DIVE HAPPY

With the minimum of publicity, the Royal Thai Navy sunk RTN Kood just off Pattaya on September 17th, giving Thailand's second biggest city its third shipwreck for divers to explore

After months of talking about it, the Royal Thai Navy quietly took the RTN Kood out to sea two days ago and sunk it yesterday 45 minutes boat ride away from Pattaya beach, Thailand's second biggest city and a big diver destination. The Kood is a sister ship to HMS Khram, which is one of Pattaya's other famous wrecks. (The third wreck is the Hardeep). The ship was scuttled between the Near Islands sites of Koh Sak and Laem Tong, which runs as deep as 55m. The ship was sunk in approximately 30m of water, making it accessible to Adventure Diver-certified or above divers.

Aquanauts Dive Centre has an excellent page detailing the sinking of RTN Kood, complete with a photo sequence of the ship disappearing beneath the waves and also a video you can watch too, along with the details of the ship's new submerged location.

Aquanauts also provides a very good overview of the HMS Khram wreck and Pattaya dive sites in general. I covered Peter Walker's DVD about the fascinating history of the Hardeep (actually properly known as the Suddhadib) before.

I've only dived on the HMS Khram myself, and it was definitely the highlight of my diving in Pattaya. Conditions on Pattaya reefs are frankly not that great - murky viz and lots of damage to the corals. But the Khram is a superb dive, and virtually every old-hand diver I spoke to in Pattaya said the Hardeep is even better. The Kood now gives me a reason to go and dive Pattaya again and see all three wrecks.