Bassas Da India Adventure: Friday 8th July. Wrecks and Whales

Pics of the day are under the text.

We were up early and prepared for our first dive while Brent moved us off to the site of a wreck around the other side of the Bassas (but not quite on the wild side). With no landmarks to really speak of it’s quite difficult to tell where you are in relation to anywhere else here.

This first dive has to be one of the dives of my life to date with unbelievable vis, and a great wreck with fantastic fish life. It was fairly challenging dive with strong current to swim through to get to the wreck which is spread between about 15 and 40 metres on a sloping wall of the reef. I maxed out at about 31m to save deco and air, but there was plenty to see and photograph in spite of the surge which reminded me of Cape Town diving (don’t fight it, just go with the flow). It was a magical dive, hard to say why (unfortunately I didn’t discover a gold ingot or a chest of coins) – but probably because so little is known about what ship it was, and because so few others have dived this wreck or indeed any of the other sites at Bassas at all – so the chance of finding something really amazing always exists.

Breakfast was cereal and coffee after the dive followed by cylinder filling for others, and rebreather preparation for me – as the next 2 dives were my turn on the rebreather.

During breakfast and all the way through the day there were Humpback whales resting in the bay with us – I got some great pics when one of them passed right under the boat. Greg got some fantastic shots snorkelling a few metres from one of the enormous mammals. They are amazing creatures, and even more so when you can see them a few metres away, instead of through a telescope.

I did two dives on rebreather this day, and had a trouble-free 130 minutes under water – now officially the completion of my 5 hours open water rebreather training.

Between dives, Brent and Miguel pulled in some more fish including a lovely red snapper which was cleaned and roasted on the braai in tin foil – ready for us to devour for lunch a few minutes later. Fish this fresh is just unbeatable.

On our third dive we discovered a huge steel anchor and a chain attached to an anchor cable, snaking through the reef. George followed the cable to the edge of a drop-off – perhaps it leads to a sunken ship?

Dinner was a fresh tuna and tomato pasta (not canned tuna but chunks of tuna fillet – part of yesterday’s catch) – another award winning Bassas dinner a la Brent. Banter and laughter, accompanied by a few Spiced Golds and in bed by about 21h30, to get a few hours rest before my night watch – was woken at 12 by Eileen and have been typing ever since.

Tomorrow is day four of five days of diving, this trip is going so fast! Hope we can get in some dives on the Wild Side tomorrow if conditions are good enough.