techdivethailand

Wreck Diving Expedition, Tech Liveaboard, September 2008

Tech wreck  expedition with Davy Jones Locker [PADI 5* Gold Palm Resort] & Worldwide Dive &  Sail

Date: 7 - 13th September 2008

Destination: Southern Gulf of Thailand [departing from Koh Tao or Koh Samui]

Objective: WW2 Cargo Vessels

Depth Range: 40 - 70 metres [Trimix & CCR Rebreather supported]

Brief: Based on WW2 Allied submarine records combined with local knowledge, we’ve selected four targets in the Southern Gulf of Thailand. These range in size, up to 10,000 tonnes.

We’ve scheduled the trip to include 5 days of diving, planned for 2 dives per day. Depth will be in the 40 - 70 metre range, with low wave heights and good visibility expected at this time.

We’ll be diving from the Sampai Jumpa sailing liveaboard, supporting both open circuit [twin set with central isolation manifold] or ccr rebreather. Trimix and nitrox are available onboard.

The price is 50,000 baht per person OR 230,000 for the full charter, maximum 10 divers.

For inquiries please contact DJL Diving.

Wreck diving expedition | Dec 14th | WW2 Schooner & New Marks

After serving us well throughout summer, it’s time to send our big boat in for it’s annual maintenance. That means driving the dive boat across to Chumphon on the mainland where it can be lifted from the water, and required work can be completed.

Since we’re already paying for the diesel, we may as well make use of the journey and check out a few more potential wrecks to the north & North east of Koh Tao!

So tomorrow our first dive will be to revisit  the WW2 Schooner wreck, last dived when we located it in August, then continue to investigate four more fishermans marks during the journey across to Chumphon.

The most interesting is a mark which matches closely with a wreck position on one of our old shipping charts. The wreck must be a decent size to pose a potential problem [and thus be of interest] for shipping. We’ve never managed to locate this wreck - hopefully this new fisherman’s mark will help us find it. The chart was produced in 1986 - the survey data which was used to create this chart was probably collected well before that date, so we have our fingers crossed that its an old wreck, rather than a recent fishing boat. We’ll see!

The other marks are isolated but come from a reliable source, which has given us several other wrecks over the last 12 months - we’ll just have to see what turns up.

Dive expedition report will follow. . . .

Wreck Diving Expedition | Dec 12th | WW2 Japanese Auxiliary Vessel

After a long wait [due to bad weather], at last we’ve got the opportunity for some more wreck exploration off Koh Tao, Thailand.

With wave heights less than 1 metre, we’ll be heading over 20 miles off-shore on our dive RIB to check out a war report for a Japanese WW2 vessel.

We’ve got two independent fishermans marks, located close to a report from a US submarine. If all turns out as we hope, we’ll be making our first deep wreck dive on a  WW2 Japanese auxiliary vessel. We estimate the depth to be around 55 metres, so are planning for deep air dives with O2 accelerated decompression. We expect the wreck to be 30 - 40 metres in length.

We’ll find out tomorrow. . . . expedition report will follow!

May 2008 TEC Liveaboard Expeditions | South China Sea

Following the fantastic technical diving trip that we had to the South China Sea this Autumn, we’re planning a repeat dive liveaboard during May 2008.

There are two departure dates available - leaving late on Sunday 18th May or Sun 25th May - each trip lasting for 5 days.

Planned dives include the HMS Repulse, Dutch Submarine KXVII and Seven skies Supertanker. We’ve planned for two dives per day, leaving from and returning to Singapore.

To see the report [including photos] from our last visit to the south China Sea click on this link: HMS Repulse Wreck Diving Liveaboard.

If you’re interested in finding out more, please e-mail DJL Diving.

Plongee sous-marine Koh Tao Thailande: DJL Diving homepage & PADI Open Water Pages Now Available en francais!

With 3 French speaking instructors on the DJL Diving team, we have the capacity to teach all PADI & BSAC scuba diving courses en francais. We’ve decided it’s time to start translating our website into French.

We’ve already translated our Koh Tao Thailand homepage and PADI Scuba Open Water page into French. These are now available on the following links:

Homepage en Francais:

DJL Diving Ecole Plongee Koh Tao, Annee Sabatique Thailande, hebergement, logement, Course de plongee sous - marine

PADI Open Water Page:

Apprenez la plongee sous-marine a Koh Tao, Thailande

We’ll continue to translate the remainder of the website - the next part will be our Thailand scuba diving Internships section [soon to be Annee Sabatique]

Sail Rock Scuba Dive Trips from Koh Tao

Around Koh Tao, we’re now experiencing great sea conditions - flat sea, very sunny and visibility increasing every day. This should continue throughout Summer.

At DJL Diving Koh Tao, we’re going to take advantage of this by using the RIB to dive Sail Rock (Hin Bae) & the Samran Pinnacles - we’ll be running trips to these dive sites twice weekly throughout Summer.

Sail Rock is a small island, which breaks the surface midway between Koh Tao & Koh Phangan. It’s sheer walls meet the sand at around 25 metres - we see lots of pelagic fish, plus there’s a vertical chimney swimthrough running from 6 metres down to 18 metres.

The Samran Pinacle is an isolated rarely dive site, roughly West of Sail Rock. Max depth around 35 metres extending up to 14 metres from the surface, this a great site for experienced divers. Deep soft corals and masses of fish (due to the lack of divers). Since the RIB is equipped with GPS & sonar its easy for us to locate this deep pinnacle.

Throughout Summer we’re making a special offer for this trip:

2 dives, 2000 baht. [Max 6 customers per trip]

Because the RIB is so quick, journey time to Sail Rock will be just 30 minutes (with flat seas), rather than the normal two hours off a big boat. Don’t miss it!

Contact us if you are interested.

Diving Expedition for WW2 Japanese Schooner

The next DJL Diving expedition target is a Japanese schooner, about 100 tonnes sunk by USS Bugara on 24th July 1945.

Taking advantage of the great conditions, we’re going to attempt to locate it in the next few days - we have a fishermans mark very close to the war report location, and expect the wreck to be lying at about 50 metres, so we’ll be tec diving it. This time the target it only 45 minutes from Koh Tao (by RIB), so it’s going to be a bit easier going!

I’ll report back what we find on this Blog!

June 18th Wreck / Coral Expo just got hotter!

Together with ‘Worldwide Dive & Sail’ we’re running a 4.5 day / 4 night liveaboard throughout the Chumphon marine reserve.

The diving is great - great mixed coral formations, many fish and lots of turtles. Last week Nereides Diving owner JP discoverd a ‘field’ of seahorses!

But here is the really good news:

Tim has a new mark from one of our contacts on the mainland. It’s likely we’ll be making the first dive on a suspected WW2 Japanese Wreck, north of Chumphon. We expect it to be in about forty metres of water.

We’ll also be revisiting the wrecks we discovered at the end of 2006.

There are still a few places left on the liveaboard - the cost is 17,000 baht. All levels of diver are welcome, as we can give training onboard. If you want to join send us an e-mail on info@techdivethailand.com. Also check out further details by visiting the June Dive Expedition listing.

Watch this space - if we get a new wreck we’ll let you know on this blog (about 22nd June). Fingers crossed