On Saturday December 5, 2009 we once again went to the tugboat wreck at Vaersenbaai. This is a dive beyond the limits for recreational diving, so we don't do this too often. But we still needed to take some measurements to find out the dimensions of the boat. And we wanted to know if the engine is still in the engine room.
WARNING: don't do this dive unless you know what you are doing; this is a deco dive!
So we went with a group of divers to Vaersenbaai. Not all of the divers in the group wanted to go to the ship wreck; only a group of 5 divers, all experienced, decided to take the risk. After a briefing and gearing up we swam on the surface to the location of the wreck. There we went under water and dropped as quickly as possible on to the wreck. In this way we create as much bottomtime as possible but even then we don't stay there longer than 2 minutes. Two of the divers started to measure this ship in two directions; once from stern to bow and once from side to side near the steering cabin. I made a video of the ship and focussed on the two holds. To the back of the ship the engine room and to the front another hold (cargo or cabin). The engine room showed a complete engine, so that solved the main question for me. Apart from that it showed that there is a door in the engine room towards the back of the ship. The forward hold is empty and not easily entered. I don't think it was a cargo hold. This hold has a door in the back towards the engine room and another one to another hold more towards the bow of the ship. It means that the ship has a lot of compartiments and that it is quite dangerous to enter into the ship especially at this depth.
The measuring team also succeeded and it became clear that the length of the ship is 19 meters (63 feet); the width appears to be 3 meters (10ft). So this wreck is quite a bit larger than the tugboat at Baya and far more interesting. On the other hand it is considerably smaller than the Superior.
This is video of this dive combined with some pictures of previous dives on this wreck and the car wrecks in the neighborhood.