Felipe Xicoténcatl (C-53)

A mooring line runs down to a minesweeper standing upright on pale sand, with buoys made fast at both bow and stern1. On a clear day the hull shows from the surface before you reach it, 56 metres of ship with the superstructure starting around 13 m and the sand at 242.

The usual tour takes the outside first, bow to stern. The bow is thickly encrusted, the guns are still on their mounts amidships, the depth charges are still on the stern, and the code C-53 can be read on the side of the hull1. The last few metres lead to the propellers on the sand, which is the deepest you will be all dive.

If you go in, you go through openings that were cut for divers before she was sunk. The through routes are bright and the compartments are dark, and the dark ones are where the residents sit: glassy sweepers packed into a corridor, a big green moray in a space the experienced guides swim straight to. Most tours take in the wheelhouse, the corridors, the engine room with its engines still in their beds, and the galley.

Silt changes this dive. Twenty-odd years of it have settled into the lower compartments and a flutter kick lifts the lot, so the choice inside is frog kick or staying out. With this much to look at at 24 m, divers say the gauge moves faster than they expect.

A fleet minesweeper that helped reopen Manila Bay in 1945 now lies on a sandbank off Chankanaab as a dive site, put there on purpose. The sandbank was chosen so that no reef would be crushed, and she was stripped of hazards and cut open before she went down. One operator calls it the only wreck dive in Cozumel.

Twenty-odd years have given the plate time to fill. Sponges and encrusting growth cover it, yellowtail snapper hang off the superstructure, black grouper hold particular sections of hull as if they had addresses, and spiny lobsters clump under the walkways in numbers that surprise people. A big barracuda is reported near the bridge. It is steel on a bare sandbank, and everything living on it arrived after 2000.

Many divers also use this wreck to find out whether they like being inside a ship. Some go through the openings, and some decide on the boat or at an opening to stay outside this time.

She was laid down as USS Scuffle on 4 May 1943 at Winslow Marine Railway and Shipbuilding in Seattle and commissioned on 2 May 1944, an Admirable-class fleet minesweeper 184 feet 6 inches long34.

In January 1945 she swept ahead of the Lingayen Gulf landings. Working off Corregidor in February, the minesweepers came within 5,000 yards of the island and were repeatedly straddled by Japanese fire before supporting ships silenced the guns. She went back into Manila Bay ten days later, and by 10 April the sweep had cleared 615 square miles of water and reopened the harbour. Brunei Bay, Balikpapan, three typhoons on the way to Sasebo and the Japanese minefields of the Tsushima Strait followed. She earned five battle stars3.

She was struck from the US Navy list on 1 May 1962 and transferred to Mexico on 1 October3, and by the 1990s she carried the name General Felipe Xicoténcatl and the number C-534.

Accounts date her sinking to June 2000, with President Ernesto Zedillo present1, though one register gives 19994. The project was run by the island's watersports and tourism association with the local dive shops and the marine park5. She was one of three hulls authorised under a single federal artificial-reef programme, and the others went to Veracruz and Cancún; the Cancún hull is a different ship5.

Surface current is reported as significant on some days and softer around the hull, so make the descent on the mooring line.

A light is required inside whatever card you hold, and a backup is worth carrying: the one equipment failure divers report on this wreck is a primary light flooding at depth. Entry is the guide's call on the day, and operator policies differ, so settle it in the briefing.

Gloves are prohibited throughout the marine park, which matters more on a steel wreck than on a reef. Fire coral grows on the hull and lionfish may be inside, so keep your trim and stay off the plate.

Operators split on whether she belongs on the first tank or the second, and the choice comes down to how much bottom time the group wants. Whichever it is, plan the gas for 24 m before you drop, because the propellers, the galley and the moray are all worth lingering over.