Cedar Pride and the Sunken Tanks

Two shore dives, both south of town. The Cedar Pride is a Lebanese freighter that caught fire in port, was bought by the authorities and sunk deliberately in 1985 across two coral heads. She lies on her port side between seven and twenty-seven metres, masts running out sideways like scaffolding, the whole hull now furred with soft coral and hanging with glassfish. We swim the deck, out along the masts, around the stern - and we do not go inside. No penetration, no exceptions, however many wrecks you have logged. After tea and falafel on the beach we dive the Underwater Military Museum: nineteen pieces of decommissioned hardware laid out on the sand in battle formation, an M42 Duster anti-aircraft gun at the shallow end, troop carriers and an ambulance further down, the deepest pieces at twenty-eight metres. Practical friction: these are shore dives. You carry your own kit forty metres across gravel and walk into small surf in fins, which is fine at nineteen and considerably less fun at sixty with a full steel twelve on your back. There is a compressor room, a rinse tank and a cold shower at the site. There is no cafe.