Truk Part 1
Truk, or Chuuk as it is now known, is a world-class destination for wreck divers.
The team, slumming it
It's been a number of years since SCDC has visited Truk in force, although there has been the occasional individual visit. This has largely been due to Continental Airlines' scheduling, which made it possible to get from Hong Kong to Truk, but only if you were prepared to pay a fortune and spend a week doing it. Getting back was worse. Well last year they changed their schedules to make life easier for Hong Kong-based wrecks (shurely Hong Kong-based wreck divers ?? Then again, perhaps you're right. Ed.). Trevor and Steve moved into gear and put together a crack team of experienced divers to take advantage of this. When they realised they could get a discount if they had 12 people, Louisa and I were invited as well. From SCDC there was Steve, Etsuko, Trevor, Robert (a late replacement for Les who was legless), Neil and Louisa. From elsewhere in Hong Kong's diving community was Dave Sharpe, Chas and Linda Doyle, Bo Fussing and Park Ng. Finally a frequent visitor to Hong Kong on his quarterly migration route between the UK and Manila and Bangkok was Ian Green. Ian's the guy who has almost as many holidays (3 in 2001) as Steve (3 in April).
Rather than go to Truk with a whole bunch of diving gear that I hadn't dived with for ages, I did a warm-up dive in Hong Kong. As a result I ended up going to Truk with a whole bunch of diving gear that I'd never dived with, when it turned out that half of it needed replacing. That included a computer that thought I was at 1000 metres above sea level.
In my experience SCDC dive trips tend to be a series of setbacks and problems punctuated by some good diving. The first setback came before we'd even got on the plane, as Louisa's ticket was issued in the wrong name. Chas was able to sort that out, which meant I was unable to go on my own. The second setback appeared to have happened when we arrived at Guam at 04:30. As in every SCDC trip I've been on, transport had been arranged. And as in every SCDC trip I've been on, it wasn't there. Several people jumped in a cab, which did the trick, as 5 minutes later a van from Professional Sports Divers arrived and asked if we were the Australian party. Not wishing to look a gift horse in the mouth, we pushed Trevor to the front and he confirmed that we were. We got to Santa Fe on the Bay at 5 am and most people went to bed in preparation for the 11am dive. Unfortunately I spent the next hour and a half re-packing everything so that my dive gear was in 1 bag instead of 5.
Professional Sports Divers is run by Simon Pridmore who used to be with the police in Hong Kong. He arrived at 11am to pick up 11 bleary-eyed potential divers. Repeated attempts to raise the dead were unsuccessful and Robert stayed in bed. We picked up some Nitrox cylinders at Simon's shop and were driven to the pier and loaded onto a boat for the 10 minute trip to the mouth of the harbour. We were warned to expect poor visibility as a US aircraft carrier had turned around over our dive site about an hour earlier. We were going to dive on the Cormoran and the Tokai Maru. The Cormoran was a German ship that had parked in Guam during the First World War. After several years of fairly relaxed internment, the German crew realized that Uncle Sam was gingerly climbing down off the fence, and was planning to join the winning side and claim all the credit. Rather than let the Cormoran fall into American hands, they scuttled the ship. 35 years later and this time Uncle Sam was unceremoniously pushed off the fence by the Japanese. They went on to take Guam, where the Tokai Maru was subsequently anchored. An American submarine found it and torpedoed it. On its way to the bottom it hit the Cormoran and came to rest about 8 feet away. In 1993 an earthquake pushed the 2 ships together, so now their hulls touch, a rather bizarre legacy of 2 world wars, and a unique dive site. Visibility was apparently poor, but not by our rather sad standards. We dropped down onto the Tokai Maru and saw where the 2 hulls touched. We then swam along the much smaller Cormoran before crossing back to finish on the Tokai. There wasn't much coral, but quite a lot of fish life. Our second dive concentrated more on the Tokai Maru. It was a good start to the trip,
Dinner that night was at the Lone Star and even Robert woke up long enough to eat. The Lone Star is a steak restaurant that specialized in massive quantities of red meat. The only vegetarians in there are on the menu. The beer was fairly substantial too. Fortunately they laid on a van to get us back to the hotel, because none of us were capable of walking. The excess weight was too much for our puny legs.
A small beer with your cow?
Sunday dawned bright and early, but fortunately I missed that by about 5 hours. After we'd checked out, the plan was for several of us to go to a shopping mall. The girls were going shopping, while we considerately waited for them in a bar. Like any good plan, this one fell apart almost immediately when half of the group headed off, and the other half had to wait patiently for an hour while Ian got on the phone to sort out his sleeping arrangements for the post-Truk part of his trip, the Manila and Bangkok legs. We finally caught up with the others at Planet Hollywood. After a small beer we headed to the airport on the way to Truk, so we thought. Once there we were treated to a comedy double act by Steve and Etsuko, who had managed to lose their tickets and passports. After that came the bad news. 8 of us were on the flight, but Steve, Louisa, Chas and Linda were not. This must have been particularly galling for Chas who had been to a dinner with Continental Airlines' chairman some weeks before. We had a long discussion at the front desk where Steve quite legitimately pointed out that our seats had been confirmed months in advance. In response Continental Airlines adopted a bizarre customer service ploy, and threatened to arrest him and Etsuko. At that point we went through to try our luck at the gate. The problem was that it had been raining in Truk, and as any pilot can tell you, if it's raining, you have to throw a few of the passengers off to make room for the crew umbrellas. Everyone boarded except for the 4 unfortunates, along with Etsuko, and I. Oh and Dave Sharpe - who had considerately waited behind to laugh at us. Anyway at the last minute they got approval to load some extra passengers despite the rain, and we all rushed on board.
When we got to Truk we found out how they'd managed to squeeze on the extra passengers despite the restriction on aircraft weight. They'd taken off 78 dive bags. This was a little excessive, as they only really needed to throw Dave's off. Continental Airlines offer a very generous luggage allowance of up to 2 bags of 32 kg, i.e. 64 kg.Despite this, Dave had single handedly used up all the excess for all 12 of us. Repeatedly reminding him of this guaranteed that I wouldn't be borrowing anything from him during the rest of the trip. (His foresight was somewhat justified when his primary and backup computers both started acting up. Fortunately he was able to switch to his alternate backup computer). Needless to say the 78 bags included all of ours, except Robert's. It was a shrewd tactical move by the Guam staff, who'd elegantly shifted the problem somewhere else. We filled forms in at Truk airport until the early hours. This seems to be a regular thing, and the airline is in a monopoly position, which is how they can get away with it. Continental's chairman has recently written a book about turning the airline around called "From worst to first". I think it might be time for the sequel - "And back again".
Thorfinn
We turned up at the Thorfinn and met Captain Lance Higgs, who filled us in on the history of Truk and the Thorfinn. Truk was originally run by Germany, but the Japanese were given it for siding against Germany in the First World War. They turned it into a major naval base as it is a huge lagoon surrounded by a fringing reef. In 1944 they had a large fleet of merchant ships there when the US decided to attack it. Over the course of 2 attacks from aircraft carriers they sank over 40 ships. (If the US navy had adopted the same methods as Continental Airlines only half the planes would have arrived, and they wouldn't have had any bombs on board). Lance also went over their diving rules, which include some fairly heavy stops to reduce the risk of DCS. 2 minutes at 18 metres, 3 minutes at 9 metres, and 10 minutes at 6 metres as a minimum, even on no stop dives. With up to 5 dives a day, and the nearest chamber 600 miles away in Guam, these precautions are sensible. Diving is done from 4 tenders which means that there are only a few other divers on each of the wrecks at any time.
