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The boat is moored up next to Rocky Island. Everyone else has gone for another reef dive on the drop offs surrounding the island, however today I'm going to get a fix of rusty metal.
We descend from the back of the boat on our deep deco gas, and then at around 10m switch onto a bottom stage. I check that Nick is ready, and then we hit the triggers and scooter down the reef, 30m, 40m, 50m, 60m and the wall starts to become more of a slope, 70m, Hmmm, where is it, 75m, Ah a shadow, that looks good.
Scooter towards the shadow and then it all starts to come into focus, a bloody big wreck.
In 1923 the 152m long SS Maidan was passing through the Red Sea on its way from India to Britain, when after a series of navigational errors she struck the shore of Rocky Island, and after some hours sank in what was then simply reported as "deep water". A detailed account of her history and loss can be found here: Egypt Red Sea Shipwrecks - The Maidan
We arrive at the stern and quickly turn left towards the bows, and then spot the large break between the stern and the rear hold. We drop into the hold and have a look around inside the hold. We scooter forwards into the rear of the engine room and then turn back into the upper hold. Here we find examples of 1920 society, Bits of Ivory, the sea water has not been kind, and everything looks like it will disintegrate if you even move the water. We come out of the hold, turn right and carry on towards the bows, we scooter over the deck of this magnificant wreck, and not for the first time do I wish I had my Video rig with me. I get a signal from Nick, turn quickly and he's signalling to switch off the bottom stage and back to backgas. I do a quick check on my own bottom stage and decide I'll also switch. Once on backgas it's back on the trigger towards the stern. We drop through the break and find the spare propellor and Faisal's little suprise for any visitors. We then go behind the wreck and under the real propellor, looking up through the prop towards the reef is a great view. Then far too soon we've reached minimum gas and head away from the wreck and up the reef.
Coming back up the reef on the scooters we soon reach our first gas switch,and which point we start swimming. We work our way along the reef as the wall gets steeper and our stops get longer. Then at 30m we send up a bag and suddenly are joined by our support team (who had been waiting on the RHIB directly above us) They come down, take a few photos and bring spare gas in case it's needed. We switch to our 50% at 21m with no issues. A slightly boring dive for the support team as we didn't need the gas for this dive, but it's a very nice feeling to have guys arrive with backups.
40 minutes later we've reached 6m and switch to O2 and it's time for the guys to leave. Before they do we get rid of our used bottles and take the spare O2 and get settled in for a long wait. 40 more minutes and then we point the scooters towards the boat as we do our slow final ascent.
A great dive, with far too little time on the bottom.
The crew on MV TALA really made this dive easy, all I had to worry about was doing the dive, they sorted out all the logistics, and even managed to remix the backgas quickly after a bit of an error occured with the first set.
Details of my dive for those that care:
Max Depth, 98m
Av Depth, 95m
Bottom time, 18min
Total time, 128min
Gasses: 10/70 bottom gas, 21/35, 50% and O2 for deco.
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Originally Posted by Air Guzzler 
