September 2008: South Pacific
Luganville, Espirito Santo, Vanuatu pt 7 (S 15.30.905 E 167.11.027)
Aore Island, Vanuatu (S 15.32.252 E167.10.810)
One of the top reasons for us to be in Luganville is to scuba dive the wreck of the SS President Coolidge. Since the boat was located so close to shore all the dives on it are shore dives and not from a boat. We met at the shop at 8am and was taken in a van with a few others to the dive site. The pavement ended pretty quickly and then it was a bumpy ride down the potholed dirt road. In the picture above you can see the water color differences. We walked out in full gear almost to the blue water line and then dropped. From there it was a very steep decline to the bow of the ship. It is made easy to find as a line is tied to the bow and secured to the shore.
This is a deep dive with the bow sitting at about 20 meters and the stern at about 60 meters. The divemasters/guides leave small tanks attached to a line in the decompression staging area at 6 meters and 3 meters in case anyone needs them. The visibility was not very good but up close to the wreck it was fine.
Since this was our first dive on the wreck we did not go inside. This shop runs a structured approach to this wreck. Each dive progressively goes deeper into the wreck and deeper in the water. There are also other specialty dives that could be mixed-air, dual tank, etc.
On my 2nd dive a couple days later I was able to go inside the wreck and was shocked as to how deep inside we went. It was fantastic even though we needed flashlights to see. I took more video than anything on these wreck dives and those are pretty interesting clips.
(YouTube clip)
When the war ended a lot of equipment was dumped in the water near here. On the beach are polished shards of bottle glass mostly Coke. There are also lots of small pieces of ceramic plates and dishes.
No comments:
Post a Comment