 metres. By now kiting up had become quite slick and professional. We paired up and jumped in, as soon as the bubbles cleared it was obvious we had jumped into a great big fish bowl. There were fish everywhere, the whole wreck site abounded with life, and at this shallow depth the colours were breath taking. Once again, amidst all this beauty and the amazing mass of marine life, there were Ralph's trainers tied to the wreck. On this dive my buddy was Ray who took it into his head to chance his arm, by tickling the biggest Moray I have ever seen, the eel's head was about 10-12 inches wide, and the body was about 2-2.5 metres long or so it seemed, through a mask anyway, I attempted to take photos of this event, but because of the size of both Ray and the eel my point and shoot camera could not get the whole event on one photograph. Perhaps a bit of cut and pasting using three separate snaps may make an interesting picture. Needless to say I resisted the urge to follow Rays lead.We then came across a large and extremely well camouflaged Devil Scorpion Fish. It was at this stage that Ray noticed my contents gauge swinging from 100 bar to zero. On surfacing we found that my tank valve was only open about half a turn, at this point a vague memory of warnings about complacency sprang to mind. It's a good thing this was not the previous dive, or the viz at 38 meters may suddenly have deteriorated.

We now had only two days diving left and some of us old ones were beginning to feel dived out, but very satisfied with what we had done on this holiday. "Sorry Mick". There were two more reef dives at Sabina Reef, the highlight being when a strobe light was spotted blinking away about 200 metres off our stem during a night dive, the zodiac was dispatched to retrieve a relieved pair of divers. The last days diving was in the harbour at Hurghada, nobody was particularly excited about the prospect of harbour diving after all we had seen up to now. We were all in for a pleasant surprise. The EL Mina lies at 30 metres near the entrance to Hurghada harbour. She was a small, armed Egyptian naval vessel apparently sunk by Israeli action during the six-day war. She lies resting to one side with much of the armaments visible, the seabed is littered with live ordinance, and even intact portholes blown out at the time of the attack. Wreckies eat your hearts out. She appears to have been at anchor when it happened, as the anchor chain is visible running out from the bow.The visibility even here in the harbour was about 20 metres, the size of the wreck meant that as you descended to it you could see virtually the whole wreck from the shot line. It proved to be a thoroughly good dive with both Andrew and myself wanting to stay down as long as possible, the 6 metres stop proved a bit crowded as we all had the same idea. Needless to say those trainers put in another appearance.

We moved off towards our last dive site, and moored up just a few hundred yards from the shore. We were told that this wreck had been a luxury wooden dive boat called "Excalibur', apparently the owners had been ashore eating in a local restaurant when they saw their pride and joy on fire.Once again we had the pleasure of being able to see the complete Vessel as we descended to the wreck. The fact that she was a wooden schooner complete with Bowsprit made it easy to imagine that we were diving on an amazingly well preserved ancient wreck. As she was so small, there were divers everywhere, we explored the bridge, which was teeming with GlassFish and some of the accommodation. You found yourself waiting in line to move through the various compartments. Once again we had to keep an eye out for resident LionFish and sea urchins, not to mention unintentional fin strokes from above. Unlike last years Red Sea trip we had seen no sharks, but as we left the wreck Russell cut his ankle on a piece of jagged hand rail, thus raising expectations of an encounter. We ascended the line to our predetermined safety stop depth, and whilst I prudently stayed a little lower, with camera at the ready, Russell considerate as ever joined Sarah and Emma for a photo stop. Once back on board everyone agreed that it had been an excellent way to end the trip.

In conclusion I would like to thank Mike and Sue on behalf of us all for organising a marvellous holiday, and everyone else for being such splendid company.

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