Travelogue Diving Cruise Red Sea with MY Independence II
(Brothers - Daedalus - Elphinstone)
in July 2018
The flight was booked and paid at Condor, but we flew from Stuttgart with the Lithuanian budget airline Avion Express to Hurghada.
We really don't want to complain about the flight attendants not speaking German, but also the seating quality and the service left a
lot to be desired. To put it straight: On the return flight all toilets didn't work......
After all, the luggage had arrived, which was then thoroughly checked in Hurghada. The safety precautions
in Egyptian airports are getting more and more extensive, of course you are not allowed to discuss about sense and nonsense with the staff.
Of course we were asked for a detailed examination with our underwater housings. Tools and batteries
we had stowed in our diving gear this time.
Then there was again the 3.5 hour bus transfer to Ras Ghalib, where we already met 3 of our fellow travellers. Relative
late in the evening we reached the ship, we were the last guests to check in. The tour was almost fully booked with
19 divers, guides were Fadlallah and Ilona. This time we had cabin 7 on the dive deck, right next to the kitchen.
The tour started on Friday morning at Ras Torombi, we saw a very big stingray and a great coral block with
many fish. The rest of the time we spent collecting garbage and shooting smb as an exercise (as always very entertaining).
Then we finally started to Brother Islands, it was a bit windy and there were quite a lot of waves, so there were some divers.
seasick, and the drugs ran out.
With two other ships we first lay at Little Brother, the first dive was quite spectacular, we jumped.
almost directly from the Zodiac onto 3 sharks (Longimanus). The visibility was good, several tunas, barracudas, grey sharks crossed our way.
The fox sharks weren't very communicative.
In the afternoon there was a blue water dive without any big fish sightings and we changed afterwards to the big brother.
Day 3 at the Big Brother is mentioned in the logbook as follows:'5 ships and a single Longimanus, unfortunately there wasn't much to see because of bubbles.
' We used the time to photograph corals and the many red anthias, now and again also a
Napoleon with child. The current conditions here were also very different: Once there was no current at all, at the next
Hasi jumped almost independently into the boat.
In the evening we changed to Daedalus with little wave, this time we were lucky with the conditions during the crossing. Unfortunately
there was relatively little fish to see at this beautiful reef this time, the popular hammerhead sharks we mostly only saw far
below us at a depth of about 50 meters.
A successful conclusion was at Elphinstone Reef with two dives, surprisingly there was hardly any current and waves.
For the first time we were able to explore the reef top with an unbelievable amount of fish, two turtles paddled past, unfortunately no sharks.
Shokran to the crew of Independence II, a big thank you to Ilona and Fadlallah. See you soon again!
