SS Undola 28-07-07

We had flat seas and little wind as we headed out of Dolan's Bay on Saturday 28 July. A good trip down to the Undola and we drop anchor after not finding our mooring. A seal frolllicked on the surface but did not come down to us. We were interested in what changes the big seas had made to the wreck. At the bottom viz was great. The wreck looked much the same - no real major damage that we could see. The most interesting thing was that there is now a large scooped out area under the back of the wreck and parts of the propeller are uncovered. I'm sure this was not the case before. A moray has taken up residency under the toilet which is still as it was. I did note that the storms had cleaned the spindle on a valve on top of the boiler. The metal of the spindle is quite shiny.

Also pleasing was that our mooring is still in tact - the float at 13m holding the chain and rope up. We put another drum on the surface. Clearly the surface drum is either being removed or the seas are breaking it off. We will try another approach to try to maintain a mooring there.

The wind had come up during our first dive and the water became quite choppy as we did our deco stop. We moved the boat onto the mooring for our surface interval. The wreck was so tempting that we put out the back anchor as well and did a second dive. First dive on 26% Nitrox and second dive was on air.

We will need to move the mooring on the wreck. The beams that it is tied to to are now not secure on the wreck and we noted movement in the beams due to the boat.