Diving Along the Way: The Undersea Journey of the Picton Castle
Tuesday, November 15th, 2005
Four years ago when I told my sailing buddy, Mark, that I had decided to sail around the world on the Picton Castle, he immediately replied, “Bruce, you are going to be visiting some of the top dive sites in the world and if you don’t take the time to dive them you will be missing half the trip.” He was right. Mark has been an avid SCUBA diver for about 20 years, and shortly after our conversation, I enrolled in a dive class at my local PADI dive center. I earned my Advanced Open Water certification, and began preparing for this upcoming adventure. I practiced deep dives, night dives, wreck dives, and underwater photography (which, by the way, is a lot tougher—and more expensive—than it looks) so by the time we set sail I felt very confident in my diving ability.During my interview with Captain Moreland, I asked him about bringing dive gear and his advice was, “If the island doesn’t have a certified dive shop, it isn’t worth diving there. You can rent everything you need, so keep what you bring to a minimum.” By this time I had grown accustomed to (and quite fond of) my own gear, but I packed only my mask, snorkel, fins, dive computer, regulator, and a lightweight (0.5 ml) wetsuit and left behind the bulkier items—the BCD and heavier wetsuits.
As the crew arrived in Lunenburg, I found seven other divers among them, and we began talking and planning our dives along the way.
The stop at Jost Van Dyke in the British Virgin Islands was short and unexpected, and while the diving is good, especially on the wreck of the Rhone, we had no time there to get away and coordinate anything. Perhaps on our return leg, we’ll have the pleasure of diving in the BVI.
Our next port of call was Panama City. We were eager to get wet, but when we arrived we found that most of the dive centers were located on the Caribbean side of the isthmus. There was only one dive shop near Panama City. I called there, and being on short notice, they were unable to accommodate us. Also, the dives there are about a 2.5-hour boat ride out to some islands of the Pacific coast. So we set our sights on the Galapagos Islands.
Once in the Galapagos, we discovered that most of the best dive sites were in the northern part of the islands and were accessed by live-aboard dive charter boats on 5–7 day trips. Since we had only a few days and we were all assigned different duty days aboard the ship, we opted to go with a local PADI shop, called Charo’s Dive Center. Charo and his crew took very good care of us on a couple of local dives at Kicker Rock and Lobos Island.
Kicker Rock is a split rock standing tall out of the sea about 25 minutes by dive boat from our harbor anchorage at Puerto Barquerizo Moreno, the main seaport town on San Cristobal. The water is quite cold (the prevailing current flows up from the Antarctic), but my 7 ml wetsuit kept me warm as we dove 80 feet down and swam around the rock. We caught a glimpse of a Galapagos shark, an eagle ray, and we also saw beautiful sea stars among the colorful algae on the rock.
Later that day, we dove at La Isla de Los Lobos. It was a shallow dive of 20–25 feet along a sandy reef between the main island of San Cristobal and the smaller Lobos island. The smaller island was inhabited only by sea lions. As I was entranced with the number of stunning pincushion sea stars along the sandy bottom, my dive buddy, J.D., grabbed my fin and motioned upward. Behind and above us were baby sea lions frolicking and making sweeping passes at us. Although they are very territorial and at times aggressive on shore, in the water these creatures were amazingly friendly, curious, and playful. They tagged along like puppies throughout most of our 40-minute dive. In the shallows of the reef we witnessed marine iguanas feeding on the algae.
Our next opportunity to dive was in Rarotonga, although we did some pretty extensive snorkeling in Mangareva, where the reef revealed white-tipped sharks (about 5 feet long), octopus, lots of parrot fish, butterfly fish, angel fish, and wrasses. There were no dive shops on Mangareva. My theory is that because of the extensive pearl farming there, they are reluctant to have a bunch of SCUBA divers swimming around their oyster beds.
Then on to Rarotonga. We were all excited at the prospect of donning tanks again, but while the dive shops there were all well equipped and ran some first-rate dive operations, the dives were lackluster. We booked a couple of dives with Cook Island Divers, the oldest dive shop on the island and we had a great time with them. But much of the reef we saw had been destroyed by pollution and was rife with Sigua Terra, a bacterium in the algae. It is harmless to reef fish, but if the fish are eaten by humans, the bacterium causes an irreversible neuropathy. There is an effort to revive the reef and evidence that it is slowly coming back to life, but we saw little live coral and few reef fish there. What an unfortunate situation.
After Rarotonga, we snorkeled on Palmerston Atoll and found more reef life there. Without the threat of Sigua Terra, we tried our hand at a bit of spear fishing, but the fish proved far too smart and agile for us.
A short sail later and we were once again strapping on the tanks to dive at Tonga, and what a thrill that was! The reefs were beautiful, with a variety of fish and other reef animals that we had expected to see since our arrival in the South Pacific. One dive was on a site called “The Chinese Garden.” Here, the table coral stretch across acres of reef and the landscape is covered with Christmas Tree Worms. These lacy, conical-shaped animals live attached to the coral and rock and are about 1.5–2 inches high in brilliant shades of blue, yellow, white, red, green, and black. As we swam over the terrain, I thought that not even an IMAX camera could capture the beauty of that reef!
The next day we went for a couple more fantastic dives on a wall and through several underwater caves, then spent a couple of hours whale watching with a mother and 2-week-old baby humpback whale. What awesome and graceful creatures they are!
Fiji was our next stop, and we were already psyched up for the “Soft Coral Capital.” We were not disappointed. What we saw in Tonga somewhat paled to the beauty, variety, and vibrant life in the Beqa (pronounced Benka) Lagoon. In short, the diving was getting better as we sailed West. The Beqa lagoon is a wide reef between Viti Levu and the smaller island of Beqa to its south. Here we saw multitudes (no exaggeration) of Angelfish, Wrasses, Parrotfish, Butterfly fish, Chromis, Clown fish, Shrimp, Octopus, Lionfish, Sea Stars, Sea Cucumbers, Eels, Goatfish, Squirrelfish, and Grouper among huge growths of staghorn, table, brain, and soft coral, alongside sea fans, anemones, and urchins. Fiji was, indeed, an underwater paradise and the best reef dives so far. I am told that the Western Coast of Viti Levu around Nadi (that’s right, pronounced Nandi) also has some spectacular diving, and I regretted not being able to stay longer to explore the other dive sites. Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to return.
As we set sail for Vanuatu, all the divers began focusing on our first opportunity to do a wreck dive. Now, this is not just any wreck, but rated one of the top 60 dive sites in the world. The wreck of the SS President Coolidge. A luxury liner built in 1931 and pressed into service during World War II, the President Coolidge served as a troop transport for American forces in the South Pacific. On its fourth trip as a troop transport carrying 5,000 troops, as it was approaching Luganville on Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu, miscommunication caused the ship to strike a mine. The ship’s captain put her full speed ahead in an attempt to beach her but his attempt was thwarted by the reef. There was no panic as the 5,000 troops disembarked, and many even walked to shore. There were only two deaths: one man was killed in the explosion, and an army captain, finding the man missing, went back on the ship to find him and lost his life in the attempt. The ship sank in 90 minutes. Later, during a cyclone, she slipped to the bottom and now rests on her port side, completely intact on a gentle slope between 60 and 230 feet deep.
After the war, salvagers recovered the propeller, bunker oil, brass, copper, and electric motors. But in 1983 the Vanuatu government declared that no salvage or recovery of any artifact was allowed from the Coolidge. One of those involved with the salvage operation was a man named Allen Powers, who currently runs Allen Powers dive tours. Allen has more than two years of bottom time and has intimate knowledge of both the wreck and the reef around it. Since the wreck is so deep, Allen leaves plenty of surface interval between dives and we spent the four hours between dives hanging out at Allen’s place, having tea, coffee, and rolls, asking questions, and pouring through the extensive library he has accumulated on the President Coolidge.
So, we dove into history and viewed the awesome splendor of this 654-foot ocean liner with its holds and compartments filled with WWII relics such as jeeps, tanks, halftracks, big guns, rifles, helmets, mess kits, china, and silverware. And, of course, we can’t forget “The Lady.” The lady is a porcelain panel of a woman and a unicorn. A well-known artifact among dive enthusiasts, it measures about 2 feet by 3 feet. It was originally in the smoking lounge, but in the 1980s its fastenings gave way and it fell. Suffering only minor damage that was easily repaired, she was moved up to the main dining room, a location farther forward in the ship and more easily accessible for divers to see. I did five dives on the Coolidge, including a night dive into the hold and chain locker to view tiny headlight fish. These creatures have phosphorescent “lights” on their gills and in the pitch black of the hold at night, they appear to twinkle like fireflies on a summer’s eve.
That’s about it so far for our underwater adventures with the Picton Castle dive group. We’re all looking forward to the beautiful reefs and walls off Bali, and to cage diving with Great White Sharks off Mozambique and South Africa. We’ll keep you posted!