Hi all. Would just like to share my experience diving the Sugar Wreck off Pulau Perhentian. This is one of the more popular wrecks in the area, so I'm sure a lot of you know it already. Although not sure if divers from Redang also dive here? Hmmm. Okay, here goes:
Max depth: 18m
Bottom time: 33mins
Viz: Poor, max approx 3-4 meters
Currents: Moderate
I did this dive as an adventure wreck dive right after I got certified as OWD. It'll be credited when I do my Advanced
I've always had a fascination for shipwrecks ever since I was a wee kiddo, still remember I had books regarding wrecks and I loved to read em. Suffice to say, I was pretty damn excited bout this dive. Let's go wrecking , yeah!
A bit of background info on the wreck. Let's see if I can get this right, hehe. The ship was originally a cargo ship that mainly transported sugar (hence the name), original name was MV Unistar 17. It's port of call was somewhere in Indonesia. The ship's length is 78m and it's beam (width) is 12m. The story of how it sunk goes something like this. On it's last run of hauling sugar from somewhere to somewhere (heheh) in 2001, one of the engines kaput. So it had to be towed back to Indonesia for repairs. On it's way there while being towed, a heavy storm broke out. Fearing the worst, the tugboat crew had to cut the towing lines, thus leaving the ship to float free. Unfortunately, it took in a lot of water in the heavy seas and duly sank to the bottom (there's also a few people that suspect the sinking was intentional, so that the company can claim insurance and whatnot, but i disgress). No lives were lost. The tale of how it sank is kinda similar to the story of the American Star wreck, off Fuerteventura...which is simply eff-ing amazing! Google it, and honestly u won't regret it!
At present, the wreck lies on it's side (the port side, I think, might be wrong), with the deepest part of the hull resting at 18m depth and the shallowest part of the hull standing in only 6m of water! Cool eh?
Our boat ride to the site took about 45mins from Long Beach, it's one of the furthest from shore dive sites in the area. Upon arrival, we could see about 2-3 other dive boats already there, with quite a few divers already in the water. We promptly got our gear on, entered the water and got with our assigned buddy groups. My group consisted of 1 DI-cum-DM, me and my buddy, and a British couple who also just got their OW certifications. We then descended along the mooring/buoy line which is attached to the stern of the wreck. Unfortunately, the Brit girl had a few problems equalizing, so we had to wait for her to get it right, which was about 10mins wasted during the descent.
Eventually, she did and all of us descended together.
Going down, my heart sank as the viz was very poor. I can hardly see the others in my group if they went ahead a few feet from me. Nevertheless, the stern of the wreck slowly came into view at around 6m. Man, it was huge (at least for me)! As we got to the hull, we levelled off and started exploring. I was kinda nervous cuz I was afraid of getting lost, so I didn;t have much time to really look and appreciate the wreck itself, as I was too busy looking ahead to see where the DM and the other buddy group were going. Sigh. Anyway, we came to this huge cargo holds. The original dive plan was to partially penetrate the cargo holds, but since the viz was very poor, Vince wisely called it off. Off we went towards the bow of the wreck. All the cables/ropes of the ship were still intact, also some sort of radio equipment in the bridge. Seeing them was amazing! Another thing of note is that the wreck is covered by about 10 million sea urchins...so all throughout the dive I was asyik2 compensating my buoyancy (tak pandai sangat lagi ni) so as to avoid the urchin's spikes from puncturing my privates, hehe. There were a few close calls though, especially in tight spaces.
As we made our way to the bow, my buddy pointed something out to me. He was pointing at a hole in the deck of the ship. I took one look and didn't see anything, so I signalled him to move on and get with the program hehe. Didn't wanna lose sight of the DM. It turned out my buddy saw a freaking big grouper lurking in the hole. Kinda sad I missed it. The DM also signalled a few times when he saw something of interest, a pufferfish, an angelfish, some crabs, trevallies, fusiliers, etc. Truth be told, I didn't see any of these things! Sigh...guessed I was too preoccupied with not getting lost. What I did see was all the urchins! Oh well...
Upon reaching the bow, we made our way back to the stern where the buoy line is. At this point, I was running low on air, 50 bars left. I signalled the DM. There was quite a current then, so our progress was slow. Believe it or not, when we got to the buoy line, I had only 10 bars left!
I made this known to the DM. He signalled the ascent and all of us ascended along the buoy line. During the safety stop, I began to feel the air I was breathing thru the reg had a sort of resistance, as if I had to work harder to breathe. Verrryy anxious at this point, hehe. I collected my wits and signalled the DM that I was out of air and that I wanted to use his octo. So that's how I surfaced, alternate air source ascent.
And strangely, this is not the 1st time it happened either. On my 3rd OW dive, I also ran out of air and had to AAS ascend. I used up 40 bars in just a few minutes! I wonder why....my instructor said there should be some sort of award for that, lol.
Overall, the dive was OK, but not that great. mainly due to the poor viz and currents....and also the damn sea urchins! Haha. I rate it 5 stars out of 10.
My buddy and I did take some underwater pics with a disposable underwater Kodak camera, and I wish I could post them up here. But the camera is now no longer with us. It's a long story involving my dive buddy, me, the DM and a dive knife. Ask no more, it's a loooooooooong story. Hehe. Hopefully we'll be getting the pics sent to us in September.
Okay, that's all for now. Hope I got this rite and all of u enjoyed reading this. Ciao!
