Rubis wreck (Cavalaire)

What is the story of the Rubis submarine?

The Rubis was a Saphir-class minelaying submarine, built at the Toulon shipyards and launched on September 30, 1931. She carried 32 mines and could lay them without surfacing. In June 1940, she was in Dundee, Scotland, when the armistice was signed, and she joined the Free French Naval Forces. She mined the coast of Norway from May 1940, the Bay of Biscay in 1942 and 1943, and the approaches to Stavanger in 1944. In 22 patrols, she laid nearly 683 mines and sank 22 ships, 14 of them German: the highest tally in the Free French Naval Forces.

Struck from the lists on October 4, 1949, she was sunk on January 31, 1958 off Cap Camarat to serve as a sonar target, with a 9 kg charge placed at the stern. That explains the state of the wreck: a whole submarine, sitting upright, without the break of a shipwreck.

What can you see on the Rubis at 41 m?

The wreck is 66 m long, 7 m wide and 8 m high. She sits upright on white sand, with the deck at around 34 m and the keel at 41. You descend along the mooring line, circle the hull in one direction, then come back over the deck and the conning tower. The net cutter is still in place at the stern, the openings in the hull let your light in on the conger eels, and the cloud of anthias and Mediterranean chromis wraps around everything. You can see it all in a single dive, which makes it one of the few big deep wrecks in the Var that you see whole in one go. It ranks among the hundred most beautiful dives in the world.

Current, depth, nitrox: how should you dive the Rubis?

The Rubis combines the constraints of a deep wreck and an offshore site. The current, sometimes 3 knots, hits at the surface as well as on the bottom: descend and ascend along the mooring line, hand on it, and keep the group together around the hull. At 41 m on a standard air tank, manage narcosis and air consumption from the moment you go in. Nitrox, €10 at Mio Palmo, extends your no-decompression time but changes nothing about the maximum depth, which you must respect for your mix. Exposure to every wind makes cancellations common: plan this trip early in your stay, with a spare day.