Nine times out of ten, while setting up my technical gear on the boat I’m asked “How deep are you going?”. When diving the Thistlegorm the answer is 31m. Now, most people immediately respond with “what’s the point of 4 tanks and all that extra gear?”
| Location: | 27° 49′ 03″ N, 33° 55′ 14″E. Northeast of Shag Rock, Sha’ab Ali |
| Access: | Day or Safari boat from Sharm El Sheikh or Hurghada |
| Minimum Depth to Wreck | 10m (at Bridge) |
| Maximum Depth to Seabed: | 31m (Railway Engine) |
| Average Visibility: | 25-30m |
45 minute Thistlegorm recreational dive prof
Normally the Thistlegorm can be a bit of a divers nightmare – you arrive after a particularly early start to discover a large number of dive boats with exactly the same agenda. The recreational timetable for the Thistlegorm is the briefing, external orientation dive (no penetration), surface interval and then finally the penetration dive. One difference to the normal day dives is the number of 15L tanks on board. For some reason (it’s not like they’ll be diving at 7ATM) most peoples air consumption goes off the chart. Most people manage a bottom time of around 35-40 mins (waiting for people to join you on the line to descend, people to take photos, people getting lost,etc) with some finding their computers giving them an additional deco warning. Experienced divers can normally stretch the time out considerably with less faffing to and from the line and minimal finning.
For the second dive you have to add in the issues associated with the penetration – it’s dark, disorientating and full of people reenacting a scene from star wars (very powerfull torch beams swinging wildly from jeep to wheel to boot!). Add in groups from other boats following different routes and you have a mildly chaotic scenario. From personal experience – I’ve had to abort two recreational dives due to people loosing the main group and freezing (perceptual narrowing ) and a low air scenario.
This is where technical diving enters the scene! Tech diving is not primarily about “Deep Diving” – indeed the first several courses focus on the concept of Decompression procedures and Extended Range. One of the key review questions during the TDI courses is
“What effects decompression obligations more (a) depth or (b) time?”
The answer is time – staying 3 minutes longer has significantly more decompression obligation that going 3 metres deeper.
Extended range introduces the skills associated with staying underwater for longer periods (irrespective of depth – that’s gas choice)
140min Thistlegorm technical dive profile
So, what’s this got to do with the Thistlegorm? Consider the scenario where you can spend 1hr 40mins (more than the recreational divers get with two dives) and that the recreational divers have to spend at least an hour surface interval which leaves the Thistlegorm empty! The standard tech dive plan is to start the dive 15 mins after the recreational divers and explore the area around the anchor and railway engine. Then it’s a high speed fly by of the external hull structure (on X-Scooters as the current can be especially strong) before shallowing up to the mid level and penetration. The recreational divers should be long gone by now so no torches are required inside the wreck – 30 mins of gliding over the trucks, bikes and boots. 30 mins later it’s time to shallow up and explore the upper decks and captain cabin and radio office (last time the radio was still there!). Once that’s done and we haven’t messed up the dive plan it’s a short deco stop on the line and it’s up for lunch and a nap.
SS Thistlegorm on tech scooters from John Mason on Vimeo.
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and Canon G10. Both require an adapter to attach the Pano-Pro lens with the 7D needing a supporting brace (otherwise you’ll either ruin your lens or have out of focus shots!) Although the quality generated using the Pano-Pro and 7D is far greater than the bloggie, the software (at additional cost) lets the whole package down. Updates are less than frequent (only on Windows at the moment) and the package is especially obtuse to use. Oh, and it’s huge!
(around £240) and the 
(one, but it’s easier if you have two!)
with thread adapter so it’s flush with the plate and will not snag on the rail.
360 Panorama – Occipital
Panoramatic 360 – floaty
Gorillacam – Joby Inc.
TiltShift – Michael Krause
Plastic Bullet Camera – Red Giant Software
8mm Vintage Camera – Nexvio Inc.
Air Video – Watch your videos anywhere! – InMethod s.r.o.
iMovie – Apple Inc.
VNC Viewer – RealVNC
BTFON Wi-Fi – British Telecommunications plc
V-Planner – HHS Software Corp.
Dive Log – More Mobile Software
Google Earth – Google
Sky Mobile TV – BSkyB
it was the technical diving services provided by Blue Marlin Dive. In the space of 15 years both Blue Marlin and I had progressed from recreational diving to technical diving (although Blue Marlin have been doing it a lot longer than I have). The staff at Blue Marlin (Jen, Simon, Will and Ivan to mention a few) were great, the deep walls of Tunang and second world war wreck were excellent sites and the pace of life on the island makes this a sure bet for a repeat visit.
are superb in their relative gadget domains, but what good are they to each other? 
) is that you’ll have to wait until your back at base or carry a suitably powerful laptop/netbook with you to review your shots.
sheltered spot. One of the biggest joys is watching them grow – unfortunately I travel too often. So, the obvious answer is the Tomato CAM! An inexpensive Logitech Pro Cam and Mac Mini (for the image quality) and 
I was interested in it’s capability to provide a preview and back up capability. Obviously the 64GB of onboard storage would never be enough, so the article by 
is to logically mount the drive so that it can be accessed through iFile. The demonstration shows this being achieved by using SSH from a laptop – which rather defeats the purpose of a reasonably self contained solution.
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