Dive Boat Sinks at Brothers

A dive boat sank in 90m last week on Big Brother (Red Sea)
GPS N 26 18' 41" E 34 50' 50"
Does anyone have any details ?
Splash

Splash wrote:

> A dive boat sank in 90m last week on Big Brother (Red Sea)
> GPS N 26 18' 41" E 34 50' 50"
> Does anyone have any details ?
> Splash

The position you gave is to the east of the Lighthouse on Big Brother,
the depth indicating that the position is about 100m from shore.
The numbers as such seem to be less than totally exact, at least my
digital map would place these on the island itself.

Anyway, this is no mooring point, the moorings being in the South-West
to West of the southernst point of the island.

So my best guess of a shop sinking here is, well uncertain.
Normally a dive boat approaches B.B. from west, and tries to moore up
among the mess of the other boat, after clearing questions like "who
leaves when".
You line up the front lines, and use a stern anchor or mooring buoy at
the depth of circa 80m.

Now the "normal" havaries are such, that there is upcoming wind, stern
mooring brakes loose, momentum trashes the boat unto the reef.

From said position, no such szenario induces itself.
To havarize there, a boat must have a major breakdown, probably
north-east of said position, because the prevailing winds come from
bearing 110° in this part of the Red Sea.
Such that a possible szenario would look like a havarized boat, stranded
to the reef, would use teh repercussions from the impact to be drawn to
depth and "land" there where your post indicates.

Another szenario, of which I am even more uncertain, would include an
impact on one??? of the there laid out mines.

That is, I know at least one mine planted there, but this at an
approximate position of 26°19.33N/34°50.00, at a depth of 26m.

Since this depth indicates some mine-based-intelligence ( go up when
target condition met), this is not contribuitory to the mentioned
sinking of a dive boat, since such boat would hardly met the proper
specs for a mine to blow the whistle.

Matthias

Thanks for your comments
The wreck was just a few days ago 1/12/04 or thereabouts
I was there at the time, diving from Royal Emperor
Sea Serpent was there too, but I don't know the name of the boat that went down
Helicopter was called as 4 divers went missing for a couple of hours
Fortunately no lives lost
There was an 8 knots current running with high winds, big waves and lots of surf/surge
Challenging diving to say the least, without having your dive boat sink !
Apparently the propellor hit the reef causing substantial damage in the stern resulting in it sinking in 15 minutes in 90m
However I haven't seen any reports of the wreck yet
Splash