And so last Thursday we gathered a party of about twelve divers and two dive boats and shot off from the Sharjah coast.After 30 minutes of bouncing on the sea surface, we arrived at the dive site. The water was crystal clear and the wreck could be seen from the surface.

‘Anchor away!’ came the shout followed by a hundred successive clinks of metal as the anchor chain snaked across the front of our boat and into the sea.

The first wave kitted up and performed the usual equipment checks before plunging into the water with a mighty splash. I systematically ticked their names off a soggy dive log before getting my fins on to do a bit of wreck reconnaisance.

I jumped in and suddenly found myself in the water’s grasp being pulled out to sea. I reached for the rope on the side of the boat but only got a finger on it before the current got the better of me. I ended up grabbing the rope connecting our two dive boats and slowly worked my way up and on to the second boat.

‘Doing a bit of mountain climbing?’ a fellow diver chuckled.

The first wave of divers surfaced and it was our turn to get our kit on - the most painful and annoying part of diving.

I put on my boots, slipped my fingers into my gloves, zipped up my wetsuit, put my dive computer on, attached the air cylinder to my jacket, attached the regulator to the cylinder and inserted all the hoses into their respective places, wrapped a weight belt around my waist, put my jacket on, put my fins on, put my mask around my neck and spat in it (no, this is not some silly diving tradition - it prevents the mask from fogging up underwater). Whew… finally ready to go.

Now, let me tell you, when you’ve got hoses, cameras, lights, whistles, scissors, knives, and all sorts of other crap sticking out of you like a porcupine, in addition to hauling a heavy steel tank on your back, every step you take is an excruciating battle to stay calm and balanced especially with the boat rocking back and forth.

Once you take the plunge into the water though, a lovely warmth flows through your body (but that could be the piss you were dying to take on the boat floating up your wetsuit).