Egypt

Stuart Philpott gets the star treatment during a weeklong northern safari on the VIP One liveaboard out of Sharm el Sheikh

Photographs by Stuart Philpott

Where did the time go? I couldn’t believe my

last trip to the Red Sea was five years ago. I had booked a week on VIP One liveaboard operating from Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt and was looking forward to visiting some of the popular dive sites, meeting up with some old acquaintances, and hopefully making a few new friends along the way.

The airport transfer bus pulled up outside the familiar Travco Marina (now called Landmark), where hundreds of day boats and liveaboards reside. I was no stranger to VIP One, having booked a trip in the early 2000s. VIP One owner Alain Sobol greeted me at the marina entrance. Alain is a well-respected figure in the Sharm diving community and has probably been around since the Pyramids were built! The boat had mainly been chartered by a Belgian dive club, but there were still a few vacant cabins, so I booked a space alongside Alain’s wife, Stella ‘Nails’ Sobol, and Merci Madar, visiting from Sarasota in the USA. It was good to see Hooch, VIP One’s resident instructor/dive guide. After working the ropes for more than 12 years, he can probably be classed as part of the furniture now. He led me to cabin number six, complete with en-suite near the bow. The Belgian entourage weren’t arriving until early morning, so I prepared my camera and crashed out for a few hours.

VIP One has quite a few repeater guests. Vincent, the group leader, had been on the boat several times before and had even booked another safari trip for later in the year.

The boat has to be one of the longest-running liveaboard operations in the Red Sea, topping around 1,000 safaris in its 26 years of service. The boat hadn’t changed much since my last visit. It still had the same classy-looking teak saloon and dining area, which led out onto the dive deck. Upstairs there is an outside seating area and bar, with a sundeck on the top floor. Trips run from Sunday to Sunday. All food, soft drinks and diving is included. Alcohol is extra. Guests can bring their own spirits aboard, or there’s always a beer available in the cool box.

We couldn’t have asked for better weather conditions. Flat calm seas and a slight breeze. Hooch said the forecast was holding steady for the whole week. This early in the season sea temps hovered around 22 degrees C, so I was wearing a full 5mm suit. We moored up at Marsa Bareika for our warm-up dive. The underwater visibility looked a little murky, maybe 15-20 metres with some sediment floating about. This didn’t bode well for my pictures. I could see hours of post-editing work coming up! Stella, complete with whalesharkpatterned suit and white Fourth Element mask and fins, had kindly offered to pose for my pictures. I couldn’t help but notice Stella’s scary-looking finger nails as we made our way back up the mooring line to the surface. I made a mental note not to mess with Stella!

40% of the Red Sea is shallower than 100m, and 25% of the Red Sea is less than 50m deep. This means that a lot of the dive sites are within recreational limits –no wonder it’s so popular with divers of all levels of experience! The SS Thistlegorm has to be one of the top ten wreck dives in the world, maybe even top five? The last time I visited the site there were at least 20 other dive boats moored up with at least 16 divers per boat

Early next morning, we headed out to the Dunraven wreck lying upside down on the seabed at a max depth of 30m. From a photographers’ perspective, the highlights are the prop swathed in soft corals and a huge shoal of glassfish lingering inside the hull. The visibility was still not the best, but we managed to swim back and forth through the glassfish shoal and spend some time posing at the propeller, so all-in-all a job well done.

Everybody sat around the long, stately looking dining table at breakfast time. Contemplating over heaped platefuls of pancakes and scrambled eggs, the Belgian group decided they wanted to see wrecks, and as the sea conditions were favourable, it was a unanimous decision to head for Abu Nuhas, the final resting place for the Carnatic, Marcus, Kimon M and the Giannis D. We had split into two groups. Team Karim was guiding the Belgian group on the bigger dinghy tender, and Team Hooch was looking after the stragglers, which included me, on the smaller dinghy.

One of Hooch’s many useful talents was to check out the other dive boats before we jumped in. Perfect timing meant fewer divers to negotiate at the dive site. On the SS Carnatic, we finned through the vast cathedral-sized cargo holds adorned with beautifully coloured soft corals. The usual fish species were swimming about including butterflyfish, angelfish, scorpions, triggers and glassfish but alas we couldn’t find any wine bottles.

On the Marcus (Tile Wreck), I took some fun shots of Stella by a rope noose and then headed inside to get some pictures of the square floor tiles. I heard Stella bellowing through her regulator and then caught sight of a lone bottlenose dolphin. The dolphin stayed with us for a minute or two and then with a tail flick disappeared as another dive group jumped into the water.

Our final late afternoon dive on the Giannis D was a little murky. I did my best to get some shots of Stella hovering by the stern rail and then we went inside, swerving past a giant moral eel yawning by the doorway. On my last visit I remembered seeing a brass compass binnacle in the bridge, but this has now gone - I thought the CDWS had strict laws about removing items from wrecks?

Stella exploring a wreck

Distinctive stern of the Giannis D

The Giannis D sailed under her original name until 1975 at which time she was sold and re-named the Markos. Interestingly, that name is still discernible on the vessel’s hull and there are those who insist on calling her by the misnomer ‘Markos D’!

Gorgonian seafan

The SS Thistlegorm is famous for its wartime cargo and was fitted with light weaponry. It consists of a 4.7inch light anti-aircraft gun and an anti-aircraft machine gun.

Motorcycle in the Thistlegorm

My favourite moment of the day had to be pizza time. After our third dive the cook prepared some afternoon ‘snacks’. This was usually a pizza of some form or another and cakes, all washed down with a cold beer or two – unless, of course, I was going on the night dive.

The SS Thistlegorm has to be one of the top ten wreck dives in the world, maybe even top five? The last time I visited the site there were at least 20 other dive boats moored up with at least 16 divers per boat. This equates to a shed load of divers. I remember counting 24 divers passing through the holds in single file! When we arrived on site, I counted only four boats. Again, Hooch did his magic and we mostly had the whole wreck to ourselves for the next four dives.

The current was pumping hard as we pulled our way down to the deck. In these conditions it’s better to go inside. I could see the water carriers of the two Stanier-class 8F locomotives perched on either side of the hold entrance. One was balancing precariously on the edge. Hooch took us on a tour of the munitions, which included row upon row of trucks

Vibrant soft corals The arid landscape contrasts with underwater

and BSA motorbikes. Bizarrely, he stopped briefly to point out a colourful nudibranch the size of my little finger! Most of the Wellington boots have now disappeared, but Hooch did manage to find half a boot with the sole still attached.

On dives two and three, we ventured outside, swimming over the mangled number four and five holds all the way to the stern guns. My main goal was to try and take an Alex Mustard-inspired picture of the motorbike. The plan was to place a light source on the other side of the front wheel and take a shot with the shards of light shining through. Sounds simple but Hooch only had a couple of low-power torches, so I couldn’t quite get the effect I wanted, but it was fun and frustrating trying! There is so much to explore on the Thistlegorm. Hooch has logged more than 1,000 dives at the wreck site and could still find something new to see.

Hooch has logged more than 1,000 dives at the wreck site and could still find something new to see

Just to finish off a spectacular round of dives, we watched a number of giant trevally swooping through a shoal of fusiliers picking off the stragglers.

At the Alternatives, I gave super model Stella an official warning. The pinnacles are covered in brightly coloured soft corals, including pinks, yellows and reds, so I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to get some closeups of Stella sporting her new mask surrounded by fauna. But I hadn’t noticed that her mask kept fogging up and she didn’t point this out to me until we got back on board VIP One. Foggy masked pictures are absolutely no good to anyone. I didn’t stop teasing Stella for days. Hooch’s bright idea was to remove the offending mask underwater and give it a good licking!

Shark and Yolanda Reef has always been a worldclass dive site for marine life, corals and sea fans. We started off at Anemone City for some close-up Nemo

Alain Sobol

Red Sea diving pioneer Alain Sobol has been associated with Egypt since the late60s. In 1968, his late father Paul owned a dive centre in Brussels and was the head of CMAS in Belgium. He sent Alain to Na’ama Bay to set up a diving base for club excursions. Alain drove an old Bedford truck loaded with compressor, dive kit, outboard and dingy all the way to Italy, sailed to Haifa in Israel and then drove to Na’ama Bay, just a deserted sandy bay with very few buildings. For most of the 70s and early 80s ,Alain would travel from Brussels to Sharm running training courses and guiding dives. From 82 onwards, he stayed in Egypt and set up the world-famous Red Sea Diving College. In 1996, Alain had VIP One built. There are still a few charter weeks left for 2022. Contact: info@redsaecollege. com for more information on bookings. Resident VIP One dive guide Paul Winkworth (aka Hooch) is an absolute Red Sea legend. Hooch learnt to dive in the UK during the late-90s, visiting Sharm El Sheikh several times on diving holidays. For 14 years he worked for a printing company based in London and then one day woke up and decided to make some radical life changes. Within two weeks he had quit his job and hot footed it to Egypt. He met up with Red Sea Diving College manager Guy Haywood, who gave him a job day boat guiding for two weeks. Fortunately he did such a good job, Guy asked him to stay on. In 2005, he was introduced to VIP One and began guiding one trip per month. By 2006 he hosted all the UK group safaris and in 2010, became a full-time guide. He is planning to run his own liveaboard workshop in August 2023, maximum 12 spaces. Contact: info@ redseacollege.com for more info.

The guests on VIP One

pictures and then finned across the blue void towards the reef. There were literally millions of orange anthias darting in and out of the vertical wall. Predatory tuna, jacks and barracuda were swimming past us. It was still quite early in the season so the full regalia of marine life wasn’t around yet, but still, this wasn’t bad and the visibility was back to 30 metres plus! I could have stayed there all day just watching the action unfold. We explored the debris field from the Yolanda stopping to take some pictures of the toilets and bathtubs. I’m sure there used to be far more toilets? I heard a rumour that certain individuals were filling the toilets with air and sending them over the reef edge. Hooch swam over a leopard shark and managed to fire off a burst of pictures. By the time I appeared, the shark had swam off into the distance. I gave chase, but couldn’t get close.

The overall mood seemed to be a little subdued when we reached Ras Katy and Ras Um Sid. I think everybody realised our wreck and reef fest was coming to an end. We definitely ‘smashed’ some of the best dive sites the Northern Red Sea had to offer, 24 dives in all. VIP One had really delivered. n

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TEAM AWARENESS AND POSITIONING

Audrey Cudel continues her House of Cards series, this time focusing on team awareness and positioning

Have you ever seen a murmuration? Hundreds,

sometimes thousands, of starlings flying together in whirling, ever-changing pattern, twisting and changing directions at a moment’s notice. How can a swarm of birds fly as one and co-ordinate such complicated choreography in perfect synchronisation?

It’s easy to understand how one starling knows to turn when its neighbour turns, since they’re close together and can see each other, but how hundreds or thousands of starlings manage to turn simultaneously, when birds at opposite ends of the flock are separated by space and hundreds or thousands of other birds remains a mystery. Right? We are not starlings and ‘swarm of divers’ tends to be limited to a handful of individuals. But what if, beyond the beauty of the choreography, we managed to dive as one, mirroring one another or performing complementary tasks supporting one another in perfect position? Wouldn’t it be more enjoyable and safer to be able to position ourselves and communicate anticipating the plan and or mitigating risks if an unexpected situation came to happen?

Throughout our diving education, we transition from self-awareness focusing on managing our initially unsteady house of cards basics: breathing and buoyancy control, trim and propulsion techniques. Metaphorically, and in this case with another kind of wing, we learn how to fly. As mastery builds up through practice, we follow a guide and turn our attention outwards - enjoying more of the environment and the company of others, flying metres apart in a threedimensional underwater world. Team and awareness are two notions we have not yet envisioned. We are simply a group of individuals who dive in the same place at the same time, not having much clue about our ‘buddy’s’ equipment, skill level, or emergency procedures management, which might differ from our own training history.

Communications during the dive are a chain of reactions rather than anticipation, limited to some random ‘Ok’s’ ‘Look at this’, until someone’s pressure gauge rings the bell ‘It’s time for everyone to head back home’. Should one diver go missing on the way, we learned to search for a minute before surfacing. The whole picture is one of a poorly planned dive by a disorganised and unsafe crowd of divers. Hopefully, no one ends up kicking their neighbour’s mask while turning unexpectedly to figure out ‘where in the underwater world’ their mate has vanished.

There are two main purposes for diving as a team: safety and complementarity. Safety is met when a reasonable number of divers (two to three maximum, four being two teams of two) join together as a safeguard to jointly address any problem such as equipment failure, intricate navigation or deal with environmental issues. The recommendation to have redundancy in diving does not only apply to the equipment, but also to the number of brains and pairs of eyes available to deal with any situation. Some dives, such as decompression dives, will require divers to mirror one another’s actions as part of the procedure they have learnt throughout training. Complementarity steps in when divers become dependent on one another and are assigned different roles and tasks in order to complete a mission. Overhead environments are a good example where one diver who is in charge of line deployment might be the eyes forward and the other might look backward to spot any line trap, and provide support with lightning.

Whatever the dive configuration, the team plans the dive, visualises the plan, dives the plan and respects the fact that any team member can call the dive at any time for any reason. More than just a golden rule, it is a safeguard.

Team Awareness and positioning are essential to members’ safety and to enable the communication within the team. This awareness is driven by the combined cognition of its members i.e., their ability to perceive, understand and project events based on former experiences both as an individual and as a group. Needless to say, a team member’s awareness should not be distracted by poor buoyancy, trim or the inability to have a chat facing one another.

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Positioning is greatly supported by the ace cards: breathing and buoyancy control, trim, and efficient propulsion techniques, as we documented earlier in the House of Cards series. Being able to navigate side by side, at arm length distance, or half a body distance with one behind the other, enhances the speed of response when a problem arises. Being able to locate team members visually by simply turning one’s head, or through passive light communication without needing to turn around constantly, is a safeguard that will prevent kicking in a team mate’s mask or damaging the environment.

The ability to face one another on ascents and descents, and to use the environment for the team’s safety, enhances communication procedures and enables an appropriate chain of reactions should one team member suffer from some sort of vertigo or any equipment failure.

Using the environment for potential physical support is also part of the team awareness: for example, using a shot line rather than drifting in the blue, positioning the team parallel to a drop off rather than turning one’s back to it, being able to deploy a SMB at depth to support the team’s ascent, while also notifying the surface, earlier than later, about the team’s location.

Communication within the team relies on a common language that needs to be learned, practised and validated before the immersion. After a number of practice dives, the team learns to speak one voice. Should the team change, the voice should be no different. This is paradoxically one of the major differences between the recreational and the technical diving world: while most recreational divers receive a briefing covering underwater communications, which typically varies from one location to another, for the most part, the technical diving community have settled on a common international language, independent of training agency. Once underwater, words are no longer spoken, but communication is enabled through other means; hand signals, writing, light signals and touch contact.

However, much of the real communication is implicit, which brings us back to the foundation of awareness. Most of us have a special buddy - the one we love to dive with because we know what each other is up to without having to express anything. This ability to see beyond the mask, to read other team members, to use the environment and understand what the current situation is, and how to interact, does not come as a miracle - it takes time, practice and humility. Some critical skill circuits conducted as part of training sessions, highlight the team’s ability to cope with any challenging situation.

Most of the diving agencies offer a Solo diving course insisting on equipment redundancy and other safety procedures. Some divers will, of course, argue that it is sometimes safer to dive alone rather than in bad company, and that is perhaps wrongly true. The differences in perceptions between divers should be addressed on the surface, prior to the dive, in order to understand what made the company ‘bad’ at first sight. Most of the time the answer will relate to one of the diving foundations missing for one diver or another, and sometimes the answer will relate to poor communication, preparation and planning before anyone even dipped their fin tip in the water.

Diving is more about committing to a common goal of sharing, rather than about achieving greatness on our own. Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and diving as one, a success. Anthropologists admire starlings’ remarkable ability to maintain cohesion as a group in highly uncertain environments and with limited, noisy information. When uncertainty is present, interacting with a limited number of neighbours optimises the balance between group cohesiveness and individual effort. n

About the author

Audrey Cudel is a cave explorer and technical diving instructor specialising in sidemount and cave diving training in Europe and Mexico. She is also renowned in the industry for her underwater photography portraying deep technical divers and cave divers. Her work has appeared in various magazines such as Wetnotes, Octopus, Plongeur International, Perfect Diver, Times of Malta, and SDI/TDI and DAN (Divers Alert Network) publications.