Eight Days in Chuuk - Day Two

Woody

Second morning, with the other groups about to leave, divers were down to three – us two and Woody, a retired pilot from Alabama, who’d arrived the day before us.

Dive 2 – Seiko Maru - a 5,000-ton cargo ship. Early morning deep dive – down to 43m. Following our guide for the week, Tomo and spotted a grey reef shark swimming around the deck as we descended. Took a bit of getting used to diving deep, getting into deco and watching our air. Swam around the holds, one with torpedoes, and round the bows, then back to the line to start ascent at 100 bar.

Then started the usual liveaboard routine – eat, dive, eat, dive, eat, dive, eat, dive, eat, sleep! Just about time to shower, rinse off swimsuit and eat a cake before the next dive. Slightly longer break before the next dive, as the tender was off to take the other guests back to Weno. However, we weren’t long before we were off to…

Dive 3 – Heian Maru – 11,614-ton submarine tender, sunk on her port side. Dropped down to the wreck making our way to the bow to see the name on the side of the ship. Then in and out of holds, saw torpedo warheads stacked on the deck and periscope tubes piled in a gangway. As we swam along, we got a sense of just how vast the ship. Managed to make our way right to the stern and up over the propellers, which were covered in life and back along the starboard side to the shot line and safety stops.

Dive 4 – Yubae Maru - 3,217-ton army cargo ship on port side. This is the wreck with the sewing machine in one of the holds. Couldn’t do too much penetration as it’s starting to collapse but we went in a few holds and saw lots of chinaware. Spent quite a long time at the propellers (where the shot line was) looking at the plentiful life growing on and swimming around them before it was time to ascend for stops.

One of the Betty Bomber engines

Dive 5 – Betty Bomber – Mitsubishi G4M3 Navy type attack bomber. More a dusk dive starting at 5:20pm. We descended down to the wreck but immediately set off over the reef to see the engines, which settled a hundred yards beyond the rest of the plane. Had the camera out for the first time in Chuuk and got a few shots before the light started to fail. Was too scared to swim through the body of the plane as it needed a bit of a wiggle to get out at the tail but went inside to see the thousands of glassfish. As the fourth dive of the day, we were all getting a bit tired so dive didn’t last too long despite being over 10m shallower than any of the others that day.

A general consensus between the three of us that we didn’t want to do a night dive after dinner (much to the delight of staff) so instead showered and changed for dinner and the evening. After eating, we moved rooms to the lower deck – with only one other guest, we had the choice of any cabin for the week. Then an evening of relaxing in the lounge before another early night.