Anyway the first dive we went down the anchor line to the bow and I hit sand at 30.2m (100'). The vis was good, about 12 - 15m (40 - 50') and the water temp was 23C (73F). The first dive we agreed that we would do a loop around the wreck to check it out but not penetrate. I have dived the Swan plenty of times after it was sunk (I think I dived it at least once a year for the first 4 years) but I haven't dived it for 4 or 5 years. Aparently there has been some deterioration and I wanted to check it out first before we went in. There was a lot of plant growth and sponges etc on the wreck, and lots of fish of various species (my fish id is a bit hazy). There was a decent size sting ray hanging around and we saw a smallish wobbegong shark (about 5') as well. The wreck itself look OK to us and where we stuck our heads in to have a look we couldn't see any problems going from one side of the ship to the other, but untill we went in you couldn't tell if you could swim the length of the ship or up levels. Anyway we did our loop and had a bit of a ferret around and ended up doing a deco stop at the mast at 9m (30'), then swam back to the anchor line over the top ove the wreck. It looks cool whne you are swimming at 9m looking down over the wreck. Or at leat I thought it did.
The SI we spent an hour on the boat and had soup and bread rolls. Unfortunatly we didn't see any crayfish so no cray sushi for us that day.
Only water to drink as well. I forgot my red cordial (very pissed off about that!!)The second dive we decided to penetrate near the bow, two decks down from the main deck and see what happens from there. If we couldn't swim the length of the ship we would go up a level and try again. Either way we would exit around the stern when we would rise up to the main deck and swim around toward the bow, then if we had enough air and time work our way up to the bridge then out to do our deco then back to the boat. That was pretty much how the dive went. We penetrated the wreck at the lower level but found there was some racking that had fallen over or been pulled over and whilst you could probably get past if you had to we decided it wasn't worth the risk. We exited the way we went in and went up to the next deck and were able to penetrate and swim the full length of the boat, exiting out the stern. We then accended to the main deck and went to penetrate again but had to move up another level to the bridge as some of the other divers had been into the main deck level first and had kicked up a lot of silt so we couldn't see where we were going to go so we didn't penetrate. We swam up to the bridge level on the outside of the wreck and were able to penetrate via a companionway just behind the bridge, then into the bridge from there. After a look around the bridge we went back out to the companionway and there was a ladder leadng up to a lookout so we went up there then out to do our deco stop on te mast agin. Inside the boat it had been stripped bare by trophy hunters. A lot of things I remember from earlier dives had been taken or vandalised. I think this is a real shame. There is no reason to take anything as it is not a historical wreck and the souvenirs don't mean anything. It's not a deep or difficult wreck so I don't see the point.
So all round it was a good dive and I had a great time going back and visiting a site I hadn't dived in ages. I have to admit I lucked out with my dive buddy. In a situation where I had never met this guy before and he hadn't ever done any wreck diving it worked out supprisingly well.
