Dacorum Sub Aqua Club

Miss Nouran

These two pages show the routine for doing a dive on the Red Sea live aboard, Miss Nouran.

You may go through this cycle fifteen or twenty times during your week of diving. It's a tough job but someone has to do it!

You can enlarge an image by double clicking on it.

The photo below shows the Elphinstone reef in the southern, Egyptian Red Sea. It's a coral reef around 400 metres long and 30 metres broad. 

The coral starts at 1 metre below the surface and plummets to 70 metres or more in places. 

Most of the reef consists of vertical walls, but there are overhangs, huge cracks in the walls and even an archway at 55 metres. All are covered in colourful corals and fish.

At the time of year we dived it, April, strong currents from the north meant we had to, either, do drift dives along the northern tip and west side, or dive in the shelter of the southern tip. 

With 16 divers on board, the wide diving platform on the back gets busy.  You can see we've abandoned the independent air sources we use at home but you'll notice we've still taking our flags, surface marker buoys and strobes.

At last it's time to jump in - you heat up quickly in a wet suit - but the 23 degree April water will cool us down. Most people are wearing 3mm or 5mm wet suits.

Submerge, find the reef and have a look around. The underwater visibility on this trip, at 10 metres, was poor for the time of year.

After 30 or 45 minutes diving, come back up and wait to be picked up by the tender. 

Miss Noran has a very good dive guide, Souheil. We had the choice of following her or going our own way. Sometimes we dived in twos, other times we did larger groups. 

If you get separated from the boat, you put up a surface marker buoy to attract attention. Swearing loudly does the trick and can be very therapeutic if you missed all the fun because you couldn't find the reef.

Return to the boat

Where the crew are ready to get you on board.

Get yourself to the ladder.

Climb on board. As the engines' exhausts are at the back of the boat, it pays to keep your mask and regulator on until you're completely out.

The ever helpful crew assist you.

You are then able to tell everyone all about it. You put your gear away, get dry and into warm clothes.

Meanwhile the cook is making the next delicious meal.

This diving certainly makes you hungry!

Then set off for the next site.

And have a little rest so you're ready to do it all over again in a few hours time.