MV Xlendi

The inverted hull looms up keel-first at around 32 metres after a five-minute fin west down the reef slope from the Xatt l-Ahmar entry. This is an exterior tour, not a penetration dive: work the propellers at the shallow ends, run the broad flank of the upturned hull, and drop along the sea side toward 42 to 44 metres if gas and training allow, looking into the hull edges for moray, octopus and anemones without going in. The crushed superstructure lies beneath the hull, short of exits and off-limits. Fish life is dense along the outside, so there is plenty to see without ever nearing an overhead. Afterwards you climb back up the reef slope, hunting octopus and cuttlefish across the boulders and Posidonia toward a safety stop near the ladders.

Xlendi is the serious one of the trio. Where Karwela invites you in and Cominoland tells a story, Xlendi is a big inverted hull on a slope, hull-up like a capsized whale, with the superstructure it once carried now flattened beneath it. The draw is exactly that wrongness: the twin propellers standing proud at 32 metres, the broad hull rising overhead, the sense of a ship that went down the way no ship should. She is the largest and deepest of the three, and the only one whose scuttling went wrong, which is what pulls the experienced divers who have already worked the other two.

She was built in 1955 at Helsingor in Denmark as a train and car ferry. After more than thirty years in Danish service she was sold to Maltese owners and renamed Royal Sheeba in 1987 and then Borgshorn in 1988. In 1990 the Gozo Channel Company acquired her, renamed her Xlendi, and ran her as a passenger and car ferry between Gozo and Malta1. Her career was accident-prone, and she was often described as an unfortunate ship shaped like a coffin: she ran aground at Comino in 1992, hit the Mgarr quay in 1995, and suffered a fire in 1999, though no casualties were recorded1. Handed to the Gozo Tourism Association, she became Gozo's first artificial reef when she was scuttled on 12 November 1999, cleaned of fuels and oils with doors and windows removed. Strong winds on the day pushed the sinking off plan and she rolled, coming to rest completely upside down with the superstructure crushed beneath the hull2. This was a planned artificial-reef scuttling with no loss of life.

This is the deepest and least forgiving of the Xatt l-Ahmar wrecks, running from the propellers at 32 metres to 44 metres on the sea side, so it is an experienced-diver dive with Deep-level training strongly indicated. Penetration is not a recreational option here: the interior is inverted, crushed, silted and short of exits, and warning signs are posted to keep divers out. Stay off the structure and keep your trim along the hull, where sharp metal and silt are the main concerns. Plan gas and no-decompression time around the deep sea-side hull, and treat Xlendi as the first and deepest dive of a two-wreck day rather than a casual pair-up.