This wreck is often rated one of the best in the world and certainly it is a great big wreck surrounded by marine life but you cannot swim inside and it is hard to see much through the holes. For me, this re-affirms the Thistlegorm in the red sea as the greatest wreck dive in the world where swimming around inside reveals motorcycles, rifles and army boots with the same intense level of fish etc... Now for the death defying story.
Aquaman (aka the assassin) and I were at the Hayman Island resort where we dove the nice bait reef with the 20 meter swim through at the cathedral. The reef, at the southern tip was nice but not inspiring so we got a chopper and flew an hour north (near Townsville) to dive the Yongola. The dive shop is a converted shack out of Mad Max with an inflatable boat that gets dragged to the nearby ocean with a tractor. Since it got stuck in a swamp the day before, we took a death defying run along high tide in a jeep that came a centimeter from flipping over into the ocean which of course was great fun. Thereafter we set off to the wreck in our inflataraft to find whipping currents around the dive buoy.
We were with 6 dive instructors who jumped into the torrent and desperately flailed to cling to the boat line so as not to be swept off to fiji. One dive master immediately lost his snorkel in the chaos. I was the last one in and immediately started to drown in the torrent and the spaghetti like mass of tangled instructors. I did not know at the time that Aquaman had volunteered to open the air on my tank but only got half way. As I tried to suck air through the respirator I nearly suffocated in 3 inches of water.
Finally the hapless divemasters sank to the bottom... and I, assuming the tank was fine but I was disoriented descended out of the torrent 80 feet down to the peaceful wreck. Heaving and wheezing on the half closed respirator, I managed to burn 25% of the tank in 5 minutes. I signaled disaster to the team leader who swam over and looked at my gage which was jerking all over the place while I suffocated 80 feet from the surface. He put on the best look of horror one can with a mask clamped on your face and he swung around and opened the air and saed my life. I was shaken but not stirred and continued the dive although only for 28 minutes as my air had burned out. Later he said out of 700 Yongola dives that I was his closest near death experience of which I am quite proud.
It turns out during the torrent struggle that I kicked Aquamans belt off (which he miraculously caught) in an act of revenge prior to the suffocation. We went down again without incident and then headed back where the ship ran aground on a sand bar. The captain called abandon ship and we all jumped over and swam 200 yards to shore. After nearly flipping the SUV, drowning and abandoning ship, I deem this the most fun I ever had in one day and I will eagerly try to convince the murderous Aquaman to meet me in Yap Indonesia for another go.
Comments