Wreck Diving in the Baltic Sea

Wreck Diving in the Baltic Sea
By Aki Keronen


Changing Plans

At first we were planning to go do some OC cave diving in Plura, Norway. Due to the unfortunate and fatal accident of Ståle Tveitane, diving was prohibited in Plura and we needed to look for another options.

At first we thought that we will anyway go to Norway and do some wreck diving, but decided that it’ll take way too long time to drive all the way to the west coast of Norway. The second idea was to book a trip to Åland which is an island belonging (how ever being autonomic) to Finland in the Baltic Sea. This idea sounded fine, but when we started calculating all the costs of this trip, we decided to save some money for a trip to Egypt at the end of the year. As we had booked some time off from work and were desperate to go diving we decided to take a liveaboard trip with M/S ORBIIT which happened to be heading to the Tallinn coastline in Estonia. This sounded a great idea as we haven’t being diving in Estonia at all and heard that diving there is great with a bit better visibility and lot of nice wrecks. We have being in couple of trips with M/S ORBIIT in the past and liked it a lot.


Thursday, 31st August 2006

Arrived to the harbour around 18:00, unpacked my car and took it to parking area some distance from the harbour. We left from the harbour around 19:30 and headed to Suomenlinna which is a fortress outside Helsinki where our passports were checked. After this we started heading towards Pirita harbour in Tallinn where we arrived just after 02:00 on Friday morning. We docked the ship and tried to get electricity from land, but fuses kept going off and we had to use ships own generator. We also filled two of the fresh water tanks. I got into bed around 04:00.


Friday, 1st September 2006

We woke up around 07:30 and had a nice breakfast at 08:00. After this we went to local store to do some shopping. When we came back we were still waiting for our guide to arrive.

Dive Team

• Aki - Inspiration Vision
• Mikko - Inspiration Classic
• Jukka – oC

Dive 1 & 2

• Name – Bungsberg / Eva
• Displacement – 1,504 tons
• Length – 75 metres
• Built – 1924 in Hamburg, Germany
• Sank – 1943 by mine
• Depth – 38m (bottom)
• Dive Details – 62 min (31,5m) / 50 min (37,1m)

We left from Pirita harbour before noon, after our Estonian guide arrived. First dive in this trip was to a ship named Bungsberg. On first dive we descended to the deck where visibility was approx 10 meters. We started heading upstream and in the first cargo hold we found dead seal (well it was a white thing and we knew that it’s remains of a seal because few divers have being here in the past. We continued our way to upstream and came to bow of this ship. We looked around for a while and started heading towards the stern. There was a nice gentle current which took us slowly to the stern where we looked over the edge for the rudder and propeller, but the visibility was getting a bit worse and from the deck level it was pretty hard to see them. After looking around the stern for a while we started heading towards the line for ascend.

We did the second dive of the day in this same wreck and once again descended to the mid of the ship. The visibility was getting worse. Now we headed directly to the stern and went to look closer for the propeller and the rudder. Just few meters below the deck level it became really dark. We stayed there for a minute or so and headed back to the deck and headed towards the bow again. After 20 minutes it started to be really cold and we started ascend at 30 min bottom time. The water was 2°C.


Saturday, 2nd September 2006

Dive 1

• Name – Raa / Polaris
• Length – 32,3 meters
• Built – 1917 in Koivisto, Finland
• Sank – August 8th 1942
• Depth – 26m (bottom)
• Time – 53 min

First dive of the day was to a Finnish build three mast wooden sailing ship which was in not that good condition. After 30 minutes we were again quite cold, had go around the ship about five times and started heading towards the line.

Dive 2

• Name – Christine / Marie
• Length – 15,6 meters
• Built – 1916
• Sank – April 24th 1943
• Depth – 27m (bottom)
• Time – 62 min

Me and Mikko were to be the ones taking the line to the ship and there for entered the water first. We descended to 24 meters using a buoy line that was thrown from the ship to mark the estimated location of the ship. I tied my reel to the buoy line and started heading to the direction where I thought to find the ship. After 3 minutes we saw the ship in head of us and I tied the reel to the ship. This ship was much nicer with a lot more details than “Polaris” and I think it’s because it was in better shape and also I think I do like more steel than wooden ships. We went round and round the ship for 4-5 times and looked all the details. At stern there was engine room which felt quite tempting to penetrate but was way too small. All though it was cold once again at the bottom, we did manage to stay there 45 minutes before we headed to the line for ascend. For me this was definitely the best dive in this trip.

Dive 3

• Name – Tutti
• Length – 15,6 meters
• Built – 1889 in Hamburg, Germany
• Sank – November 21st 1944
• Depth – 16m (bottom)
• Time – Skipped this dive

I was so tired that I decided to skip this dive, how ever Mikko did this dive with some OC divers as I had my first decompression beer.

In the evening we headed to Tallinn centre for few beers and food as one of my friends picked us up from the harbour.


Sunday, 3rd September 2006

I woke up at 08:00 with bit of a hangover and went to get some breakfast and then back to bunk. We left Pirita harbour around 11:00 and headed back to Helsinki. We arrived to Suomenlinna fortress for passport control around 17:00 and waited there for a while. After the passport control we headed to the home harbour, packed our cars and headed home.


Summary

I heard so many good stories that diving in Estonia is really great and that there are really amazing wreck, but to be hones I was disappointed. I think my expectations for this trip were too high and would have liked to see WW2 time military wrecks, but due to limitations of diving in Estonia, that seem to be impossible. How ever the trip it self and all the people on board of M/S Orbiit were great.

Also one interesting thing to notice was that almost all of these ships have changed their name and if I remember correctly you should never ever change your ships name!!


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