No extra tilt of the wreck

In my report on the dive that we did at the Mediator last Sunday I mentioned that it looked to me that the tilt of the wreck at the bow had increased to starboard. Today I checked this with previous pictures of this section of the wreck. To the left a picture that I made on November 4, 2007; that is more than two and a half year ago. I created a second layer on this picture in which I copied a small section of the picture from last Sunday with an opacity of 50% so that the original picture shines through. You can see it as a small rectangle in the picture at the left. I aligned the pipe in this small section with the pipe that is laying on the sand in the original picture; also the lowest part of the bow is aligned in both pictures. The pipe is not connected to the wreck so if tilt of the ship would have increased since 2007 the bow at the top of the small rectangle (just below the Tarpon) would be misaligned with the bow in the original picture. Although not really visible in the small picture, by clicking on that picture you will get a larger one in which you can see that there is no visible increase in the tilt of the wreck in the two and a half year since the previous picture. So even if there is an increase this would be minimal and certainly not visible with the naked eye.

Back at the Mediator after a long time

After a long time of absence we finaly found the time to get back to the Mediator. The number of volunteers has dropped below a critical limit for structural activities on the wreck. So the only remaining activity is once in a while a guided tour at this historical wreck site. And even these quided tours are not very often because most tourist don't know about this possibility.

On Sunday July 25, 2010, we did a guided dive / rescue exercise at this location. As usual I was the first one to enter the water to have optimal conditions for photography. As soon as I was under water it became clear that the conditions on this day were quite exceptional; the visibility was very good. At least 10 - 12 meters.

The condition of the wreck itself didn't change visibly except for the tilt of the ship. I didn't check it yet with pictures from the bow from previous years, but it looks to me that the bow is more tilted to starboard than I can remember from the past. The picture can not give the final answer because there is always a chance that I have tilted the camera so we need to do a measurement to be sure.

What has changed visibly is the amount of debris on the wreck. There are a lot of tires on and around the wreck. Also other materials that don't belong there are spread over the wreck. A cleaning is something that we should organize for the near future.

Pictures from this dive can be found in the Pictures section under Mediator.

Boca Patrick - a North shore dive

On Sunday May 30, 2010, finally the conditions for a North shore dive were optimal. There had not been any wind for three days, so there would be almost no waves along the North shore. Because of these conditions Karel Boon (Trunkdivers) organized a guided dive at Boca Patrick. A lot of divers responded: 9 divers; some of them relatively unexperienced; on the other hand also a number of very experienced divers attended (4 instructors).  I was unable to attend because of an injury that I got during a hike on Wednesday through a field with lots of thorny bushes and cacti (see curacaopictures.com). The appointment was at half past ten at the dive shop at Landhuis Daniel. Dive sets and tanks were loaded in the pickup quickly and then the caravan left towards the dive site Read more...

Relaxed dive at Marie Pampoen

On Wednesday May 5, Rob and I went for a dive at Marie Pampoen. Diving through the week is a new option for me since I retired at May 1. And it is a good option! Rob wanted to improve on his photo technique when shooting without a strobe at depth. And I wanted to check if I could reduce backscatter further by moving the strobe farther away from the camera. So we both had a goal during this dive. We went to the East (left); first rather shallow till we reached the wrecks. There we went deeper each our own way. I already made some test shots shallow to get the best settings for my flash and these looked promising. I shot some pictures of the small boat and then I went a bit deeper to take some shots of other pieces of wreckage. At my deepest point I saw a large Tarpon but couldn't go any nearer because of the remaining bottom time. Read more...