Wednesday 28 September SS Coolidge and MV Mystery Ship

inside the bridge

Yesterday's dives were good but Yvonne tempted us back for one more. This time to go to 47m and into the engine room. Her briefing was clear and she was obviously enthusiastic to take us in as many of the divers who come here are often only recently qualified or perhaps haven't dived for many years.


gun emplacement



To get to the engine quickly to maximise our time we went lickety spit along the outside of the hull and into a large opening cut by the salvager's back in the 70's straight into the engine room. It was fascinating to see the gauges and telegraph signals. We swam through the bathrooms on C deck all the way back to the chain locker at the bow and back out into clear water for our slow ascent. This was by far the best of the three dives we'd done on the Coolidge.

A good dive would have been enough to make it a good day but the cherry on today's cake was the arrival of our Canadian friends, Glen and Cindy, aboard Mystery Ship. We last saw them in Auckland in January and played tag throughout Fiji always missing them by an island or a week until now. They arrived in here in Luganville on Monday and we finally met up and had dinner with them together with Oso Blanco. Say hello, say goodbye. Hello and goodbye to Mystery Ship and a sad farewell to our very good friends and long time sailing and diving buddies, Eric and Annie and their son Bear. That's just how it is with cruising. We may just see them all again in Nouméa, New Caledonia at the end of October but there's no guarantee.