After waiting for what seemed like weeks, we finally got to dive the Rainbow Warrior. The ship was bombed by French terrorists in Auckland harbor 20 years ago in an effort to stop Greenpeace from interfering with the French governments plans to do nuclear testing in the South Pacific. The ship was salvaged from sinking at first, but was later towed well north of Auckland and sunk in a very remote location.

The dive was a typical cold water dive with limited visibility at the surface and somewhat better below. Not ideal for photos, and none really turned out well enough to post them to the website. There is a ton of life on and around the wreck and it would be fun to see it in another ten years or so. Maybe another trip here is required!

The dive operator is supposed to be the class of Paihia. Unfortunately, their regular boat is on it's way back from Auckland after undergoing some remodeling. We were reduced to diving from an old fishing boat that was not well suited for divers, especially a group as large as we turned out to be. There were two instructors, 6 divers and four people who came along to do an introductory dive. The schedule for the day was rather brutal. A two hour boat ride to the wreck site, dive 1, a surface interval nearly 4 hours while they did the introductory dives (it wasn't pretty) and then a second dive before the two hour boat ride back. In total we spend ten hours on the boat for about 1 hour and 45 minutes of dive time.

After the diving we had a quick dinner in Paihia and then hit the road for Auckland to pick up Scott at the airport.

Stay tuned for details of his first day in Auckland,

Eric & Val