SS Undola 21-04-07

The seas were very flat on Saturday April 21, 2007 so thought that we would take a long trip down the coast to the wreck of the SS Undola. This was our first time on the wreck. There are two excellent resources for information on this wreck - Michael McFadyen and Tom Byron's book "Scuba Diving, Snorkelling and Spearfishing Guide to Southern NSW".

We used GPS co-ordinates 34^o10'44.0"S & 151^o05'38.4"E which is over the bow. Sea Tamer uses 34^o10'44.5"S & 151^o05'37.4"E which is over the stern.
A tighter set would be 34^o10'44.24"S & 151^o05'37.9"E, in between the 2. When hooking up on this wreck there is not a lot of metal midships so it it possible to drag right across the middle and not hook up at all.

It is a long run down the coast to the wreck which is located in 44m off Garie beach. The seas were flat so we had a good run. We left Wally's wharf at Dolan's Bay at 7.30am and dropped into the water at 8:32. We hooked up on the wreck first time (or so we thought). Our GPS told us the boat was not drifting so down we went through clear water. As we approached the bottom we saw that our anchor had dropped 5m short of the wreck on it's port (left) side and was sitting in the sand. We heaved it over to the wreck. Like the Tuggerah there was fish life everywhere and crystal clear viz, no surge and we loved exploring it. We saw heaps of nannygai, sea pike and yellowtail, 2 cuttles, and quite a lot of other fish life. Surprisingly there were no wobbbiegong sharks.

We found the toilet immediately, on the port side, towards the bow it is hard to miss. I headed to the bow and swam slowly down the port side to the stern, noting the rudder and rudder post at the stern. There is no prop visible. Coming back up the starboard side the wreck is more open and parts of the engine can be seen behind the boiler. The boiler sits a midships. There is now only remnants of fishing nets. At this point I was getting seriously into deco so headed forward to get Wayne and head back up to the surface. I was also down to 100 bar of air. We took a slow ascent, mourning the fact that we could not spend more time here.

Diving on air I spent 4 minutes getting down, 17 mins on the wreck, 6 mins to get back up to 7m (my ceiling) and a whopping 31 mins decompressing. As the ceiling reduced, we also moved up with it but most of the decompression time was spent at 5m.

Next time we will dive this on Nitrox, probably about 27%. And there will be a next time.