Dive Report : Um El Faroud

Location:

Wreck description:

She was built in 1969 at Smith Dock Co. Ltd, Middlesbrough, England and was owned by the General National Maritime Transport Company, Tripoli (GNMTC). She had been operating between Italy and Libya carrying refined fuel up to 1 February 1995. On 3 February 1995 she was docked at No.3 Dock of Malta dry docks. During the night of 3 February an explosion occurred in No.3 centre tank and nine shipyard workers lost their lives.

The vessel suffered structural deformation and, following inspection and survey, was considered a total write-off. She occupied the dock in the harbor of Valletta for three years until it was decided that the best option to utilize her remaining value was to tow her to sea and scuttle her as an artificial reef in 1998.

An excellent visualisation of the wreck is available as a 3D model by Fourth Element : http://www.fourthelement.com/adventures/3d_um_el_faroud_wreck_map.php

Dive Team :
Vas (Guide & A), Irwin Sheer(A), Lolke ‘Mr Faroud’ (B), Svenke Wall (B) and Chris Armstrong (B).

Dive log:

We dropped down to about 10m and swarm out the mouth of the river. We followed the reef on the far wall around for a while before taking a bearing off into the blue. The sea floor is at about 32m which you can see clearly below you, it makes you feel quite small with the viz being 30-50m! It’s also quite nice swimming through the blue, looking around I can see my team all around me, above, below, behind and infront, with our guide, Vas, out in front.

It takes about 5 minutes of swimming through the blue and you start to see a shape forming and before you know it you can clearly see the huge wreck that is the Faroud. To protect our gas and no-deco time, we stayed shallow at about 12-15m the minute we were above the wreck we then drop down. Lolke, Svenke and I dropped right down to the screws again and Svenke shot some more video.

We ascended up the port side of the rear section once again and unlike last time where there was an underwater queue to the first hatch, it was clear this time. So I gave Lolke my backup LED light and turned it on for him and he lead into the wreck.

Again I let Svenke go second and I took position 3. Lolke led in and it looked like we dropped in to the engine room. We were swimming over a gridded gantry. We turned left and down and dropped into an open compartment.

Lolke found that the compartment went forward under the deck and had a quick look around. The engine room compartment (or so I think it is) is quite significant and you could easily spend a dive just looking around here! Ascending to the top of the cabin we then came out under the bridge and met Vas and Irwin.

Lolke showed us a large plaque that commemorated those that lost their lives in the tragic explosion.

Vas led the group back down the starboard deck, Lolke, Svenke and I took a right and entered the cabins. We swam in and turned right which turned out to be a very large room around the front and port side of this deck of the ship, possibly some kind of briefing room. Swimming further aft, on my left I saw a shaft, elevator shaft maybe? Or a personnel cargo shaft that went right down into the belly of the ship. We stayed on this level. Swimming through a few more bulkheads we then exited the ship on the port-aft section of the ship. We swam around the stern.

There was an amazing amount of fish here including and observation lean-out which Lolke gladly posed on!

Here, we also swam up to the top of the exhaust stack to a depth of about 16m, eels and starfish were here too.

Unfortunately it was now time to leave so off we headed. Leaving the stern we hit the reef and I enjoyed swimming over and looking into the holes seeing the fish.

Video:

Svenke has graciously edited his video and put it on YouTube for all to see.