N-East

Local Name:

N-East

Depth:

Depth is about 70 feet to the top of the cabins and close to 100 feet to the sand.

Anchoring:

To dive this wreck you anchor on the "N-Buoy" coral head. It has a pole and a flashing light on it and it is located almost directly out from the rock jetty at Emon. Anchor and then use GPS to get a bearing to the wreck.

Location:

Latitude			Longitude
Degrees	Minutes	Seconds	Degrees	Minutes	Seconds
8	44	20.280	167	43	52.140
8	44.33800	---------	167	43.86900	---------
8.73896	---------	---------	167.73115	---------	---------

Notes:

This wreck has several interesting features. Most easily noted is the fact that the entire stern is nearly blown away! When it was hit it appears that it's own munitions went up and pretty much blew away everything down to the waterline! There is a communications cable passing over the engine room of the ship. Also, I have seen some nice soft corals growing in the windows on the north side of the wreck.

The area between the ship and N-Buoy coral head tends to have a fair number of bottles, so if that's your interest...

NOTE: On 6/16/2005 we ran up a float from the wreck and marked the position with GPS. I believe that the location listed here now is very accurate. Prior to this I had been using a waypoint that was given to me and I had somewhat verified it using a fishfinder. When swimming out from N-Buoy I found that I kept ended up a little to the north of the wreck. This new position is about 100 feet south of the previous one, which makes sense!

Photos:

	A view of the gun mount and bow taken from the starboard side. You can see a small room directly under and behind the gun platform.
A shot peering in one of the windows or doors on the port side. Note the sagging ceiling.
	A communications cable runs over this wreck. I believe that it runs off to the N-NW. We see several wrecks with cables on, under or very near them. The Little Bustard LCM has a cable under it and Palawan has a cable going over the bow. Hamel Side has a cable running just off the end of the LCM. There is rumored to be an LCM north of N-Buoy coral head with a cable running over it. I suspect we are talking about the same cable.
This shot is taken from up near the bridge area on the starboard side facing towards the stern. You can clearly see the cable running over the top of the ship. As you swim out to the ship, of you are off a little bit you can usually see the cable sloping up towards the ship. Just follow the cable up!
	This shot is taken from the stern looking forward. You can just see the deck bending down in the bottom of the photo. This will be more obvious in other photos. This configuration is a bit different than we seen in many of the smaller ships. I don't recall any holds forward of the cabin area and this framework is certinly not quite like what is commonly seen here. Anyone have any ideas?
Another shot of the deck, but this time looking towards the stern. Whatever was supporting the deck must have been blown away and now the deck has bent down towards the keel.
	The ship once had a bow gun. What happens to all these guns? Many of them are missing. Do they tumble off during sinking? Have they been recovered?
Another shot looking down into the ship showing the metal framework.
	This soft coral can be found on many of the windows. I seem to remember it only on the port side, but that's not to say it isn't elsewhere.
Here's a shot of the stern of the ship. We can see where the deck suddenly drops down. The entire stern is pretty much blown away down to the waterline. It seems clear that when this ship was attacked that it must have had munitions in the stern that were hit causing such extensive damage.