HMS Repulse & Prince of Wales

**Alun** · 12-05-08 08:20 PM

I believe it is traditional to write something whenever you've been away spending money on diving, so here's my brief offering.

I've just got back from a trip run by Jack Ingle, based in the South China Seas to dive the HMS Repulse and HMS Prince of Wales. Whilst I was there, I did something that I swore I would never do. I got an open circuit trimix ticket...

Basically, you make your way to Singapore (I went Gatwick to Dubai, Dubai to Singapore with Emirates cos it was cheaper and I got to leave the car outside my brother's house for 10 days) and the boat (MV Mata Ikan) picks you up there and takes you to the middle of the sea, somewhere off the coast of Malaysia for 5 days of liveaboard diving.

We had 2 dives on the Seven Skies, a freighter which is conveniently at the half way mark...
http://www.asiadivesite.com/malaysia...kies-wreck.php
Then we travelled overnight again to reach the site of the Repulse, for the skills part of the trimix course, and what turned out to be my 300th dive.
4 dives in total on the Repulse, including the completion of the squeaky gas course and it was time to move sites to have a look at the Prince of Wales.
Sadly our on board compressor decided that it was going to die at this point, and no about of percussive maintenance or filter peering by the crew could fix it. I could tell that the fault was major, because the mechanic took *both* rusty adjustable spanners to it at one stage.
It was about then that the crew confessed that they didn't have a spare compressor on board. One of the other divers commented that Jack 'wasn't looking at his fluffiest' at this news.

Fortunately, there was another dive boat on the Repulse so we were able to make use of their compressor. Jack never said how much he had to pay for air, but did comment that it was amazing how expensive air fills can be when the alternative is a 36 hour round trip away.

One dive on the Prince of Wales, my deepest and longest yet at 63m and 100 mins total in water time. Didn't get the chance to do another on this wreck because we had to zip back to the site of the Repulse to refill the tanks before the other dive boat went back to wherever they were going to.

Final dive of the trip was on an unknown wreck, simply referred to as the Aur Tanker, because it sank near the island of Aur and was a tanker...
http://www.asiadivesite.com/malaysia-dive-sites/aur/

Really enjoyed myself on this trip and it's one that I'd definitely consider doing again. The next time I will probably enjoy it a lot more because I won't have my thinking head on as much. Broke my own rule really about not doing dive training on a holiday, but there was no way that I'd have got as much out of the trip as I did do, without it.
The water temperature all week was 31 degrees down to about 12m and then it fell to a positively baltic 28 at depth. This made the suggested rule of 30 (Do all your deco and then do another 30 minutes) all the more pleasant. Although when it became obvious how close I was to 100 mins on the Prince of Wales, I couldn't resist staying down with everyone else until I'd reached that number

Alun - PSAI Squeaky Gas Level 2.