Yorkshire Divers

Diving Dude · #1 (**permalink**) 02-08-07, 07:05 PM

Woo hooo......l've dived the Leopoldville, a wreck l've wanted to dive since l read about it in the book 'D-Day wrecks of Normandy' about ten years ago.

Blanaid aka Divegyrl and l joined another YDer Dave Burke and his merry men on Skindeep skippered by Len the former owner of Autumn Dream, for a three gigette over to Cherbourg on monday, tuesday and wednesday just gone.

The wreck lies five miles outside of Cherbourg harbor and the sinking is a tragic story, http://www.history.com/minisites/leo...age?pageId=264

Blan and l were the first pair in, Blanaid was to take the floats to send to the surface after l'd tied the shot line to the wreck. However Blans rebreather had a slight problem so l entered the water alone with the intention of waiting near the bottom of the shot for Blan.

The Leopoldville rests on its port-side and Len (the skipper) had shot the wreck exactly where he said he would which was on the superstructure towards the stern. As l descended the shot l thought wow......this is a feckin huge wreck!

It was built in 1928, gross tonnage 11,172 t length 492 ft beam 62 ft

l tied in the shot at about 40 mtrs and the sea bed is at 57mtrs, had a poke around and dropped into one of the big openings whilst waiting for Blanaid.
Blan joined me after about ten minutes and we go towards the stern.
Just behind where the main superstructure ends there is a big break in the stern, as we swam into this you could see many openings and corridors into the wreck, we then carried on the stern and to the rear deck gun. Again the stern section was easily penetrable and covered in really girly pretty things and covered in girly fishes.....l loved it...as well as being a massive wreck with plenty of penetration points it was pretty and colorful as well. l'd say the vis was 8-10 mtrs.

Day 2, the shot was in a similar place and we headed for the pointy bit this time, again there were a lot of easy penetration points and two big holds which you could drive a bus through. l entered one which seemed to go almost to the bottom of the wreck, again there was plenty on penetration points.
As we got the the bow our planned bottom time was almost up so we sent up our smbs and spent 5-6 minutes drifting over the wreck.

Day 3 was a similar dive to day 2, this time we went into another hold which had lots of army boots covering the side/floor.

This wreck is now my joint favorite wreck, alongside the Audacious and the Koln and l'll be visiting her again next year.

Leopoldville, May 08

Oh, l nearly forgot, the weather was great and the sea almost flat for the journey back to Weymouth.