mv Empress

[DrMike]

That's the endorsement I've been looking for . . .Thanks DrMike!
I've been informed that Helium/O2 costs over there for a week-long diving excursion on Open-Circuit will be about $500 USD (which is why I'm looking at a future Megalodon CCR training & purchase!).
Can you recommend any nice, inexpensive hotels in Singapore?

For cheap and basic try one of these - http://www.hotel81.com.sg/

If you want something a bit more upmarket you can try Traders hotel or one of the other well known hotel chains.

 

[pakman]

Doc, what water temps should we expect around that time of year and at those depths?

 

[Zippsy]

28 degrees Celcius

 

[Zippsy]

BTW, speaking of captn's, what ever happen to that spear shooting doyle or boyle guy and mv grace?

I hear Greg Doyle is doing some R&R in Australia. Barracudas up here are rejoicing. The ship, I hear, may be wishing it were doing R&R in Australia. Some reports have it being scrapped, others have it sitting in a pawn shop waiting for the guy with the claim ticket.

 

[pakman]

28c, ah bath water...

LOL, thanks for the update on doyle... I remember reading a few amusing threads that were floating in FiNs about that guy...

 

[pakman]

Thought I'd give a quick update... Just got back from Singapore after a week on the mv Empress diving the HMS Repulse, HMS Prince of Wales, Seven Skies, and Aur Tanker. Tech Asia from Puerto Galera had been running roughly a month of week long trips on the mv Empress on the South China Sea wrecks through April and May. Originally, they had booked the mv Empress to explore the HMS Hermes aircraft carrier off Sri Lanka, but the trip was cancelled due to renewed fighting between the gov't and the Tamil Tigers. I was on the Apr. 30-May 5 trip. First off, while the mv Empress is far from a luxury liveaboard, it had all the stuff needed for an enjoyable and safe tech trip. Plus Vidar, the captain, was such a character, he had us laughing all week with all his stories... Especially the one of hacking his way out of 50m+ wreck, running out of air, and doing an OOA ascent up to the deco bar at 6m... Anyways back to the Empress. We had 9 divers onboard and there was enough room for us to kit up and generally lounge around on the back without it ever feeling too cramp. And you had to love the lift at the stern of the boat. Empress also has a 2 man recompression chamber strapped on top. They would drop down a deco bar below the boat with O2 regs set for 6m and 4.5m. Food was excellent! After suffering through a Similan liveaboard with barely edible food, this was a luxury. 4 of the divers brought along their scooters (I quickly had some scooter envy after watching them zip down the line as we struggled to pull outselves down on some higher current dives). Our group were a mix of tech divers experience-wise, some DIR, some not, and some of us fresh out of our normoxic trimix course. The mv Empress had helium on board, so we were diving trimix and carrying 11liter 50% O2 stages.

mv Empress's homebase is Ponggol Marina, about 10 min north of Changi Airport. We cruised overnite to Pulau Aur for our first dive, the Pulau Tanker. Interesting wreck, but the current was a bit strong making it less enjoyable. The star of the show was the HMS Repulse, the british battle cruiser sunk duing WWII by Japanese torpedo planes. At 242m long, the Repulse is MASSIVE. This was by far the most enjoyable dive. At its deepest, it is about 57M so allowed us to enjoy 20-25m bottom times with relatively short deco obligations. Viz was OK, but less than what they experienced in the earlier trips. Repulse lies on port side and the mooring is tied off at the massive torpedo hole at midship. The main guns are truly amazing. 15" guns. The B gun barrels stick out of the sand and are truly awe inspiring. The superstructure is somewhat intact. Unfortunately the Repulse is engulfed in a cloud from 30m down. While you can make out its massive outline while descending, it didn't make for any good pics. Vidar had previous run some heavy lines through the Repulse from previous trips and we had a blast doing some penetrations. Those with scooters enjoyed running the full length of the repulse while us scooter-less divers had to take in the Repulse section at a time. We unanimously voted to stay at the Repulse for an additional day and opted to do only 1 dive on the HMS Prince of Wales. We could have easily spend the entire trip exploring the the Repulse.

HMS Prince of Wales (PoW) sits deeper in the water and unfortunately turtled when it sunk so is a less enjoyable wreck dive. For our one and only dive on the PoW, we dropped down to mooring which is attached at the stern. There you can view the massive screws and the gaping torpedo hole. There is also a large Union Jack flag at the tie-off in memory of the British sailors lost on the PoW.

For our last day of diving, we did the Seven Skies, a 90,000 ton Swedish super-tanker that sank in 1965. She sits upright, but the midsection was blown up during an accidental tank cleaning explosion that sunk her. The aft section sits upright at 64m max depth, but the exhaust funnel sits around 20m and the superstructure/ bridge sits around 30m providing some interesting swim throughs at various levels including a drop into its large engine room. Meanwhile, Vidar slipped in a casual dive himself and floated up another monster porthole to add to his collection...

Overall, an excellent trip. Would love to go back to the Repulse again with more experience under my belt in order to do some more deeper penetrations.

 

[Kevrumbo]

Still another monster porthole for Vidar? I'd like the opportunity just to see his junkyard back in Port . . .Good to hear you had a good time too pakman! But your viz/water clarity was worse than mine? (I'd say 8 meters at best for me with fair to poor particulate cloudy water clarity). Only "incident" we had was being blown off the Repulse upline at the 21m deco stop, and having to do drifting deco for nearly 50 minutes on 50% and backgas. Upon surfacing, I feared the worst --being run down by a Supertanker, or the current taking us beyond visual range & drifting about in open ocean already halfway down to Jakarta-- but we were only about a kilometer away at most from m/v Empress, and our SMB was easily seen above the thankfully calm sea conditions. . .

 

[pakman]

Good to hear you had a good time too pakman! But your viz/water clarity was worse than mine? (I'd say 8 meters at best for me with fair to poor particulate cloudy water clarity). Only "incident" we had was being blown off the Repulse upline at the 21m deco stop, and having to do drifting deco for nearly 50 minutes on 50% and backgas. Upon surfacing, I feared the worst --being run down by a Supertanker, or the current taking us beyond visual range & drifting about in open ocean already halfway down to Jakarta-- but we were only about a kilometer away at most from m/v Empress, and our SMB was easily seen above the thankfully calm sea conditions. . .

now that would have been interesting considering that the Repulse is smack in the middle a shipping lane! They didn't send the tender and drop some 100 for you guys?? Some of those monster container ships were coming by pretty close! Fortunately the currents were tame at the Repulse. Tanker Aur was another story and I was imagining us getting blown off the ascent line as the current was running at a good clip.

 

[Kevrumbo]

now that would have been interesting considering that the Repulse is smack in the middle a shipping lane! They didn't send the tender and drop some 100 for you guys?? Some of those monster container ships were coming by pretty close! Fortunately the currents were tame at the Repulse. Tanker Aur was another story and I was imagining us getting blown off the ascent line as the current was running at a good clip.

In hindsight, I believe the crew were just realizing our status was about overdue at about the time when we finally surfaced. The Second Team that initially descended right after us, lost sight of the Repulse and got blown off too, aborting their dive early and returning back to Empress. Now supposing if they had not lost the wreck and continued their dive as normal & coming up through the deco stops, they would have noticed that we were not on the Deco Trapeze at 6 meters, and perhaps would have raised the alarm sooner upon surfacing & not finding us back on board the Empress. Thank Goodness the weather and sea state was benign, otherwise I'd be washed-up on shore right now somewhere in Java. . .