Thursday 7 May 2009

Diving again

This morning, Tracy (my dive-buddy) and I had our most interesting dive yet. We searched for the ship's propellers, which was not easy with underwater visibility reduced to 4 feet by the filthy waters of the port. In the photo you can see the ship's two rudders painted red directly in front of the metal propellers - we followed the rudders down but still could not see the propellers, and a strong current pulled us off course as soon as we let go of them. So we went back up, and then following the propeller's supports - shown at about 45 degrees in the photo - and following them until we found the propellers, both of which had fishing nets wrapped around them from when we first sailed into Cotonou in February. Tracy cut the nets off (which was the purpose of the dive) whilst I tried to illuminate the scene with underwater flashlights, and then we found out the hard way that nets and scuba divers don't go together well - we became quite tangled up on our return trip to the surface. Very rewarding work though. Olly

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