John inside the wreck
After Sydney’s ‘coldest start to summer in 50 years’ and weeks of wind and rain, I didn’t hold out much hope for today’s dive on the Adelaide – truth be told, I was most interested in testing out some new gear (the ‘Titanbox‘ – a solid titanium frame for my Inspo CCR), adjusting some weight and that was about it, maybe 10 minutes in the water and I would be happy.
After an early start and a dream run up the freeway I arrived at the Haven at 6:30, right behind Arthur and settled in to wait for everyone else to turn up and listened to Arthur’s tales of the trip to Truk that the guys had just got back from. After an hour or so, Mike W (our driver), Roy, John & Graeme arrive and we started gearing up (still missing two, but we had an 8:30am mooring booked so there would be no waiting!). Quickly got ready and we loaded the boat and started to motor out of the haven, at which point our two latecomers arrived, so we came back in picked them up and headed off for the quick run out to the wreck.
We arrived at the site and the first thing I noticed was that there was only one ‘official’ mooring which belonged to
Roy outside the wreck
Prodive Central Coast and Bob was already onsite and had divers in the water. We noticed that another ‘unofficial’ mooring (i.e. a float tied to the wreck) was free so quickly jumped on that. Guess whoever is managing the site needs to do some work with the mooring system – there are now 5 moorings and a cardinal marker sitting in Terrigal Haven, all of which have come loose – one was found in Jervis Bay!).
I quickly jumped into the water and promptly sank like a stone! Seems the Titanbox is much heavier than I expected and although I had removed 3lb’s from my weight belt that was nowhere near enough and I was massively overweighted (the following day on the Coolooli I took another 6lb’s off and was still slightly heavy - in the end I removed 11lbs). As I was ‘falling’ onto the wreck I noticed that the viz was actually pretty good – around 15m so although quite overweighted I decided to go for a bit of a swim and have a look around.
Main nav light above bridge - June 2011
It’s been a few months since my last Adelaide dive and the change in the wreck is amazing - it’s now covered in growth and there is virtually no bare metal visible in the outside at all. The top of the bridge is now covered in seaweed (yep, seaweed!) and the rest is covered with a hard growth (Compare the ‘Main nav light above bridge – June 2011 witht eh same shot in Dec 2011). The fish life on the wreck has exploded as well, on my last visit the decks were covered in Fortescue but not much else, today there was all sorts of fish buzzing around inside and outside (yeah…I should know what some of them are, but I’m a wrecky so fish isn’t isn’t my strong suit).
Main nav light above bridge - December 2011
I dropped down to the stern at 36.6m, swam in through the bottom hole and pottered around through the engine and machinery rooms, then up to the next deck and basically zigzagged up the decks to come out at the bridge. I hit the top of the wreck at the 60 minute mark and started my ascent with a 5 minute deco obligation. I arrived at my 6m stop and after waiting for the Vision to clear deco I surfaced and then it was back on board, wait for the last of our divers to surface and then the quick trip back to Terrigal.
All up, it was a great dive – far exceeding my expectations!
Growth on the top of the bridge
A big thanks has to go to Mike W for voluteeering to drive the boat. Having a dedicated driver is a luxury we don’t often have and it makes the day go much quicker when we can get all divers in the water at once and thanks also to Graham for allowing me to use his pic’s in this post.
So much for the Titan box being a travel frame!
I feel I got the better end of the stick! 