Best of Wrecks Red Sea – day 6

Our final day of diving and probably the final blog entry unless something out of the ordinary happens during our night out in Hurghada later today.

Having started our journey back towards Hurghada we did our first of two dives this morning at Shab el Ert, or more commonly known at home as Dolphin House. There are 3 Dolphin Houses in the Red Sea and I’ve never encountered Dolphins in any of them, expectations were low.

I buddied up with Melvin and Philippe, the French-American (he’s actually Canadian but we’ve had a great time calling him a yank all week). Philippe decided to lead this dive. The dive itself, in Red Sea terms was not that spectacular. A sandy bottom with coral bommies and lots of little fish. As predicted there were no Dolphins. The highlight of the dive is that myself and Melvin had to tell Philippe that he was leading us in the wrong direction and therefore using various hand gestures we made him aware that the ‘beer fine’ rule was being enforced.

We were about the last people back on the boat and just as we were taking our kit off a pod of Dolphins typically appeared right where we had just been diving. I calmly asked one of the boat guys ‘quick, quick, grab the zodiac’. Myself and Mel grabbed our fins and masks and leapt in to the zodiac like a couple of Olympic hurdlers wired on Red Bull.

We lost sight of he Dolphins but our boat driver shouted “JUMP”, so without question we rolled back in to the water. Right in front of us less than 10 yards/meters away were about a dozen Dolphins slowly and calmly swimming right past us. With the cameras rolling we spent several minutes gathering evidence to show the guys back on the boat.

Today’s weather for Mrs G: SCORCHIOOOO

This wreck was an ex-Russian frigate that was sold to Egypt. During the Egyptian v Israeli conflict, an Israeli Phantom jet fighter bombed the navy vessel and sank it close to Hurghada Port in about 30m of water. Apart from a large hole where the bomb hit, the wreck is relatively in tact living on its port side. You can still see the gun turrets, propellers, bow etc. Marine life was fairly interesting even though the coral hasn’t taken hold properly.

Myself, Mel and Phillipe navigated our way over to a nearby trawler. Although not as fascinating to look at, the marine life was! Thousands of glass fish being stalked by chunky lionfish and crocodilefish.

With our equipment rinsed and drying in the sun we are making plans for a final farewell to this wonderful part of the world. Tomorrow we get to lounge by the pool before our afternoon transfer to the airport. It’s been a great trip and we’ve thoroughly enjoyed the accompany of the Danepack and other guests on the boat. As usual blueotwo have provided us with a first class service and we look forward to returning to the ‘best of the Red Sea – shark special’ next November on board Blue Horizon. If you would like to join us the please e-mail me when I’m back in the office next wee – mark@oysterdiving.com

I hope you enjoyed reading about our wrecks diving holiday to the Red Sea.