Dennis Bakhuis

Dive site · sea · Ras Muhammad and Sha'ab Mahmud

🇪🇬 Beacon Rock, Sha'ab Mahmud

Sha'ab Mahmud, South Sinai, Egypt

The reef named for the steel beacon on its southern tip — which stands there because of the ship lying upside down just off the wall below it.

Dives here
3
Deepest
21.8 m
Water
salt
First · last
2017 · 2017

Revision 1 · changed 10 Oct 2026

History
  1. r1 10 Oct 2026 Imported from the personal log · Dennis Bakhuis

Site data © divelog-sites contributors (ODbL), descriptions and maps CC BY-SA 4.0 · 53edcaf

1 map

Reef edgeDrift along the wall, 6-20 m · 482 mBeacon Rock↓0 mSouth cardinal beaconDunraven wreck↓29 mWreck (sunk April 2017)Zodiac dropN50 m
  • Entry / exit
  • Point of interest
  • Wreck
  • Lighthouse / tower
  • Dive path
  • Wall / drop-off
  • Wreck footprint
  • Depth
Site map · 4 objects · 1 path · max 29 m

Beacon Rock, the southern tip of the Sha'ab Mahmud reef, with the south cardinal beacon on the reef top and the Dunraven upside down at the foot of the wall just south-west of it. Reef edge, beacon and the 2017 wreck from OpenStreetMap (the reef outline there is coarse); the wreck position from dive guides. Dives are dropped by zodiac and drift along the wall back to the boat; drop point and drift direction depend on the current and are approximate.

Map © divelog-sites contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0 · 53edcaf

Sha'ab Mahmud is a large reef system enclosing a lagoon, west of Ras Muhammad at the mouth of the Gulf of Suez. Beacon Rock is the coral outcrop at its southern end, and the name is literal: there is a metal navigation beacon on it.

The beacon is there because of the Dunraven, which hit this reef in 1876 and rolled over into 30 m of water just off the wall. You can dive the reef and the wreck on one tank — the wall itself is good, with overhangs and a drop into the blue, and the wreck is a short swim along it.

Three dives here over 15–16 October 2017, to 21.8 m; the Dunraven is logged separately.

Position corrected September 2026. The workbook had this at Bluff Point on Gubal Seghir, 32 km south-west — there is a lighthouse there too, which is presumably how it happened. It put Beacon Rock 32 km from the Dunraven, even though the Dunraven lies 580 m off this reef and was dived the same day. The position is now OSM node/768031212.

Dived here with

Kim Peter Ruben Saskia

Nearby sites

3 dives at Beacon Rock, Sha'ab Mahmud

  1. 16 Oct 2017 with Ruben boat date16 Oct 2017 depth18.6 m time68 min water—
  2. 15 Oct 2017 with Peter, Saskia boat date15 Oct 2017 depth11 m time64 min water—
  3. 15 Oct 2017 with Kim boat date15 Oct 2017 depth21.8 m time70 min water—

Sources

  • First-hand observation (Dennis Bakhuis)