Pulau Sudong "Wrecked" Dive

Sunday, 9 July 2006

This was the worst dive till date in my record. We dived in bad weather, poor visibility and strong currents. Terrible diving but it was good exposure to a challenging experience.

The dive trip was pre-planned to be at Sudong Wreck in the afternoon. We gathered at 2 pm, RSYC. The operator was late for 20 mins. The rented equipment was in a total mess with the confusion of the sizes. The operator did not pack them in order according to the list i provided him with. After finally sorting out our gear for a good 10 mins, we proceeded to the dive boat and depart for the dive site.

Alda and Katherine posing against a backdrop of darkened sky

The whole day was overcast with thick cloud cover. There were strong winds. Swirling currents and big waves were quite evident. When we arrived at the buoy line marking the Sudong wreck, it was low tide. Our big Salvage-converted dive boat couldn't go near, for fear of running aground the reef flats around the buoy. Poor Hanyong was sent down to survey the currents and he fought a good 10 mins to reach the surface marker about 10m away. He had to fin back in the choppy waters to tell us to abort this site. So the operator brought us to another site called the Ministry Wreck. The murky waters already turned us off when we arrived. Part of the ship wreck was visible from the surface. Again Hanyong was made to jump into the water to test the site's condition. He gave a "NO" signal and have to swim back to the boat. I imagined his weariness and could clearly see the frustration written all over everyone's face.

The Trio: Lingjun, Xiangyi and I

The operator then decide to bring us to a "reef" along the northern coast of Pulau Sudong. He gave a briefing on the terrain of the "reef" and asked us to head south towards P. Sudong. The breakwaters was about a few hundred meters from where we dropped off. Finally, we hit the waters and broke up into groups to dive, unguided... It started to drizzle already but we went ahead. One of Lingjun's fins came detached and luckily i was able to retrieve it. We were floating on the surface for quite a while being tossed in the waves. Xiangyi wasn't able to decend due to insufficient weights so i passed her mine. Alda, Issac and Yifei surfaced following the lost buddy procedure.

We gathered together and decended. It was beginning to get dark at about 3 metres and we were in total darkness when we continued until we hit the bottom at 12 metres. The current was very strong at the bottom. There was nothing but silt. We were basically being swept underwater as it was almost impossible to fin against the current flow. Dark and obscured by extremely poor visibility, we stayed very close to one another. I was controlling LJ's dive light attached to her and pulling her by the wrist. We lost Alda and Yifei when we decided to abort the dive after about 10 mins of bottom time.

Issac and I decided to swim closer to Sudong, hoping to hit some reefs while the rest decided to call it a day. It was extremely exerting to fin against the currents on the surface. Both of us decended after getting to around 10 metres within the vicinity of the sudong jetty. Again there was absolute nothingness but dark and silty bottom with a bit of rocks and seagrass. We decided to quit finning and just ride on the swift drift. We were swept in turbulence and there was no way we can see anything at all even if there's something there. Kind of scary though 'cos there was no reference but the bottom and we only relied on 1 miserable little torch. After being carried by the currents for about 15mins to god knows where, we decided to surface. We covered about 500 metres in that short interval!

Dredging on the nearby Pulau Busing

Now the sky's brewing badly, sprewing heavy rains and flashing lightning at us. No way we can continue with another dive and it was getting late too. We negotiated and asked for a refund. The operator refunded us partially after seeing some frustrated and disappointed faces.
It was another bad day to dive locally for me. Somehow, I just didn't feel satisfied. Despite 2 consecutive disappointing dive trips to local waters, it's not going to deter me from giving Singapore waters another try.