Safaga

Diving here is day-boat work out of the harbour, and the timetable answers to the wind rather than the clock. Crews generally take the long crossing to the offshore marks first, while the sea is at its flattest, then work back towards the coast for a shallower second dive and lunch at anchor. Fixed moorings are the norm on the busier reefs, so entries are a giant stride off the platform and, when the surface is moving, a straight descent down the line rather than an amble down the slope.

The sites fall into two kinds. Offshore, isolated reefs rise out of deep water with steep outer faces and shallow tops, and you dive them as a loop: down one flank with the blue on your shoulder, round the point where the current divides, then back onto the coral shallows to off-gas. Inshore is gentler ground — coral heads standing on sand, sheltered bays, slow drop-offs, straightforward navigation. Exposure rather than depth is what separates the two, so the same site can give a very different dive from one day to the next.

What people come back for is the soft-coral cover on the exposed vertical faces and the blue-water hang out on the current-swept ridge, holding position at the reef edge and watching what passes. Those marks are the first to go when the weather turns, and Safaga's northerlies are reliable enough that the bay, screened by Safaga Island offshore, has long doubled as a windsurfing and kiting base. The wind that fills those sails is the wind that cancels the crossing, though a blown-out morning usually reshuffles the plan rather than ending it.

Safaga also loads liveaboards bound for the reefs further south, so a dawn mooring shared with a bigger boat is not unusual. Anyone hoping to dive the Salem Express should raise it at the booking stage rather than assume: not every operator runs her, and where she is offered it tends to be as her own outing rather than a slot in a routine two-tank day. Published casualty figures from the 1991 sinking have never been reconciled, differing by hundreds between official counts and later estimates, and briefings cover conduct on the wreck as carefully as the dive plan.