Dive report: P29

About the Wreck

The ship was scuttled on 14 August, 2007, at Cirkewwa, just off the north-west coast, near the ferry terminal. Also known as the Boltenhagen, P29 was an East German minesweeper before being commissioned by the Maltese Navy in 1996 as a patrol boat. 

The wreck is about 170m offshore, between Cirkewwa Point and Lantern Point, near the popular Rozi wreck. (from Divernet).

Patrol boat P29 was a Kondor I Class former Minesweeper and Patrol Boat that was scuttled as a dive site in 2007 off Ċirkewwa, Malta. It was built by Peenewerft shipyard to patrol the river banks between the East and West Germany and then was also used as a minesweeper for the East German Navy under the name Boltenhagen.

It was purchased by Malta in 1992 along with its sister ships P30 (formerly Ueckermuende) and P31 (formerly Pasewalk), and was used to secure the Maltese coast against smuggling and border control operations. It was sunk as an attraction for divers on 14 August 2007 to serve as a diving site. The P29 is 51 metres long and lies at a depth of around 35 metres but the entire dive may be done at 25 meters. (from Wikipedia).

The image below shows the underwater terrain about the wreck. According to the sketch, we used "route 1", which is probably the shortest and easiest to get to the wreck (from Malta.com)

Schematic

Dive Report

Entering at Susie's pool, Rob and I switched onto our stage which for me contained around 110 bar of 50%. From there we swam out at 10m, staying behind and above Steve who is guiding us to the wreck. With Steve at 25-30m, the bubbles of his exhale created a beautiful curtain that stretched right up from the depths to the surface above us.

Curtain of bubbles from Steve

Once the wreck becomes visible, I indicate to Rob that we should switch on to back gas (as breathing 50% at 30m+ when on the wreck would expose us to extremely high levels of oxygen, whereas we've got trimix in the twinset on our back with far less oxygen (about 25% vs. 50%), both switched and comfortable, we then descended onto the wreck. Congregating at the stern, we made sure the team was settled (now consisting of Chris Ryan, Rob and I), before setting off to swim along the port side.

In the number 1 position, I swam forward (there were many doors and windows at the rear of the superstructure, but we wanted to swim forward first), as I swam forward I gently ascended up the side of the super structure to be level with the bridge, most of the instruments were removed here, but the console and windows were still in place. The massive amount of fish swimming around the wreck is beautiful! The wreck is also covered in plantlife which is thriving.

Schools of fish on the wreck

Stopping at the top of the superstructure, I look back and I can see the light from Rob is stable so I continue onwards to the bow, descending as I go, just in front of the super structure is the gun. This gun has been placed as the patrol boat isn't normally equipped with a gun like this, regardless it still makes for a great photo opportunity! Just in front of the gun, I see an open hatch leading down into the bow - if only I had a full twinset then I'd feel like I could explore more!

I swam along the gun then circled around to head along the starboard side. I had got to the entry door when I looked behind me to see that Rob and Chris were not behind me, they were still at the gun taking pictures.

Rob at the gun

With the team re-assembled, we entered the hatch on the starboard side. Turning right and then descending into the next room (there were actually holes cut into the floor of the compartment that we just entered, but they looked a little cosy to swim through and my team is still coming through the hatch above me and might not see me descending again).

The first compartment

In this room, I turned left to head towards the stern, this next room in particular still has gauges mounted on the wall, some kind of instrumentation room. I did a quick 180 to check on the guys behind me, I see two torches, neither moving rapidly so all is well. Continuing on I suddenly have a dawning realistion: I'm doing the exact same route as I did two years ago, but this time I have trimix in my twinset which is making everything clearer - this journey through the ship certainly feels longer than last time. Leaving the room with the gauges, there is a very short corridor which leads further aft and ultimately exits into a compartment that is a largish cargo hold at the stern. 

Gauges

Once in this cargo hold, I waited so that I could see the entire team in this compartment. This compartment felt very different from what I remembered of my previous dive - again proves how valuable the trimix I'm breathing is - even at 34m things are exceptionally different from how I remember! Chris was following close behind and took a picture of Rob as he swam through.

Cargo room

I ascended up what appeared to be an elevator shaft into the outside world. Chris followed me with Rob ascending third. I think that I was stressed because I felt like my breathing was elevated for the entire dive, so I took a few moments to rest on this ledge while Chris took pictures of Rob coming up.

Ascending up

At this point I was down to about 80 bar so thumbed the dive on gas reserves, minimum gas had been set at 60 bar so I didn't think with my current state there was any point exploring anywhere safely as I would quickly burn through that last 20 bar and then into our safety reserves.

Getting ready to leave the wreck, I remembered that we arrived from the back-right corner of the ship, when I pointed in that direction (supported by my compass) Chris disagreed with me and pointed straight off the stern ... He's been here several times so clearly knows more than I do.

Swimming along we passed above the anchor so I knew we were on the right way back even though it didn't seem right by my bearings.

The anchor

Rob and I then did a switch onto our stages with 50% in at 21m on the fly (but still a team switch).

We swam back to Cirkewwa, looked in on the Madonna statute located in an alcove just below Susie's pool before finally ascending up into Susie pool where Chris took a picture of us he then found a fish very similar to the lethal stone fish.

Madonna statue

After completing deco we exited and came home to Techwise where we met Julie.

Video

During the dive I was carrying a GoPro Hero (the photos above are simply stills from the video), I have assembled a small video about our dive which is below.

P29 from Chris Armstrong on Vimeo.