River Gurara — bow

The run out from the Porto de Abrigo goes west toward Cabo Espichel, where the River Gurara went down on 26 February 1989. The ship broke in the middle, and this dive is the bow half of it, the section that stayed nearer the coast. The wreck sits at an average depth of 28 m, so the whole profile is planned around that number from the moment you leave the boat.

Work the structure rather than the sand. Large congers hold in the openings in the plating, and pouting, seabream and wrasse move over the section with morays, squid and octopus tucked into the smaller gaps. Visibility on this coast swings widely from month to month and site to site, so how much of the wreck reads as one shape on any given day is the variable, not the depth.

The two halves of the ship are dived separately. The stern lies at an average of 23 m, and Paredes do Cabo, the wall beside the cape at 12–15 m, carries scattered traces of the same wreck — enough that a second dive on the shallower ground still keeps you on the River Gurara. Ascents come off the wreck itself, and at 28 m in Atlantic water the ascent is the part of the plan that matters.