Dive Report : Blue Hole and Azure Window, Gozo

Location:

About the site (from Wikipedia):

The Azure Window (Maltese: Tieqa Żerqa) is a natural arch in the Maltese island of Gozo featuring a table-like rock over the sea.

The arch of the Azure Window is disintegrating, as large pieces of rock keep falling from the arch. It is expected that the arch will completely disappear within just a few years. The arch is in a dangerous condition and warning notices are placed to stop people walking over the top of the arch. Evidence of this can be seen when the images of the Azure Window as shown in Clash of the Titans (1981) are compared to the more recent images shown in The Odyssey (1997) and The Count of Monte Cristo (2002). The former images depict the Azure Window arch with a flat underside, whereas the latter images clearly show that a significant proportion the flat underside has since broken away. In April 2012 a large piece of rock was dislocated and made the window larger, more unstable and losing its almost perfect oblong shape. Once the arch has completely crumbled away, the Azure Window shall be renamed Azure Pinnacle.

Dive Team:
 

Darrel (Guide & A), Bausiaux snr (A), Bausiaux jnr (A), Svenke Wall (B), Chris Armstrong (B) and Matey Lukats (DM & B)

Dive log:

I’m going to start this with a bit of a pre-dive dive log. We kitted up in the car park. From there you have to walk onto the rocky sea front. It starts of well, its just a bit uneven with a few pebbles, no biggy. Down the first set of stairs. I was relieved to feel that there wasn’t the slightest hint of bowing under my feet. And then down a second set.

Now, I want a small rant! Its amazing how “rude” the tourists are, there was one couple coming up the stairs, and being a big guy and in a twinset I was quite wide, so I didn’t want to try and squeeze past them and bump into them. So I left them come up first, I was just about to start making my way down when another couple of people came up! I’m sweating away in all this gear and they just take their sweet time! Grr! Anyway I get down the second set of stairs.

At this point the ground becomes more pebbly so with the weight of a twinset its uncomfortable to walk on but bearable. You basically walk down a valley towards the blue hole.Starts getting a bit more interesting now. You have to negotiate your way over a long section of boulders. There is a bit of a route carved through it. In a single cylinder, it wouldn’t be too bad, in twins, you just have to take it steady and make sure you get your footing right. Coming back was harder because you have to climb UP the rocks as opposed to down.

I can now see the pool of water starting to appear around the corner, the end is nigh!

This is actually the hardest and most dangerous part if I’m honest! The water is about 4 inches deep for quite a distance and the rocks are extremely uneven, the shallow water means its impossible to judge what you are stepping on, and it is very slippery again. If you just take your time you will be fine.

The pool has a kind of ledge, it slopes down to about knee-deep and then it kind of just drops off. So at this point I recommend (and did) turn around, inflate the wing and just fell in backwards. Svenke was cooking in his drysuit so he had gone down before me and was enjoying the coolness!

We didn’t have to wait long for our group to arrive and get set.

Firstly we dropped down into the Blue Hole to about 7m to get comfortable. At about 10m there is an arch that takes out towards the Azure Window and the open sea.

Swimming through this you are struck by the clear blue water, 30m visibility easily! There is a reef to our right as we swim out. After just a minute we are approach the Azure Window. The “boulders” that have fallen from the storms to make the arch above us are the size of large vans at the smallest! The splash they must have made when they fell would have been impressive! Rolling over and looking up you can see the arch above which looks stunning.

We are now swimming around the far edge of the column that makes up the Azure Window. The sea life is incredible, my HID light is useless at the moment, even with the ground just a metre or two below me I can barely make out the spot, looking forward I see flashes of silver as light glitters off the smooth scales of the schools of fish in front of me in a smooth liquid dance.

Looking to my right, I see the vast expanse of the ocean, looking right and down I am swimming over the ledge where there is a drop off. I can see more boulders easily below me, thinking back to the Faroud, as we approached that wreck, I remember looking down at the screws thinking, nah that’s only about 20m down, ha, it was at 35m. Bearing that in mind, looking over this ledge, its probably at a good 60m!

We are swimming along the wall of the headland now and there is a thin fissure that requires you to drop down to about 15m and leads up to a colourful, narrow chimney. The chimney is comfortably wide enough for a person, you could probably squeeze a second person in beside you so you don’t need to fear getting stuck. The chimney heads up at a 45 degree angle, levels out at about 9-10m and then heads up again to about 5m.

The corals were beautiful colours, fireworms that look like hairy centipedes were everywhere! The colours were incredible.

We swam around the Fingers Bay, there was a semi-dead jellyfish on the floor, if not dying it was stuck in a hole! It was upside down and getting close, I could see that it had tentacles about 2-4 inches long at most with a beautiful bright violet tips. When you think of jellyfish, you imagine the Austrailian ones with invisible tentacles stretching out 20 feet, but these are orangy and actually quite beautiful. We swam around the bay and then worked our way back and then swam down the chimney, looked even more impressive going down.

We spent a good while swimming through these underwater valleys admiring the fish and the colourful corals and plantlife. Matey found a cool plant? It was attached to the rocks, the body was a tube approximately 1cm in diameter and about 10cm long, at the end it had a beautiful array of branches fanned out trying to catch the nutrients in the water. Touching it, the branches quickly retract into the tube body. That was quite cool to see when Matey poked it.

Coming back, we passed under the arch once again and then came back to the Blue Hole. Now Svenke and I are advanced divers so our DM, Matey, showed us to a small cave.

The entrance to the cave is probably 3-4 double decker buses side by side big!!! Matey turned on his little handheld light, and I obviously had my HID on, once we got under the rock it was like a light sabra and travelled about 50m! The cave was huge, I had a good swim right to the back and had a good poke about, there were fossils all over the wall.

Matey found a large clam shell, easily the size of a papadum to give you an idea of size!

We are now at about 50 mins run time and time to head out. A group has just got in and started their descent so we let them pass first. I was a big kid and got above the divers descending and enjoyed the tickle of the bubbles! Shockingly it pushed me up from 7m to 3m! So I dropped back down to about 5m to start clearing off a safety stop. Looking around the wall I was trying to find sea horses but found none.

After looking around I decided I would just hover midwater so I settled at 5m and a jellyfish came down to keep me company! I really did find it quite interesting to look at. I was looking at the smooth top “head” and thought I’d give it a poke. I was expecting it to be extremely soft and flimsy, but it was actually quite tough! So this time I used my palm and started pushing it about!

There aren't any organs in a jellyfish, its just a mass of tissues, so I was pushing this about and flipping it upside down so I could see its tentacles and their beautiful purple tips. They move with the water flow, so wafting my hand I could watch them sway in the water.

I probably spent a good 5 minutes playing with this jellyfish, poor thing must have been dizzy if had “ears”! Yeah that’s also PADI rule #2 broken, touch nothing and leave only bubbles, ooooops!

Matey and Svenke and cleared their safety stop so up we went. Doing a 1m-minute ascent I deliberately stopped at 6m for 1 minute, 5m for 1 minute, 4m, 3m, 2m and 1m. And then an ultra slow ascent from 1 to the surface. I like my slow ascents, the pressure gradient on your body is changing at its fast pace so I like to control it and keep it down.

I mentioned earlier that the trek back is quite challenging. I stopped twice, I’d heard about a friend who had done a dive (a deep trimix dive) and had executed the deco successfully and had gotten bent. The difference between normal and this time was that he said he had done some significant exertion immediately after the dive : moving kit about, a twinset plus three deco bottles is a non-insignificant amount of weight.

Ever since I had heard about that I always took the work I did post dive very seriously and looking at this long (uphill) trek I wanted to take it carefully. Matey stuck with me and gave me a hand to help pull me up some of the bigger boulders. Thanks for your help buddy!

It was a welcome sight to see that Darrel had opened the back of the van and cleared a space for me to set the rig down, to say that I was relieved when I parked my hide would be an understatement!

I hope this has been interesting for you to read, it was interesting to “do” I promise!

Video:

Svenke has done a great job putting together some video of the dive and is on YouTube:

Malta Dive Holiday–Day 6

 Day 6 – Wednesday

Arriving at Divewise today, we were treated to Darryl ask our guide going to Gozo. We had to meet at Divewise at 730, so we could get kitted up and packed so we could catch the 830 ferry meaning we had a good relaxed day.

The ferry are the roll on - roll off type and they have a very slick operation. Driving straight on.

Driving straight on

Dive #1 - Blue Hole and Azure Window

Walking across the rocks, Darryl gave us a dive brief and we could look down in to the beautiful Blue Hole and the stunning Azure Window.

Beautiful Blue Hole

Azure Window

You can read about the dive by following this link.

Dive #2 - Inland Sea

Just a few hundred metres away is another dive - the Inland Sea. Basically a crack in the rock allows boats and divers access to the open ocean. You can read about the dive by following this link.

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.

Dive Report : Um El Faround

Introduction

The Um El Faroud is a brilliant wreck that is sunk at the Blue Grotto in the south of Malta. From Divewise, it’s about a 30 minute drive, 40 minutes at most if you go at rush hour! (or rather rush day, the roads seem hellish 24/7!).

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

The Faroud is located about 100m off shore, but its recommended not to do a surface swim, I don’t think there are even any surface buoys so you miss the wreck completely! Instead you jump in at the bottom of the hill. Boats are running in and out of here all the time, so I recommend that once you leave this local area you stay well under water.

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, I dropped out of trim into a head first finning descent, swimming straight past the stern of the ship, Svenke, Lolke and I dropped down to about 33m to the screws (propeller). A nearby piece of pipe held a medium sized moray eel. I tried to light it up for Svenke to video, but the closer Svenke got the more the eel retreated in the pipe!

Swimming over the prop and then coming up on the port side of the ship moving slowly forward. The first large hatch that we came to had a massive underwater queue of people trying to move through it! So Lolke led us forward and the next hatch we came to we went in. We had agreed with Vas a maximum of 15 mins inside the wreck and given how busy it was we didn’t spend anywhere near that long.

Lolke led, Svenke followed with his video lamp on, I took position 3 and tried to light up as best as I could for Svenke. The first compartment looked like a an observation deck as it stretched a good length of the ship. Directly opposite the external hatch was a door to a corridor, to the right I could see the engine room (or storage) and below me. But we stayed on this level and turned left  Following the corridor further we came out underneath the bridge where we met Vas and the American.

My favourite kind of scuba diving is cave diving, so being inside a wreck was my idea of heaven, and with it being perfectly intact I was extremely happy. I met Vas just outside and she gave me a fairly relaxed “Are you OK?” gesture. I shook my head to say no, I obviously wasn’t OK – I was ecstatic! So I took my reg out with my right hand and did a massive Cheshire Cat grin that was so big I had to close my eyes to emphasise it even more! I also tensed my arms and made them shake to show the excitement! Holding that for a second, I then opened my eyes to see Vas attempt to laugh – which had the effect of almost spitting out her reg, obviously her body then went “Oi don’t let that reg go!” and it looked like she coughed as she clamped down on it again! It’s hard to explain with words, but I felt like I 12 year old in Disney world, THIS is wreck diving!

After composing ourselves, we swam forward to where the stern of the ship is broken from the bow / storage section. I led swimming forward, the open storage area that I came to was the size of several double decker busses. Having a ferret about in these compartments on a future dive is a must!

Between us, we reckon that a Maltese man was lowered in to one of the fuel tanks to clean it out, being a typical Maltese, he was smoking a cigar, then boom! And now we have a lovely wreck!

I swam into the open compartment of the forward section of the wreck and had a good nosey about! I was trying to be a video light diver for Svenke so I was getting right in the holes and lighting it up. 

I turned and headed back to the bridge. We teamed up with Vas and Irwin and swam down the starboard deck. Returning to the stern we then started heading back to the shore. I liked to swim along the reef and over the wall to look at all the fish. The colours are beautiful. There were fish in all the little holes which was good fun to look in to. 

The fish life on the wreck and the reef is stunning.

Video

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

Malta Dive Holiday–Day 5

Day 5 – Tuesday

0700 – Alarm goes off, then it hits me, diving the Faroud today! Then the other thing hits me, oww, my head! Going down to the restaurant I really pushed myself to eat something, and drank a lot of water and juice.
I met Svenke at Dive Wise, asking how he was he looks me at me and just gives me the hand gesture that divers use to say “there is a problem”.I chuckled and said that I too am feeling a tad delicate! Today, our guide would be Vas taking Svenke, Lolke ‘Mr Faroud’, Irwin Sheer and myself.
We drove over to the dive site in one of Divewise’s shattle, rattle and roll pick-up type trucks, whereas yesterday, Ann had taken us in “Hannibal”, today we were in Harriot. Sounds better even with a dirty mind!
Driving to the site is about a 35-40 minute drive and you park on a devilishly steep hill!

Dive 1

We were in the water by about 10am for our first dive, for a detailed description of the dive, check out this link.

Surface Interval

When I surfaced, I asked Svenke how he was doing, he said how he was feeling great and that the narcosis at 35m had done a great job of eliminating the hangover! Couldn’t agree more! After a brilliant first dive, Svenke and I took a walk up to the restaurants to get something to eat. I had a fairly normal lunch of spaghetti carbonara.

Svenke, he didn’t! He had pasta, but with octopus!

I did try a little bit, it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting, quite soft and chewey. The “worst” bit was actually the little suckers got stuck on my tongue, that sent shivers down my spine. A relaxing lunch with a gorgeous view of the bay, spying ships sailing past:

After consuming our lunch and admiring the view, we went back to sit with the rest of our group – hard at work sunbathing! So, might as well join them! Spent a good 35 minutes just soaking up the sun, it was beautiful.
I quickly ran around the other dive trucks, I’d left myself just 100 bar in the twinset, not normally an issue, but everyone else was on 15’s as opposed to 12’s so I was cutting the dive short here. Fortunately a kind gentleman had a decanting whip available and I managed to whip over some gas from a spare couple of tanks that we had, back to to 160 bar, I felt comfortable going in to this dive not having to worry about running short and having to call the dive.

Dive 2

For a detailed description of the second dive, check out this link.

Post Dive

Kit broken down back in the van, time for a quick team photo!

Of course, after finishing cleaning down the gear back at Dive Wise, Svenke and I headed to Huggins for post-dive beers!

Dive Report : HMS Maori

About the wreck (from Wikipedia):

HMS Maori (L24/F24/G24) was a Tribal-class destroyer laid down by the Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company, Limited, at Govan in Scotland on 6 June 1936, launched on 2 September 1937[1] by Mrs W. J. Jordan and commissioned on 2 January 1939. She was named after the indigenous Māori people of New Zealand, and Mrs Jordan was the wife of the New Zealand High Commissioner William Jordan.

Maori served with the Mediterranean Fleet, was involved in the pursuit and destruction of the enemy Bismarck in May 1941,[2] and served with the 14th Destroyer Flotilla during the Battle of Cape Bon in December 1941.[3] Maori, commanded by Commander R. E. Courage, RN, was attacked by enemy German aircraft and sank at her moorings in the Malta Grand Harbour on 12 February 1942 with the loss of one of her crew. She was raised and scuttled off Malta on 15 July 1945.

Location

Dive Team:

Ann (Guide & A), TBD (A), TBD (A), Svenke Wall (B) and Chris Armstrong (B).

Dive Log:

We entered the sea after scaling down a mossy ladder after crossing some rocks. You are in a semi-sheltered pool. I’d argue it as quarter-sheltered, you do not bear the full brunt of the swells, but only by a fraction. Its good to get your fins on in and get comfy. You then drop down to the seabed (1m) and swim through the gap and follow the reef along to the wreck.

I found this excellent little sketch of the wreck (from Hajoroncsok)

Swimming from the reef it takes about 5-7 minutes to reach the wreck. You firstly arrive on the bow. The bow is very broken up with some of the key ribs standing proud of the sea bed by approximately 2m. There were some beautiful schools of fish around here.

Swimming aft you then come across the wheel house. At first I was looking down and I could see some gaps between the metal work. I dropped down and could wriggle may way down. Looking at the picture above, I was roughly where the port holes started towards the bow of the ship (but on the starboard side), once I had dropped through I was in the wreck, there was a lovely long swim-through along the length of the wreck (along the length where you can see the port holes). It would have been a lovely atmospheric shot, it was very dark, but you had blue columns of light coming in from the sides from the port holes and lovely light blue exit.

But I hadn’t told my buddy, Svenke, where I had gone, so I thought that before I go swim the length of the wreck, I would pop out and go see him. So I came out, at the front of the cabin area on the port side and met up with the group. The viz was getting “bad” at this point, there were about 3 groups on the wreck so viz was about 5m (!!).

Svenke and I then carried on around the starboard side of the wheel house. There is another swim through that a small bus could go through going straight through the wreck. 

Coming around the stern we came up and over the wheel house, you can get in there and have a look about. Svenke was photographing and filming some lovely fish and crabs as we went.

Swimming back to the bow we then left the wreck and headed to the reef. We did a 5 minute stop at about 5m on the reef. At this depth we found a massive amount of foil, to pass the time we were all collecting up the foil. On the surface we found the empty box of a 50m kitchen foil! Well, we had the contents!

The final ascent involved passing through the gap into the entry “pool”. The swell had realy picked up, it felt quite significant, perhaps 1m? I was last in the group but coming through, I just floated up and let the current push me through. 

All in all, an excellent dive, visibility was “poor” for Malta, but as a UK diver more than happy with it!

YouTube Video

My dear friend Svenke shot some video and has kindly allowed me to share it:

Dive Report : Divewise House Reef Check Out Dive

Location:

The house reef is through a gate about 30 yards from Divewise.
 

Dive Team:

Alan (Guide & A), TBD (A), TBD (A), Svenke Wall (B) and Chris Armstrong (B).

Dive log:

I had been an epic Muppet and managed to lose my 3mm wetsuit somehow earlier this year. I think that when I first joined by local dive club and we had gone to the pool in Burnt Island to do a check out I had left it there. So I had to rent a 5mm from Divewise. The objective of the checkout dive was to get the weighting sorted, and personally I wanted to get the gear checked out to make sure that all the gear had survived the journey.

I had dove my twinset in the UK in my 3mm wetsuit in the past so I knew I would be massively negative, 5mm vs 3mm, not big difference eh? Well it was! I took two 2kg blocks and slotted them on my waist strap.

Firstly, Alan led us in to the harbour to get our weight sorted and out and then we were ready we dropped down to 3m and did some quick skill checks like mask clearing and regulator sharing for out of gas emergencies. I was buddied up with a Swedish gentleman called Svenke. He was in a dry suit! Nearly 30 degrees air temperature and a water temperature of 25 degrees, nah I’m glad I left it at home!!

Settled and happy, Alan led us around the house reef.

There isn’t much to report; the house reef is fairly bland in terms of “attraction” to see. There are no sunken cars, vans, small boats or anything like that which would probably help a lot I think. The visibility was lovely 20m+. A far cry from all the UK diving I had done. There were quite a few fish, schools of fish danced and glittered beautiful silvers. I was on the hunt for an octopus looking under every rock but couldn’t find one. I was absolutely entranced with the dive. The visibility was beautiful, the water was lovely and warm, the fish were beautiful and I just felt so happy to finally be on a dive holiday!

I came out of the dive feeling excited, the water was gin clear, the fish were beautiful and even though it was relatively unexciting because there was very little to look at, it was still a lovely dive. Its nice to just check out the gear, get your weight right for some "proper" diving.

YouTube Video

My dear friend Svenke shot some video and has kindly allowed me to share it.