Every year the north west monsoon gives way to the south east monsoon.
The ancient Chinese called them trade winds and built ships that could sustain sailors for the whole year, thus taking advantage of the north east wind to sail to Mallaca and Indonesia, to trade and then return on the south west wind to their home port. This practice has been used by sailors since the start of trade and which, sadly, has been forgotten by most when steam and eventually diesel started to carry the trade ( with less romance but more speed). The Trade winds themselves have continued unabated, with irrelevance given to the technical advances made by man to progress trade .
There are, however, some sailors and and other people of the sea that still watch the rhythm of the wind. Whole islands in the alderman sea close when the wind driven waves blowing out of the south west monsoon make them inaccessible to small ships bringing supplies. Resorts and dive centers close even though the opportunity to dive and swim in the Leigh of the wind in brilliant sunshine still exists.
Those of us that still watch the rhythm of the wind see that twice a year, although not exactly the same date but around the same period, notice the strength of the wind drops off and starts to shift .This time frame can last anywhere from a week to a month, at the end of which, the opposing trade wind truly kicks in. It is during this period that the calmest sea states occur and the maximum opportunity for looking for anomalies on the sea bed occurs .
With this in mind, myself and Dave, our leading technical instructor, set off this year not only looking to local ate wrecks but also enjoy the beauty of sailing. Our vessel of choice was the Inasfail, a small ketch run by Steve, an old mariner with more sun rivals in his skin than in his sails. Looking at the tides, which are extremely important when diving in the straights of Mallaca, we decided to set off on the 20th of April hoping that the change in wind would start around then but also knowing that Sumatra would keep us out of the worst of the wind driven waves. If the change of wind where to have happened earlier and knowing that we would be protected by the peninsula after rounding Singapore,if that were to be the case, sound planning as this was exactly what was to happen. A shame as then we were only able to cross over the marks in the straights of Mallaca, confirming the presence of two large vessels but unable to dive them due to the difficulties of getting back on board a sailing ship in full technical rig. Frustrating, but there are a few more adaptable vessels in Penang we can use, now that we know they are there .
We decided to rush down to Singapore and around into the gulf of Thailand as quickly as possible to maximize our rations and time for searching for our targets in that area ,with a day spent on the HMS Repulse and IJN Hatsutaka. After a few days shooting video of these most impressive of shipwrecks, we continued north and ran a search on a mark we thought could be the Akita Maru. Very quickly, we had a large return. We shot the mark and readied our equipment although the visibility was very bad .We believe we located a large cargo vessel in 56 metres but as our rations were getting low and the diesel fuel nearly on fumes, we had to make the decision to head to port with what little wind we had, arriving back in Koh Samui on the 7th of May.
