In the Depths of the Fairest Cape
Posted By Sara-Lise Haith on 5 January 2007
False Bay
As you drive from Cape Town centre towards Kommetjie, you can choose two routes, over the mountain or around the coast. I chose to go the coastal route, past Chapmans Peak. You can appreciate the dramatic coastline on the way, stop off at look outs, see baboons running around the cliffs, and if you are there during whale season it is often that you will see them from the shore. At that time of the morning, the swell was reaching 3 metres and it did not look promising. I arrived at Scuba Shack at 07.15am, it was cold, raining, and rough. They made a couple of phone calls and it seemed that on the other side of the mountain, close to Simonstown in False Bay the diving conditions were reasonable. We arrived shortly afterwards and I was greeted by a massive blue bay of small white capped waves and the sun pushing its way through the clouds. We assembled our kit in the parking lot and placed it all into a large rubber duck (rib) and set on our way. It was a little rough but a fun ride and we set on towards a wreck called the Transvaler, which lies in 34m of water. I was wearing an Imersion 7mm open cell farmer john, with a 7mm jacket with hood, 3mm neoprene socks under my 3mm sea boots, my trusty S-tek harness and Scubapro regs, gloves and to be honest, an apprehensive smile.
False Bay is riddled with White sharks, and the dive briefing clearly said “do not waste time on the surface”. Those words haunted me as we all rolled over backwards and all I could think about was rolling on to the back of a big shark who had not yet had breakfast. We descended quickly down a shot line and the vis was about 3 metres. My assigned dive buddy was a novice diver, so I concentrated on her, leaving all thoughts of Jaws behind me on the surface. As we approached about 20 metres depth, the visibility cleared up and it was about 7 metres clear ahead. I was truly astonished how beautiful it was. The finger sponges, sea stars, nudibranches, all different colours of red and orange were wrapped around the wreck like a blanket. It was beautiful.
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