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"The dive planned originally for Sunday 29 May was to be the Sisters, with the weather pattern for the day looking decisively southerly, I decided to move the dive to the Nord which would be more sheltered in those conditions and having abandoned a dive earlier in the month to the Nord this gave us an opportunity to have another go at the wreck. For the dive we had Andreas K, Jon B and myself (James P), Andrew G who could not dive offered to run the boat.

Sunday morning we were greeted by heavy cloud and rain, it was one of those occasions where every time you looked at the weather forecast the winds were strengthening. We decided to leave from Fortescue Bay, reducing the travel distance punching into the stiff southerly breeze. At the Nord we set a shot on the stern GPS mark and deployed a drifting decompression station tethered to the shot. The decompression station consisted of two parallel ropes each attached to a buoy and terminating in a weight, a solid 2.5m bar at 6 and 9 metres joined the two ropes. With the three of us diving rebreathers we planned for a one hour bottom on the wreck making the total dive time a little over two hours, the decompression station would make the one hour of deco much more comfortable as we drifted with any current.

With the three of us geared up in our rebreathers and adequate bailout we rolled over the side and descended down the shot. We had a light current running from the north as we descended down on to the wreck. On the bottom vis was good at around 15 maybe 20m, but rather dark due to the heavy cloud above.

With an hour of bottom time we had plenty of time to explore the wreck, and breathing 55% helium in my rebreather removed any anxiety bought on by narcosis with an equivalent narcosis depth of approximately 16m. As is usually the case the wrecks was a hive of fish activity, with numerous, butterfly, barber and rosy perch schooling over the midsection, along with large schools of pike and mackerel coming and going. Amongst the schools of perch were, jackass morwong and some large bastard trumpeter. Then amongst the wreckage the usual reef species could be seen such as boar fish, wrasse, banded morwong and various species of leather Jackets.

Our dive around the wrecks took us down the port side to the bow, which is always spectacular with the large dreadnaught anchor propped up on the starboard side. We made our way up into the mid ships area spending some time poking around the structure forward of the boilers, and the engine. Here there are a number of swim throughs to poke around where the hull has collapsed in on the engine and boilers, the toilet can also be found here on the port side just in front of the boilers. From here we moved towards the stern which is always spectacular standing upright, and the overhanging stern carpeted in a mass of golden zoanthids. With our planned bottom time running out we made our way up to the stern deck, where some deck timbers can still be seen in place. With our 60 minute bottom up, which seemed to pass by way to fast, we swam across to the shot and began our assent. At 20m we moved across to the deco station, released it from the shot and we then drifted away in the gentle current. Decompressing on a drifting deco station makes a long deco much more comfortable as opposed to hanging on to a shot, where at times you are bunched up like gapes and flapping in the breeze if there is any current. It also assists with safety keeping all divers together and able to assist each other if issues develop and additional bailout gas can also be staged on the station, rather than drifting independently under DSMBs.

With our deco complete we surfaced and were promptly picked up by Andrew in the club boat who had been tracking the drifting deco station. Back in the boat we found we had drifted approximately one kilometer parallel with the shore from the shot on the wreck.

With the rain coming down it was unanimously decided to head back to Fortescue Bay, with all of us immensely satisfied with the great dive we had just had on this magnificent wreck. Much thanks must go to Andrew G who towed and ran the boat for us whilst enduring the at times atrocious surface conditions.
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By James P

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