Truk Lagoon - Report & Photos

[broady]

After years of dreaming about going and with 4 flights over 2 days / 1 night just to get there I really hoped that Truk Lagoon would live up to everything I had ever read about it.

Getting There

We used DiveQuest in Clitheroe to book the whole package, flights rooms, hotels etc... and they provided exceptional service and loads of info about every leg of the trip. I am thoroughly happy to recommend them to fellow YD’ers. You can save a few quid by booking everything direct on the internet but I didn’t want to take the risk of cocking up on such potentially complex flight and hotel arrangements and there wasn’t a huge difference in price.

Our plane flights to Singapore, Manila, Guam and then on to Truk (or Chuuk as it is now known) were largely uneventful save for the fact that Singapore Airlines have gone down in my estimation. They ran out of some meal choices and the temperature in the cabin went from sweaty humid to cold and vice versa. With no individual overhead fans it was a pretty uncomfortable flight. On the way out we had a maximum of 3 hours between flights but had to endure 5 airline meals - bleuurgh !!


The Hotel

Upon arrival we were transferred to our hotel in a rotten old blue mini-bus whose 1st step up into the cabin had completely rusted into oblivion and the whole vehicle should have been condemned to the scrapheap years ago !!! The road journey to our hotel was along a very pitted and bumpy road that was probably last maintained 20+ years ago but as the average speed was around 5 mph I didn’t have much fear of the death-trap bus falling apart – at least I felt confident I could jump clear without sustaining injury if it did !

The island of Weno itself is a bit of a shithole with its residents seemingly uncaring about ruining there tropical island by dumping cars and litter everywhere. Granted they are poor but they also don’t seem to care. Shame.

Our first 2 days were land-based at the Blue Lagoon Hotel which occupies the old WW2 Japanese seaplane base. Facilities were reasonably basic, but functional and spacious. The restaurant served actually very good food and the staff were helpful and friendly, if a little lethargic !! The bedroom was air-conditioned and had tv/ dvd, fridge, shower/bath and 2 double beds and was probably UK 2-3 star equivalent.



Land-based diving
We dived for the first 2 days with the resident diveshop founded by Kimiuo Aisek who witnessed the attacks on the Japanese ships in the Lagoon during ‘Operation Hailstone’ in 1944 and was largely responsible for the early days of diving the wrecks and founding the diveshop. He died a few years ago but his son Gradvin continues to run the business.

Diving is done from fibreglass skiffs which take between 15 and 40 minutes to reach most of the wrecks and go out at 9 a.m before returning for lunch and going out again around 2 p.m. It isn’t very busy over Xmas and there were 4 of us with a guide and boatman on all the dives. We had taken our backplates and wings as twinsets and stages would be available later on when we transferred to the Odyssey liveaboard, but for now we used twinning bands and dived ‘Twin-dependants’.
Nitrox was £10 per tank and we found not really worth it as the dive guide often gave incorrect info for the depth of dive - this we found out the hard way when we became depth restricted due to running too hot a mix for the dive we had been advised would be shallower! Lesson learnt.

Air is adequate anyway as the diving with Blue Lagoon Diveshop is all guided and within PADI NDL’s. A drop tank and extra weights hang below the boat at 5 metres on every dive and to be fair the guide did encourage lengthy stops.





Odyssey Liveaboard

From our hotel room balcony we looked out across the bay at the luxury liveaboard ‘Odyssey’ moored up awaiting our and 12 our guests arrival on Sunday afternoon. This liveaboard really is the business having won best liveaboard awards from various publications, there is a 2 year waiting list to get on it !! It is really the most effortless and luxurious way to dive the lagoon as it has exclusive moorings on a lot of the wrecks. The 2 other liveaboards moor up in one spot in the lagoon and divers have to transfer to the wrecks by ribs or skiffs. From Odyssey you just jump in from the ample dive deck – class !!

The boat itself is very spacious, each suite having its own shower, toilet, wash basin, beds, tv and dvd. The restaurant is large, having a central ‘island’ for food and large surrounding tables. A large bar with hot and cold drinks and ‘nibbles’ is at the end of the room. Alcohol is free and plentiful in supply and ships rule is that your diving is over when you open the tinnies !! Fair enough. Dive briefings take place here at breakfast and lunch. Very civilised.

There is an entertainment lounge with large screen tv, dvd and comfortable seating areas, fridge with soft drinks and charging station with hundreds of outlets for torch / camera battery charging. This room also houses the boutique for all your T’shirt / memorabilia purchases.

The dive deck is monster big with kitting up benches with seats you lift to stow your general gear – fins, masks etc... very large, definitely designed with the larger posterior American diver in mind !!! You keep your seat for the week and fills are done direct via whips. Wetsuits hang from dedicated rails, there are separate wash tanks for general items and cameras. A separate large camera bench with compressed air hose for drying cameras off etc.. There is a fresh warm-water shower on deck and hot towels provided after every dive. An ‘igloo’ water cooler is in one corner for refreshments whilst kitting up and to keep hydrated.

Diving is available at any time of the day immediately following breakfast, with the only rule being that you are back on board the boat at lunchtime to allow it to move to a different site for the afternoon. Typically Odyssey moved whilst we were eating breakfast and lunch and visited 2 different wrecks per day (3 on one occasion) The great thing is that you can just dive yourself without a guide although they are available if you wish – the boat is moored directly over the wreck - the pool is open !

Food was 1st class and plentiful and you just helped yourself to snacks, hot/cold drinks as and when you wanted. The staff were very attentive and really added to the experience. I had worried a little that our diving companions would be annoyingly ‘American’ if you know what I mean but we were pleasantly surprised and for the large part they were actually very good company. They were certainly better than the American stereotype (most were lawyers and attorneys though!) so maybe I need to widen my views on our cousins across the pond. Another lesson learned.

One interesting guy, ‘Bob’ was the Captain of ‘Seeker’ in the mid nineties after Dan Crowell and Bill Nagel – for those who have read Shadow Divers etc...., a New Jersey wreck diver full of stories about the Andrea Doria and U-869 amongst others.

Nic and I were diving manifolded twin-sets for all dives, with stages (30 cu ft – not the biggest !) taken on selected dives for deco. Deco was run on the VR3’s and pretty conservative settings – the water was warm (29 deg) and the hangtime easy peasy. As the Odyssey swings on it’s mooring in the wind its great fun to attach a jon line to the deco bar for your final stop and ride it like a fun-fair ride – add a bit of the Red Hot Chilli’s on the MP3’s (thanks Gary / warmwaterdiver) and it makes for a very enjoyable way to end a dive !!





continued....

[broady]

The Wrecks

Holy moly !!!! I can’t believe anything will ever compare to this . Dial in the easy depths (18 – 40 metres typical), good vis and sheer number and scale of the wrecks and their cargos and it truly is wreck heaven. The Red Sea wrecks are nice enough but when you are diving one of these babies and have it all to yourself for hours at a time you feel like you are taking the p....!



They are almost beyond description and our photos on our little Fuji F30 really don’t do them justice. Many artefacts still remain amongst the cargo and most of the penetration into the holds is easy peasy – I only had to use a line once to get into an engine room but otherwise the entrances and exits from the holds are cavernous. You couldn’t silt out these holds due to their sheer size even if you spend all day in them with a group of Open Water novices !!!!

Tanks, trucks, ammunition boxes, medical supplies, guns, cannons, mines, periscopes, torpedoes, bombs, gas masks, sake bottles, telegraphs, compass binnacles – just endless things to find and investigate. Sharks and rays patrol the decks from time to time and after a few days you have to pinch youself from becoming too blasé about what you are seeing !! Incredible stuff.



We invested in a set of ‘wreck slates’ which Odyssey had specially printed with a plan of each wreck and the things of note to see, very handy and great for planning the dive on

It’s so hard to say what the best dive was, the majority of ships were cargo ships with lots to see but we also dived a destroyer and a bomber that crashed after taking off from a nearby airfield. The ‘San Francisco Maru’ or the ‘Million Dollar Wreck’ as it became tagged due to the sheer value of it’s cargo was my last dive and probable favourite with it’s holds stuffed with trucks and munitions, tanks on decks etc... It was also the deepest and longest dive I did so maybe that makes it more memorable (or not with a bit of the Narcs!) – 54 metres on air with a 30 minute bottom time and 95 minute run-time, deco on 50% and 100%. Watching the other divers bounce-diving the deck on single Ali 80’s made me thankful for lugging most of my kit halfway around the world !





Conclusion

I may as well join in with our American cousins as they really do have ‘the’ word for it – AWESOME !! If you are a wreckie it really lives up to everything you have ever heard about it and if you get the opportunity to go then grasp it with both hands. It was a diving ‘lifetime’ ambition to get over to Truk for me but it was over all too quickly and I feel I have only just scratched the surface.

The plan now is to save like mad and get back out there in 2009/10 for 2 weeks on Odyssey – anyone fancy joining us ?

A full listing of photos can be found at the following link -

Public Album

Graham

[broady]

A couple more piccies....




Glassfish in Betty Bomber fuselage





Nic at prop on Heian Maru




Truck in hold

[jorawley]

wow, seriously amazing photo's....
cant decide whether to green u for the pics or red u out of jealousy

dare i even ask how much the next trip is going to cost??

[royplumber]

thanks graham

[MarkP]

I ought to red you through jealousy - Jo was right.

But I won't.

Nice pictures, but your "weed thingy" is a feather star - an echinoderm, related to a normal starfish.

You lucky b*$$er!

[liamm]

thats amazing looking - is it a fiercly expensive trip??

[GLOC]

Mmmm, very interesting. Would love to go out there.

How much are we talking about for a trip?

[Steve S]

Excellent report and pics mate I'm truly jealous.

I'd be interested subject to the price please?

Safe diving,
Steve

[David Burke]

top report
thanks for putting photos on site.
good to here you had a great trip,
a mate of mine done truk in nov 07
and loved every min of it, he has now booked for 08
safe diving
dave