Living life and making memories: Truk

On Tuesday, February 15th, I was ready to be out diving! We ate breakfast at the restuarant at the hotel, which, is where we ate EVERY single meal while we were in Truk. We actually never left the resort, except for a trip to another island. I don't feel bad about that though because there was just not much to do in the town of Weno.

Anyway, our first dive of the day was the Fujikawa Maru. I was told that morning that this was supposed to be the most famous site in Truk...the site that the most pictures are taken of for dive magazines and stuff like that. I will be honest, I'm not a huge fan of wreck diving, although Dan LOVES it. I don't really like going inside them, penetrating, as it's called in the diving world. I get nervous about that, and I just really prefer seeing the beautiful fish and corals and all that. So, when people were passing around maps of this ships during breakfast, and talking about the "super structure" and lengths and widths and what type of ship it was and all that, it kinda just went in one ear and out the other. But, I was excited to experience something new.

So, the 12 of us divers hopped on two boats, along with the boat driver and dive guide and headed out to the dive site. Alls I can say, is that the dive was AMAZING!!!!!! It was by far the best wreck that I had ever dove, and it still my favorite dive of the Truk trip.

The ship was VERY long, but we were able to enter the cargo holds on the sides. They were these huge openings, and you could swim from one to the other, versus swimming around the boat, which was much easier and we were able to see a lot more of the cool stuff. Inside the cargo holds we saw a Japanese bomber plane, a gas mask and barrels of oil. This dive had a lot of swim throughs and they were so much fun. I have attached a bunch of pictures, because there were so many beautiful ones I just couldn't decide what to leave out. We also saw several sake bottles, which we saw on almost every dive. The majority of the ships that were sank, where merchant cargo ships with supplies, which included a lot of sake!!

My favorite pink and purple soft corals.

This gas mask was inside one of the cargo holds.

This was the opening to the back of the gun, where ammunition was loaded.

The gun or canon. (not sure the proper ship term.)

Canon again.

Canon again...with a lot of fish.

Canon again...more fish.

This was the dial that said at the speed. It still moved, because Dan touched it.

Interesting that it was written in English.

Another canon. Divers in the scene are Dan and Tom.

Dan above the canon. You can see how big it is with him in the shot for perspective.

This was Dan's 200th dive. The strobe flooded out what was written on his slate,

but he sure does look cute!!

Steps leading from up from the deck.

Sake!!!!

More sake bottles scattered around the deck.

All I can say is that diving the Fujikawa was AMAZING! It was so beautiful. The ship and the things were saw were fantastic...and the amount of coral and fishlife was unreal.

Taking decent pictures inside the ships is kinda difficult. Because there is no sunlight if you've penetrated, you have to use the strobe, but using the strobe tends to highlight a of backscatter so the pictures aren't super clear. But some of the videos look pretty cool.

This video is of the inside of the first cargo hold. You can see the bomber.

This is a video of the swim through from the first cargo hold to the second.

This is a video of the second cargo hold. You can lots of barrels and ammo and a gas mask.

After lunch and a nice surface interval, our second dive was on the Yamagiri Maru. This was a nice dive, but definately not nearly as spectacular as the first one. We saw some ammunition and were able to go inside the engine room. You were also able to do a little swim through the engine room and up a staircare to a room where there was a skull. I chickened out though and didn't see it. I felt kinda like a loser for being a chicken, but oh well, I'm over that.