Excalibur

The dive

The Excalibur, logged by some operators as the Susannah or Suzanna, is a small wreck lying on sand off Hurghada. It is a real, documented site and not a boat name that leaked into a catalogue. The Red Sea Wreck Project records her as a twin-masted motor and sail vessel about 22 m long, white and light blue with dark blue trim, which sank in the harbour of Hurghada in late 1995 or early 1996 after an electrical fire. Operators who dive her describe the same boat as a sailing yacht that worked as a diving safari vessel. Sources differ on one point: one Hurghada dive centre calls her a steel cargo vessel, which does not match the wreck-research description or the rotted wooden decking that everyone else reports, and we have followed the wreck record.

She sits upright on a flat sandy bottom with a slight list to starboard. The sand is at 22 m and the deck at around 14 m, which puts the whole wreck inside recreational limits. Part of the bowsprit is still on the bow and many deck fittings and rails are still in place. The wooden decking has gone, so the hull is an open frame that light falls through, and the saloon, cabins, hold and pilothouse can be entered. Divers report the fittings of a working dive boat still inside: sinks, toilets and electrical gear. One of the two logged dives we found on the site was the final dive of a wreck specialty course, spent inside the hold.

Getting there is unusually simple for a Red Sea wreck. Divers Guide records it as a shore entry from the beach directly in front of a Hurghada dive centre, with parking at the centre and about five minutes to the water, no permit and free access; a 2024 logged dive describes the entry as being in front of the Bella Vista hotel. Boats also run to it, and several centres use it as an extra dive at the end of the day or as a night dive. Note that our pin sits within 50 m of our El Mina pin: those are two different wrecks, roughly a kilometre apart in Divers Guide's own positions, and one of the two pins is off by a few hundred metres.

The life on her is what grows on a small structure in shallow water. Soft corals cover the rails and the exposed frames; glassfish fill the interior spaces and lionfish hunt them. Operators add scorpionfish, moray eels, parrotfish, anthias and octopus, and one describes the wreck as good ground for nudibranchs and pipefish. A February 2024 log reports a large school of barracuda over the wreck. Our own occurrence records for this pin include humphead wrasse, spotted eagle ray, yellow-edged moray, banded pipefish, the striped pyjama nudibranch, blackspotted rubberlip and yellowbar angelfish.

• Upright on sand with a slight starboard list, sand at 22 m and deck at about 14 m
• Wooden decking rotted away, leaving an open frame that light falls through
• Part of the bowsprit still in place on the bow, with deck fittings and rails
• Sinks, toilets and electrical gear still inside the accommodation
• Used as a night dive and as an end-of-day extra dive

Conditions

Sheltered, close inshore, and usually still: current is recorded as none to limited by every source. Visibility averages around 15 m and is the thing that varies, since the site sits in a harbour area on a sand bottom, with individual logs recording anything from 12 to 25 m. Logged water temperature in February and March was 21 C.

On current: Two operators and one dive-site record all describe current here as none to limited, which is what you would expect of a sheltered wreck close inshore. Depth is agreed within a metre or two: the sand is at 22 m in every source, and Scubadore puts the deck at about 14 m, which is what we have recorded as the shallow figure. One Hurghada centre publishes an 18 m minimum instead, which is the sand alongside rather than the structure. Visibility is the variable part. Divers Guide gives 10 to 30 m with a 15 m average, one dive centre reports 10 to 15 m averaging 12, and two logged dives on the site recorded 19 m and 25 m. We have taken the 15 m average. The sources also disagree on what the ship was: one calls her a steel cargo vessel, while the wreck record and the operators who describe her rotted wooden decking make her a 22 m twin-masted motor sailer used as a dive safari boat. We have followed the wreck record.