Well they say bad things happen in threes, well today was no exception. They opened up diving for public boats starting today. We managed to book on the 8:30am slot for Public mooring 2. That is we were the second public boat on the wreck.
Terrigal is almost 2 hour drive from home, so I decided to leave at 5:30am. Bad thing number one. About 30 mins from home I thought to myself, did I close the roller door. I rang my daughter, still asleep, and she closed it for me. Then about 15 minutes later I missed the Pennant Hills Road turnoff, (bad thing number 2). I had to go to Christie street and turn around. Finally made it to the boat ramp at 7:30, we got everything into the boat and launched it. I park the car and trailer and headed back to down the ramp. There is no jetty so while Rudy was in the boat slowly coming into shore, I stepped off the boat ramp tripped over, twisted my ankle. (Bad thing number 3). It must have looked quite funny.
Anyway we headed out to the wreck, located our mooring, not very well marked, and geared up and Jenny & I went down the mooring rope for dive one.. We hit 32m deep and it was pitch black with visibility around 1m. Followed the chain at the end of the mooring and could not find the wreck. We surface took some bearings and dropped down and hit the deck near the stern. We headed along the deck to the wheel house and entered. The surge was strong. The visibility at all time was only around 2m so the photos I took are not great. We surface up through the tower and swam over to the boat
After a 30 min interval Rudy and me went in again. We thought if we descended down to 22m and then headed at 150° we would find the wreck, and we did. we headed directly to the bow and the 01 number, then off to the wheel house.
The cost wasn't as bad as first indicated, only $60 for a 2 hour mooring and $18 per person, the per person even includes non divers. There are a number of things they could do to make the experience better, maybe a lead rope from the mooring to the wreck from 15m down, and only charge diver the $18 not observers. But overall a good experience.