10 June 2007

Wreck of the Brisbane ~ 9th June 2007

Another lovely sunny day and seven divers with two crew went to sea to dive the wreck of the Brisbane on a low tide. On arrival at the dive site "MV Sea Zones" had shotted the the wreck and were putting divers down. They were happy with our divers using their shot line and our divers went down in a 2 , 3 , 2 pattern.

The sea was flat calm and the vis was pretty good at about 3 to 4 m. This is the tale of the 3 diver buddy team! The wreck stood in 24m of water and the uppermost points were at about 17 to 18 metres. So a nice shallow dive on a benign sea!

We arrived at the wreck amidships on the port side. From there we slowly made our way to the bow which was very well defined and stood proud of the sea bed. The plating on the bows sides was pretty much intact but both sides had a pattern of small holes allowing us to peep into the wreck. The forecastle area of the wreck was reduced to a framework.

It was a luck dive for Keeley B ( a student of one of the Sussex universties) because she had lost her large halogen dive lamp on the wreck. We found this lamp and later returned it to her. Now that was luck Keeley!

Our team of three followed the port gunwhale to the bow then descended to the bottom before returning to the deck and tracking aftwards along the starboard side. It was a superb dive with the low depth helping to give us a very long bottom time. There was little or no current and the visibilty was very good for the time of year.

The Brisbane is a big wreck and after such a good dive I think we must think about diving her more often!

The ride back to Newhaven was more novel than usual but landed us back on the quayside in time the usual post-dive debrief over and egg and bacon butty at the Coral Cafe!

Max depth 24m , bottom time 54 minutes.

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