Marsaskala · Malta

Tugboat 10

A little Grand Harbour tug sunk on purpose in 1998, sitting upright in about 21 metres of water a short swim from the Marsaskala shore, and usually dived back to back with her neighbour St. Michael.

Advanced🪸 Reef🚢 Wreck20 to 24 mShore access: easyPopularity: highAlso called Iż-Żgħira, MV No.10, Melita type tug, No 10, Number Ten, Tug 10

Plan this dive

Sea conditions

Good right now

Some chop (0.5 m E)

Forecast for the site, updated 01:46 AM

Waves: 0.5 m; from E
Wind: n/a
Swell: 0.5 m; 5 s period
Sea temp: 28 °C

Next 7 days

Today🌤️68 0.5 m
0 N

Sat🌤️81 0.4 m
0 N

Sun🌤️81 0.4 m
0 N

Mon🌤️96 0.2 m
0 N

Tue🌤️87 0.4 m
0 N

Wed🌤️30 1.1 m
0 N

Thu🌤️30 1.1 m
0 N

Exposed to wind and swell from: NE (45°), E (90°), SE (135°), S (180°). Genuinely sheltered from the north west, which is why half of Malta ends up here when the weather turns. An easterly or south easterly puts swell straight into the entry and makes the exit over the rocks unpleasant. Best season: Diveable all year. Best from May to November, and it is the classic winter fallback when the north coast is out of action..

The dive

Number 10 is the dive that turns a nervous newly qualified diver into someone who likes wrecks. She is sixteen metres of chunky harbour tug, upright, intact enough to read and small enough to lap twice, sitting on flat sand with her nose almost touching the reef. The depth is friendly, the route is obvious, and there is a reef to play on all the way back to shore, which means nobody ends the dive early with gas to spare.

Swim out from the Żonqor rocks and the bottom steps down in stages, rock and low reef giving way to a sand plain somewhere around eighteen metres. The tug appears at the edge of that transition. Over nearly three decades she has grown a coat of sponge and encrusting life, so her outlines are softened and every bollard and rail carries something living. Look into the wheelhouse doorway and the darker recesses and you will find cardinalfish hanging in clouds and a scorpionfish doing its best impression of a rock.

Most people carry straight on eastwards across the sand to St. Michael, then turn and come home along the reef wall in the shallows. That reef leg is quietly the best part of the dive: gullies, boulders, octopus in every third crack, and enough light at six or seven metres to make the colours behave.

Marsaskala visibility is the site's only real weakness. This is a sheltered corner on a busy bay, so the water is rarely as clear as the north west of the island. What you lose in clarity you gain in reliability: when the whole of the north coast is blown out by a north westerly, Żonqor is glass.

A complete little tug at a depth almost anyone can dive
Bow resting against the reef, a lovely wide-angle framing
Two wrecks and a reef in a single shore dive
Sheltered when the rest of Malta is blown out
Reliable octopus and scorpionfish on the way home

Typical plan

Enter off the rocks, drop to five metres and follow a compass bearing out across the sloping reef until the sand starts at around eighteen metres. Turn along the reef base and the bow of Number 10 shows up quickly. Circle her once at deck level, look into the wheelhouse from outside, then cross the fifty metre sand gap to St. Michael at 21 to 22 metres. Turn there, come back onto the reef and spend the last twenty minutes drifting home in five to ten metres. A single 12 litre cylinder of air gives a comfortable forty five minute dive; nitrox 32 makes the double-wreck plan far more relaxed.

What the bottom looks like

1Boulders and gullies on the way out9 m deep · 60 m out
2Foot of the Żonqor reef19 m deep · 140 m out
3Bow of Tugboat 10 against the reef18 m deep · 160 m out
4Stern of Tugboat 10 on sand21 m deep · 178 m out
5Sand gap between the two tugs21 m deep · 205 m out
6St. Michael, the usual second stop22 m deep · 245 m out

Cartoon cross-section along the usual route from Żonqor Point rocks, south side, approximate. Depths are approximate.

Flat, fine sand with no seagrass, backed by a low rocky reef that runs parallel to the shore.

Who you might meet

Getting in and staying safe

One of the easiest wreck dives in Malta to organise. Drive to Żonqor Point in Marsaskala, park on the open ground near the point, and kit up beside the car. Public toilets, kiosks, cafes and a dive centre are all within a short walk, and the big outdoor pool complex is the landmark everyone uses. Entry is over low rocks on the southern side of the point, which are slippery when wet, so plan your exit before you get in. A compass bearing straight out from the entry is the usual way to find the wreck without wasting gas on the surface.

Visibility in the bay is usually poorer than elsewhere in Malta
Silt inside the hull that a careless fin will destroy in seconds
Confined passageways: penetration is possible but unforgiving
Old fishing line snagged on rails and the mast stump
Slippery rock entry and sea urchins in the shallows
Boat traffic across the mouth of Marsaskala Bay
Easy to overshoot the wreck and end up on empty sand

A bit of history

Number 10 was almost certainly built at Malta Drydocks in the late 1940s or early 1950s, a sixteen metre Melita type tug, and she spent her working life shoving ships around Valletta's Grand Harbour. Very little of her paperwork survives. She ended up laid up at Jetties Wharf in Marsa alongside St. Michael, where both eventually sat down on the harbour mud with only a couple of metres of water under them. The Cassar Group bought the pair and in November 1996 offered them to Malta's diving community as artificial reefs, paying for the lifting, cleaning and towing themselves. Glass, doors and hatches were stripped out and a few passageways opened up, and on 16 May 1998 both tugs were sunk off Żonqor Point, chosen because it is sheltered from the prevailing north westerlies, the bottom was bare sand rather than protected seagrass, and twenty metres suits ordinary recreational divers.