Macdonald - Dive Truk Lagoon

Published by

Whittles Publishing Ltd.,

Dunbeath, Caithness, KW6 6EG,

Scotland, UK

www.whittlespublishing.com

2014 Rod Macdonald

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise without prior permission of the publishers.

ISBN 978-1-84995-213-2

Also by Rod Macdonald:

Dive Scapa Flow

Dive Scotlands Greatest Wrecks

Dive Englands Greatest Wrecks

Into the Abyss Diving to Adventure in the Liquid World

The Darkness Below

Great British Shipwrecks a Personal Adventure

Force Z Shipwrecks of the South China Sea HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse

www.rod-macdonald.co.uk

www.whittlespublishing.co.uk/Rod_Macdonald

www.amazon.co.uk/Rod-Macdonald

To Rob Ward, Ewan Rowell, Paul Haynes, Cindy Hall and Rob McGann

Tuuno ina turunai

Tha sinn air ar be ghlacadh le daoibheadh

When my good friend and regular dive buddy Paul Haynes and I were asked to present at OZTeK 2013 in Sydney we thought we might have a bit of a detour and come home to Scotland via Chuuk Lagoon. Now Chuuk isnt really on the way back home to Scotland from Australia at all in fact its completely the wrong way but Id been to Chuuk several times before; Paul hadnt, and has had to suffer hearing all about it from me for years. So we decided to go.

I asked my good friend Ewan Rowell, who did most of the underwater photography for my early books, and who now lives in Perth, WA, if hed like to come to OZTeK and then head up to Chuuk with us and he agreed. And so the team of three musketeers was formed, and after a whale of a time at OZTeK in Sydney the three of us headed up to Chuuk in March 2013. Thank you guys for your fine company, for looking after me and for the laughter and craic we shared.

I hadnt decided to write a book about Chuuk wreck-diving at that stage, but once there, it became clear that although Chuuk is one of the worlds great wreck-diving locations, other than a few good but older books and some rudimentary line drawings of the wrecks done in the early 1990s, there was almost a complete lack of good hard diver information on the wrecks as they are today.

And so, on the long flight home, this time in the right direction via Guam, Seoul, London and Aberdeen, I decided to write the book and make my contribution to Chuuk wreck-diving. Given the unparalleled number of large important wrecks at Chuuk it turned out to be a particularly arduous and time-consuming project, but at last here is the result.

We stayed at the Truk Stop Hotel & Dive Center on Weno Island (formerly Moen Island) and once there, we were looked after handsomely by Rob McGann and Cindy Hall thank you, Rob for the cigar; I havent forgotten and will return the favour next time Im out in Chuuk. Cindy looked after us and set everything up locally, giving us detailed pre-dive briefs that were extremely helpful. She also asked a local Chuukese, Nuwa Paul to act as our dive guide he turned out to be one of the most accomplished and cool divers I have dived with.

The Truk Stop Hotel & Dive Center is set right on the waters edge of the lagoon and has its own jetty where the dive boats leave from. It caters for both sport and technical divers like me and was particularly well set up for technical divers. A row of large wet-gear lockers, each of which can easily take four full sets of Tek kit, is just a few feet away from the edge of the lagoon. Right beside the gear lockers is a row of kit preparation tables for building up your rebreathers. Any combination of 23-litre diluent and oxygen cylinders was available, as was sofnalime carbon dioxide scrubber. Any sort of stage cylinder and breathing gas we needed was available; all suitably banded with clips. It is truly a great technical diving base. There is also an open-air bar right on the edge of the lagoon, which plays the coolest sunset music, so once the days diving is done you can sit and relax with a beer or one of those strange-coloured things, often seen with a paper umbrella in it, and watch the sun set on the lagoon. Cindy was also able to kindly check some of my wreck illustrations and confirm depths and features about particular wrecks that I was unsure of.

And so the four of us started diving the Chuuk wrecks. Nuwa turned out to be a top-class dive guide and very soon cottoned on to the sort of things we wanted to do and see. Our first dive was straight into the engine room of the Shinkoku Maru for forty-five minutes before exiting to explore the rest of this massive tanker in a two-hour dive. That was followed by a second two-hour dive in the afternoon. Thank you so much for your time, Nuwa.

Ewan has always been into underwater photography, and is getting really good at it, despite his vehement denials. He worked extremely hard taking some 100 photographs on each dive, continuously marshalling Paul and myself into the right place and position to get that shot. The results have been staggering, with some awesome photographs, which over the years will become iconic of Chuuk Lagoon.

While at OZTeK I met Pete Mesley for the first time. Pete runs Lust4Rust Diving Excursions and has pioneered technical diving trips to places like the Force Z shipwrecks HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse (200 miles north of Singapore), Bikini Atoll and Chuuk Lagoon where he has a fantastic technical dive set-up with Blue Lagoon Resort & Dive Shop, the other major dive resort in Chuuk. and with who I dived on my first trip to Chuuk back in 1991when my enthusiasm for diving in the lagoon was first kindled. Pete excels at underwater photography and is building quite a reputation for himself. He has very kindly let me use some of his wonderful photography in this book.

My thanks also must go to Rob Ward of Illusion Illustration, Bridge of Muchalls in Scotland for the wonderful illustrations of the main Chuuk wrecks. Rob and I started out in 1989 creating the illustrations of the German World War I High Seas Fleet wrecks for my first book, Dive Scapa Flow , and since then Rob has illustrated all my other books. I was surprised that although Chuuk Lagoon is perhaps the best-known wreck-diving destination in the world there were only some basic line drawings of the wrecks prepared in the early 1990s. I hope that the wreck illustrations I have prepared for this book will help divers for years to come to understand what they are going to be diving on.

Much though I would have liked to do so, there are so many wrecks in Chuuk Lagoon that it was simply economically impossible to prepare illustrations of them all at this point. I have had to cherry-pick and select the wrecks that divers are most likely to visit on a week or twos dive expedition to Chuuk. Over the coming years, where possible, I will illustrate more of the wrecks and add them to successive editions. This book is really a work in progress at this stage.

There have been so many wrecks to research that it has been perhaps the most time-consuming and challenging of all the books I have written. My thanks to my understanding wife, Claire, for putting up with me locking myself away in my study to write and for the helpful ideas for the book that she came up with and for generally being my soul mate and helping me to get through the laborious writing process.

Finally, thanks to Murdina Macdonald and Nuwa Paul for the translations that I hope will baffle a few folk.