{"id":374,"date":"2011-06-13T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-06-13T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bsac406.weebly.com\/dive-reports\/and-now-for-something-completely-different"},"modified":"2011-06-13T09:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-06-13T09:00:00","slug":"and-now-for-something-completely-different","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bsac.zelta.me\/?p=374","title":{"rendered":"And now for something completely different"},"content":{"rendered":"
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And now for something completely different. It wasn\u2019t meant to be \u2013 the Zainab was the plan and we had 10 divers signed up and ready to go but the weather didn\u2019t cooperate. There was a breeze whipping up the sea and we weren\u2019t long out of Umm Suqeim 2 before we realized we were looking at a journey time of nearly two hours. A quick scan of the GPS showed something called \u201c111AIR\u201d not far away so we headed for that instead. I must admit 
I thought it would be the pair of fighter jets that were dropped into the sea just offshore from the Palm Jumeirah and these are indeed in the same vicinity. What we found though was the remains of a much larger passenger jet which again had been sunk deliberately.<\/p>\n

The anchor dropped on to parts of the central section including what\u2019s left of a wing. There\u2019s not that much to see here but around 50m away there\u2019s a short section of intact fuselage which provides some good photo opportunities. A fixed rope guides you the nose section about 30m away. The controls are still intact, if a bit barnacle encrusted and the section is now home to a large sweetlips. Another fixed line takes you from the fuselage to part of the landing gear \u2013 again about 30m away.<\/p>\n

All in all a worthwhile trip \u2013 we\u2019ll save the Zainab for a calmer day. It was appropriate to dive an aircraft in one way. It was Dan\u2019s first dive in quite a while and he earns his living as a professional pilot \u2013 when he\u2019s not around the Wanderers swimming pool that is. Still if it wasn\u2019t for 800 years of oppression\u2026<\/p>\n

By coincidence the aircraft is featured in this month\u2019s Outdoor UAE magazine. It was originally a Pakistani Airbus A300 that crashed on landing at Dubai airport. There were no casualties. The aircraft was eventually taken offshore and sunk as an artificial reef. In the May edition of the same magazine there\u2019s the story of Geoff\u2019s recent trip to the Himalayas. This is online at:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.outdooruae.com\/onlineMAG\/2011_May.html<\/a><\/p>\n

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Post dive at the pool, we were joined by Brian Kirman who is heading off with Elena to a life of leisure in Greece. Uwe took the opportunity to present him and Geoff with their \u201cunter Wasser trinken\u201d certificates which they somehow missed collecting at the last awards ceremony. We\u2019re hoping he returns sometime for the advanced course (as well as some more conventional diving). Good luck Brian!<\/p>\n

Also departing (again) is booze marshal Uwe and again we hope temporarily.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And now for something completely different. It wasn\u2019t meant to be \u2013 the Zainab was the plan and we had 10 divers signed up and ready to go but the weather didn\u2019t cooperate. There was a breeze whipping up the sea and we weren\u2019t long out of Umm Suqeim 2 before we realized we were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dive-reports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bsac.zelta.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bsac.zelta.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bsac.zelta.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bsac.zelta.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bsac.zelta.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bsac.zelta.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bsac.zelta.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bsac.zelta.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bsac.zelta.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}