Torvore Wreck

The Torvore lies about half a kilometre off the south-facing coast of the western Algarve, east-northeast of Sagres inside a south-opening embayment tucked behind Cabo de Sao Vicente and Ponta de Sagres. Those headlands sit to the WSW of the site (bearings 238-248 degrees) and, together with the north-south mainland coast, shadow the dominant W-NW Atlantic groundswell that hammers Portugal's west coast, which is the only reason a ~30 m wreck on this shelf is regularly divable. Only refracted, wrapped-around energy from the WSW-W reaches the site, badly reduced, so those sectors are low. The land wrapping the site from northwest through north to northeast blocks the N-NW and NE sectors almost entirely, and the coast curving back toward Salema keeps the ENE-E partly sheltered. The fully open window is the Atlantic to the south: the SE through S to SSW sector faces clean deep water, with good exposure southeast along the coast toward the Gulf of Cadiz. The SW is only partly open, grazing just south of the cape. In practice the wreck is diveable in calm summer weather, but a Southerly or SW blow, or a large refracted W swell, quickly builds surface waves and current and forces trips to be cancelled.