Kissing The Lady
23 September 2015
Tom
For divers, a trip to Espiritu Santo is almost synonymous with a dive on the President Coolidge wreck. This is a large WWII ship that hit a mine on the way into the American navy base at Luganville. It sits on the bottom on it's port side with it's bow pointed towards shore.
Having recently re-certified, it was on my diving "to do" list for Luganville. Cruising friends had dove the wreck recently and recommended a dive shop that had been based there for about 40 years. I decided they would probably have enough experience to make the dive safe!! So I took the morning water taxi over from Aore Island and was met at the dock by staff from the dive shop. After a short stop to get equipment we headed to the dive site. The shop actually owns the waterfront right in front of the wreck making it an easy dive from the beach. Luckily I was the only one diving that day so I had the 'guide' all to myself.
We actually did two dives, one in the morning as a sort of orientation and then a second in the afternoon. The morning dive was good and I got a good look at the outside and deck structure. The afternoon dive was great.
After confirming I was comfortable we headed for the centre of the wreck to go 'below' to head for 'The Lady', which is a plaque of a lady and a horse. To get there we had to weave between decks and ended up a 44 meters below the surface! I quickly 'kissed the lady' and we headed forward through the ship, seeing an an area with chandeliers, and a crew latrine area with rows of toilets, amazingly well preserved after over 70 years. We finally made our way out at the front of the ship through the chain locker. The compulsory decompression stops on the assent were luckily in the centre of a coral garden with a multitude of fish and coral to entertain me.
A great dive that I would recommend to any divers comfortable inside wrecks.