We were in luck. After about 2.5 hours of sailing we approached the site of the Carnatic which was to be the first wreck dive of the day. I was surprised and glad we were still allowed to dive, the sea was rough, and especially rough to climb aboard a RIB. After an eventuful period of trying to put our equipment on we managed to all stumple to the rear of the boat and all safely managed to climb down into the RIB without falling into the water unexpectedly or on to one another. (You certainly don’t want a 10kg dive tank hitting you on the head!)

The Iron framed Carnatic wreck is one of the oldest in the Red Sea, sinking around 150 years ago. The Carnatic was a 90m P&O passenger boat, and laid at the bottom of the reef for over 100 years before it was joined by many others. The vessel struck the coral reef on Sept 12th 1869 and was stranded on the reef top. The captain made a bad decision and decided not to abandon the ship as he believed another P&O ship would be passing the next day in the opposite direction. Unfortunately the vessel never arrived and the ship broke in two and sank on Sept 14th 1869. 26 crew and 5 passengers died.

I have only ever dived once before when the water was so rough, this was when I was in Australia and was a few years back. It was quite hard to descend as the rough see almost instantly threw you back up to the surface as if it was spitting you out in disgust. But once we were below 5 meters all was fine and we were able to continue with our dive.

The marine life was great we managed to see pufferfish, groupers, lionfish and plenty others. We were told that there are also octopus and at certain times dolphins playing around the wreck.

The Giannis D ship sunk on April 19th 1983 after crashing full speed into the corner of Sha’ab Abu Nuhas. It was sailing from Croatia destined to the Saudi Arabian Port of Jeddah. The Giannis D is a Japanese cargo vessel which was built in 1969 and was originally named Shoyo Maru.