Expedition Leaders

Leader of this expedition is Michael Rutz. As a former military diver, he switched to the civilian diving scene and became a professional diver. During his training in saturation diving, he also participated in trainings of the following diving associations TDISDI, PADI, ETDO and CMAS. Nowadays he works as TDISDI instructor, as well he is instructor for rescue divers and navy divers. His experiences, education and trainings in wreck- and archaeology diving are of peculiar interest for this expedition.

Sunday, 17th July Gelting Mole, Home Port

The 7-day expedition to some of the most beautiful and interesting wrecks of the Baltic Sea started Sunday, 17th July 2011 at 19:00h in Gelting Mole, the home port of the expedition boat "Bubblewatcher".

Monday, 18th July Start of expedition & Inger Klit

After getting up at 9am we all had our first captain breakfast on board of Bubblewatcher. After finishing the breakfast, the last diving equitment was brought on board and everybody was totally ready to leave and excited to get to see the first wreck of this expedition "Inger Klit", which is located only about one hour away from Gelting Mole. Around noon we started our first dive to Inger Klit. Inger Klit has been the most vegetated wreck of the entire expedition.

After World War II the danish merchant shipping was totally broken. One did not have money for a new fleet. Thanks to the "Marshall Plan" May, 27th 1959 the americans pushed the danish economy with about 18 mio. Danisch Kroner. With this financial help one financed substantially 7 Caroliner. One ship out of this series has been Inger Klit. This ship was known being modern and having good maritime/ naval characteristics. It had a length of 33,48m, width 6,68m and load draft of 2,70m. Inger Klit was designed for liner service, as well as its sisterships, between Northern and Baltic Sea harbours. In 1972 the ship did not fulfill the necessarily characteristics anymore and one extended it up to 39,60m and a load draft of 2,80m. Its home port changed several times.

On the black day of Inger Klit on February 14th 1980 the ship has been 110nm away from itss home port Frederiksvaerk/ Sjaelland. Flensburg Fjord had been covered in thick fog and one had only a visibility range of 100-300m. Due to a misinterpretation of a radar image the 26 years old Inger Klit collided with the german cargo ship „Lina van Bargen“. This ship had a length of 84,11, a width of 13,60m and a load draft of 5,50m. The day of the collision Lina van Bargen was laeded with about 2725 tons of coal. At the time of the collision the bow of the german cargoship bored into the hull of Inger Klit. Within 4 minutes the whole shipping space was filled with water and Inger Klit sank. The danish crew was able to leave the ship before it sank and got rescued by the german crew of Linda van Bargen.

The foreship of Inger Klit is silted. The store room is still filled with scrap. Everything is covered with underwater plants. On the port side one can see the damage of Inger Klit. The wheelhouse is still intact and one can dive through it. Unfortunately divers have dismantled basically everything which one could dismantle. But in the end it is still an interesting and amazing wreck that one should dive to. After doing two dive sessions at Inger Klit we picked up pace to Sonderborg (Denmark). We landed in the port of Sonderborg in the evening and used the rest of the evening to visit the city. During our city trip we passed a big building right at the river which we already passed while entrance the port of Sonderborg. We found out that this building is divided in 2 parts. One part is used as a museum and the other is still a residence of the dansk royal family. Sometimes ship‘s have to move their embarkation point if the prince comes to Sonderborg boat. This even happened to our caption once.

Tuesday, 19th July Speedboat 103

The speedboat S 103 sank on Monday, May 4th 1945 after being attached by 6 Jabos. Only 12 out of a 32-head crew survived after a 45-minutes-fight for survival by swimming in the cold water and being rescued by a small fishing boat. The crew of this boat had watched the fight from land and after picking them up they helped the highly reserved crew with warm blankets. The speedboat might be also identified as a torpedo boat and was located in southern part of the small Belt in the near of harbour nowadays called Mommark. It belonged to the german military and was found by sheer chance through an opening in the cloud by british Air Force pilots while doing regular armed recce flights. The wreck was found 31 years later on a depth of 33m. Unfortunately torpedos were still active and so the Navy and a munition-clearance-service had to remove those as well as couple of depth bombs which one had found around the area of S 103. The wreck today:

Length: 34,94m Width: 5,29m Load draft: 1,67m

The wreck is still in sound condition. There are several ways to get to this wreck, but one should better choose an experienced captain who knows the sea very well and can give you also advices what one have to pay attention to during a dive to S 103.

Wednesday , 20th July Minesweeper 36

While doing the first dive at M 36, two of our divers made acquaintance of hair jellys. Luckily not too bad so after washing their faces with vinegar they went for a second dive but everybody has now been extremely on the watch because at no other wreck during this entire expedition we have been faced with hair jellys and above all not with that many. The problem was not only getting hurt in the face, more difficult was the fact that tentacled of some hair jellys stucked on the line of the buoy which we used for diving down to M 36. Those tentacled could damage the gloves of the dry suits. So all in all it was teh most demanding dive because one had to watch hair jellys and lots of crabs at the wreck, time window and drift, as well as the weather because the forecast said we have to expect growing wind and as a result of this more drift. Returning to the port of Bagenkop, we took time to go for a walk and getting to know the area.

Thursday, 21st July Koldkrigsmuseum Langelandsfort

Thursday was a day we could not go for a dive due to the weather. Beside not being able to dive we could not even leave the port till afternoon. To use the time wisely we decided to visit Koldkrigsmuseum Langelandsfort. It is a Cold War Museum and gives you the chance to view a military stronghold (on a total area of 11 hectars) and not only to see real jet fighters and big guns from close up but also to be able to touch them.

One can walk down into different bunkers that are fittet out exactly as they were when originally in use. Beside that you can also visit a small submarine and minesweeper. The submarine is 47m long and was built for the Norwegian Navy in 1964 in Emden, Germany. The crew consited of 24 men, armanent 8 torpedos. Its maximum diving depth was 186m. The boat operated in the North Sea and the Baltic and was well suited for surveillance tasks and for forward defence missions. After spending about 3 hours at Langelandsfort we walked back to the port, got on board and got ready to leave towards Troense, which has a small idyllic port for pleasure crafts and sailing boats. This trip took us about 3,5 hours and unfortunately we were accompanied by rain most of this way. While being on this route we made an intermediate stop to get to see the sistership of Inger Klit called „SAMKA Marstal“ which navigates under danish flag. Being out of the water for a whole day let us pleased the weather to become better on Friday. We spent the evening on board by reading about the wrecks we were planning on diving to on Friday.

Friday, 22nd July 4 Speedboats

Waking up on Friday morning let us realise that it has been still raining but at least the wind had calmed down so we wanted to try some dive sessions at an area where 4 speedboats had sunk. The first anchor rode has been fixed at S 4. The plan was to do dive sessions at least at 3 out of the 4 speedboats because there are located on a depth of only 8m. The data according the length, width and load draft match the ones of S 103. Regarding its history we only know that S 1-4 have been destroyed by german explosive commando in May 1945. Supposedly it has been a fleet of seven speedboats which have been sunk in this area but one have only found four of the seven speedboats. After the first dive down to S4 we noticed that the weather and drift became already stronger. So our original plan was cancelled and we decided to stay at this speedboat for another dive since the visibility has not been that well anyways and we wanted at least get to see the whole wreck. During our second dive, due to changing weather conditions, we used a safety line to make sure getting back to the buoy because it was about 3 m away from the wreck, fixed at some wreckage, but the miserable sight did not even let us look that far. Coming back on board after this dive, one could learn how fast weather changes on the open sea because by this point of time we had already heavy swell and started our tour towards Gelting Mole, the home port, since we had to expect storm the next days and we were about 12 hours away from the home port. From this point we made it only to a small port „Droene“ which was our emergency port for this night since it was too dangerous to go further due to the storm and waves. This little port had nothing around except the sanitary installations.

Saturday, 23rd July - Return Voyage

In the morning we left the small port without taking a big breakfast. Basically we only had some coffee because we had to expect rough sea and nobody accept the captain knew how our bodies would react to it. It was a real pity to stop the expedition at this point but safety goes first. When we arrived in Gelting Mole on saturday evening, we relaxed after the rough return voyage on board, enjoyed our last dinner and left the boat on sunday morning, even though everybody wished to be able to prolong the expedition. It was a lot of fun as well as instructive.

Undersuits Artic & subX

For the expedition the team used 2 different kind of undersuits. The type Artic, as well as the type SUBX. We all used a cordura drysuit and both kind of undersuits fit well with the drysuits. Artic is comfortable to wear if you go for a dive when it is sunny outside and the water temperature is about 15-20 degrees Celsius. Under this condition the Arctic Undersuit is good if your dive sessions are up to one hour. If your dive sessions take longer or you cross the thermocline for a long time, we chose the SUBX undersuit. It gets pretty warm in this undersuit and whenever the sun was out, we had to hurry to get into the water, because otherwise we would dehydrate. While diving the SUBX as well as the Arctic gives you enough freedom of movement. The SUBX is perfect for longer dives and the jacket of this undersuit is also good for wearing while being on board. No matter if it has been stormy, rainy or just cold in the evening during this expedition – the jacket was a perfect partner for all weather conditions. This was a big advantage on the expedition when you do not have much space anyways for luggage on board, because we did not have to take another jacket with us.