TRURO DIVING CLUB

Wow, 3 years since the last post. We're still diving. Lamorna Cove was lovely this weekend. Visibility was a bit dusty but with the sun shining it was lovely day out 🌞

Hi all, Emma here. Had a lovely dive yesterday evening out of Silver Steps with Al and Matt. Vis was around 8 to 10m and temp 14.6 degrees. Looking forward to a summer of Cornish dives 🤿

No posts here for a while but excited to be able to go diving again. Hope I remember what to do 🤿

Spotted in Falmouth bay 😊

Shore dive Gylly beach tomorrow 10am. Let's go diving 😊

This is what Truro Diving Club has mostly been doing this week - diving......

Just once in your life!
“Sergio, I want to go the Red sea. Which places should I visit?” This could be a question from any of my friends anytime. The answer is clear, book a Famous Five safari with Emperor to visit the wrecks of Thistlegorm, Rosalie Moller and Salem Express, Ras Mohammed National Marine Park and Brother Islands! And this was exactly our trip last week. Welcome to Famous Five on Emperor Superior.

Check dive at Shaab el Erg and who said check dive is necessarily a boring dive. Dive for sixty-five minutes with a friendly dolphin playing around us and that is not boring! And this is just the beginning!
Our second stop is Gubal island and the Barge, the remains of a small patrol boat with a big bunch of surprises, thousands of fishes and nice creatures to delight us, including George an ancient, and well known for divers, moray eel which is massive, such a dinosaur! And if The Barge is fantastic during the day, this is one of the best night dives in the northern Red Sea. Schools of fusiliers everywhere, dozens of different sorts of moray eels, nudibranchs, large pleurobranchs, crabs, shrimps and everything you can imagine for a night dive is here.

The second day we go for the first ‘famous’, the Rosalie Moller. This Second World War boat lies on a deep sandy bottom. The main deck is really well conserved, we visited also the masts and the funnel with the huge M from Moller written on.

Time flies here in Rosalie Moller and before you notice you need to begin your way back to the surface. And from the Rosalie Moller to ‘THE WRECK’, the SS Thistlegorm, the most famous wreck in the world. On 6 October 1941, a couple of German bombers with a base on Crete dropped bombs while the Thistlegorm was waiting in the “safe” anchorage to cross through the Canal of Suez and was stuck at that moment by another boat which ran into an underwater mine. To start with the SS Thistlegorm first we explored outside and the feeling is like visiting a military museum; bombs, ammunition, a gun machine, an anti-aircraft gun, even tanks, locomotives, wagons… But the best is about to come. The second dive is inside. Motorbikes, trucks, rifles, airplanes wings, more ammunition, boots for the troops. This is a wreck impossible to forget. And for the night dive? Thistlegorm again! No, we are not crazy, this is Famous five safari on Emperor Superior.

For the third day we woke up for an early dive again in Thistlegorm, never is enough when it is the Thistlegorm. But everything needs an end and it’s time to move to the third ‘famous’. One of the best dive places not only in the Red Sea but all over the world; Ras Mohammed, the first national marine park in Egypt. We have several dive sites here and always it is difficult to decide but there is a dive site which is a perfect combination of everything Ras Mohammed can offer and this place is Shark Reef and Yolanda. The coral here is just stunning, the drop offs are infinite, millions of fish everywhere and in this season of the year hundreds of bat fish, unicorn fish and jacks gather in numerous schools making this dive unforgettable. And at the end of the dive the remains of the cargo of Yolanda’s wreck and its famous big bunch of bathtubs and toilets.

Before sailing to the next ‘famous’, The Brothers Islands, we have time to pay a visit to Dunraven, a 19th century wreck with a particular feature, which lies upside down on the edge of Shaab Mahmoud reef.

The Brothers Islands are two small islands in the middle of nowhere. The first visit is to the Big Brother in what we can call the Manta’s Day! We jump for the first dive in the south plateau and after a great spectacle, some dolphins hunting a bait ball of sardines we saw a manta, for the second dive we went to one of the wrecks in this island and… we saw a manta. And for the third dive the weather just allowed us repeat the south plateau and guess what… we saw a manta!

The weather didn’t allow us to visit the other wreck in Big Brother on Tuesday but we don’t give up that easily and the first dive on Wednesday we did it. We explored Numidia thoroughly and on the way back to Superior along the west side of the island a couple of grey reef sharks and a cute small white tip reef shark joined us for a while. The second and the third dive of the day were in Small Brother where we could see more grey reef sharks and, some lucky people, even hammerheads! Besides the sharks we had also the chance to visit the gorgonian’s forest in the east side and enjoy the company of a school of tunas which could scare away the sharks we saw before, such huge fish!

The last day of the trip we only have one ‘famous’ left, the Salem Express, one of the biggest tragedies ever on the Egyptian coast and one of the most famous wrecks in the world. Here it is possible to visit the main deck, the bridge, the life boats completely useless that fateful day and even it’s possible to distinguish perfectly the part of the hull which hit the reef.

But all good things have an end and to not say goodbye but see you soon to Emperor Superior we had two more dives; Gota Abu Ramada with a wonderful landscape, big moray eels and a potato coral garden full of life. And a wreck again. El Mina, barely some metres from Hurghada’s harbour, sunk by Israelis airplanes during the Six Days’ war in the lately 60s; this is the perfect end for our Famous Five trip.

Thank you so much to our dear guests. It was wonderful to share this fantastic week and the wonders of the Red Sea with you. Thanks to our fantastic Captain Ahmed Omran, choosing always the best spots to moor and dive and his superb and hard-working Crew.

Thank you very much to Emma for contributing your beautiful photographs to our page this week. Take care, safe travels home and safe bubbles. We hope to see you again. Hugs from the depths of the Red Sea!

Sergio and Ana

For sale oceanic CDX5 first stage, Alpha 9 second and octo, not serviced only few years old excellent condition £150
Scubapro MK 17 first stage only, last serviced May 2014, still boxed £125
Contact Craig B if interested

Some pics from The Maldives

We're going for a shore dive on Sunday. Meeting at Silver steps at 2pm. The forecast is looking good.
Let us know if you plan to come along, hopefully see some fellow divers down there. Emma

We had manta rays on our night dive last night. All the divers put their torches in a semicircle pointing upwards and the mantas swooped through the beams feeding on the plankton. Incredible.

Some of us are in the Maldives. Will update if we see anything and if the WiFi works.