Truk Lagoon (Chuuk), Federated States of Micronesia

Truk Lagoon islands and dive boat

Truk Lagoon is the first place we've been to that we were warned repeatedly about before arriving, but we are happy to report that we had no unpleasant incidents during our stay there. We were very careful while we were there, especially since we continued to be warned by locals that everything on deck should be locked up, and we purposely anchored in only one location, which was off of the lovely and welcoming Blue Lagoon Resort, and we limited our overall stay and severely limited our time in the main town, and although it's a shame that we felt that all of this was necessary, I am glad to say that we had nothing but pleasant experiences during our stay in Truk.




We arrived to the main town dock pretty late in the afternoon our first day here after motoring twelve miles inside the reef. The lagoon here is huge. It's quite different from Pohnpei, which was basically one large mountainous island with a nearby fringing reef. In Truk their are many medium to small islands which are all surrounded by a reef which is ten to fifteen miles away from the central islands. The town of Weno is where we had to go to check into the country, and is also where we had been told that fights often break out in the streets between local youths.



We reached the main town dock at about 2:30 PM. This dock is really designed for much bigger ships with huge bollards spaced quite a ways apart. We put our bow line around one, but the next one back was quite a ways away, so Jeff volunteered to stand on the dock and hold the stern line. Unfortunately for him our check in process was delayed while we were waiting for one of the agents to show up, so he wound up holding the sailboat onto the dock for about two hours while many of the local skiffs went flying by creating totally unneccessary wakes to push us around. It was a bit annoying, but eventually we got our paperwork in order and still had enough daylight to head south to what we had been told was a much safer anchorage off of the Blue Lagoon Resort. We got the anchor down and got the dinghy inflated in record time and went ashore to arrange our diving for the next day. Then we headed back to the boat to finish our post-passage necessary chores and make ourselves some dinner and hit our bunks for that first blissful night of uninterrupted sleep.



The next day was the first of four days of fantastic wreck diving. We'd heard that Truk is in a class by itself when it comes to wreck diving and I think we are all now believers. We went ashore a few minutes before what we thought was 9 AM, the time we were meant to meet our guide on the dock. We waited and waited and made a few jokes about island time and waited some more, and Jeff finally walked up to the dive shop to make sure they knew we were there. In the meantime a nice fellow came over and began chatting with Fred and I. He asked if we were going diving and mentioned how early we were. Once again we had crossed into a new time zone during the passage without realizing it and we were an hour early. Sheesh!



A few minutes later, Estos and Mack brought the boat around and we loaded up our gear (after apologizing for rushing them!) and met a father and son from Australia who dove with us for two days, and headed out over some very calm water between some very beautiful islands to our first Truk wreck.



The Fujikawa Maru was a 433 ft Japanese aircraft carrier. We swam along the outside for a bit and admired the amazing hard and soft corals which almost completely cover the outside of the boat. It makes the boat itself like a reef and makes swimming around all the masts and the towers that stick up from the deck really interesting. Just the outside would have been an amazing dive, but Estos led us inside to a room with lots of pipes and some electrical circuits still showing. We swam around this for a bit then went swimming through to the holds. There were six holds on this boat all with something cool to see, but my favorites were the ones with containing the Japenese Zeros. It was unbelievably cool to be swimming around inside a ship under the water and see these planes inside. One of the holds had about six of them and they were scattered around and kind of lying on top of each other. It was amazing how tiny these planes were. I could not imagine getting in something that size and going to shoot at other planes and ships. Incredible. The holds also contained many fuel drums, lots of saki bottles, some gas masks and some shoes.

A few of the MANY saki bottles we saw while diving

Our second wreck the first day was the Heian Maru, a 510 ft submarine tender with more amazing coral outside and a really cool very long horizontal swim through with periscope repair pieces laying in the hallway.



I was completely sold on Truk wreck diving after these two dives. We all agreed that we could easily do mulitple additional dives on these two wrecks before their charms would begin to pale.



The second day we went first to the Shinokoku Maru, a 500 ft naval tanker, whose superstructure was covered with gorgeous coral. Even the bow gun was covered, so much so that it took me a moment to understand what I was seeing. We also swam inside and saw an operating table and a side room with a tiled tub.

Jeff amongst Shinokuku superstructure

This was also the first dive that we took our amazing new underwater camera on. This camera was a Christmas/Birthday/Easter/Valentines/St Patricks Day/Thanksgiving present from Judy and Merv, and we were super excited to try it out! We are also super excited to be able to share our underwater experiences on the blog thanks to the photos from the new camera. Jeff and Fred were a bit amused at the fact that I read every word of the instructions beforehand and at my initial nervousness about damaging the camera, since Jeff graciously allowed me to have the first go with it. It took a bit of getting used to at first (I am definitely NOT a "gear girl" and there is already a lot going on when you're wreck diving) but then I was very pleasantly surprised at how much fun it was to take some outside snaps. We didn't attempt any inside photos at this point, because it's pretty dark inside the wrecks and some of the spaces are pretty small and there are sometimes sharp pieces of metal about, so you need to pay attention to where you are, but we made up for it once we were outside the wrecks back in the better light. We took a gazillion photos and you can be assured that from now on we'll be posting pics of all our dives.

Coral on the Kensho

Our second dive this day was the Yamigiri Maru. It had a big torpedo hole in side which we swam into, and more amazing coral on the outside, and also a human skull which appeared to be fused into the wall of the engine room. This was the only sign of human remains that we saw while diving although many of the wrecks have them. Our dive guide told us before the dive that it was there and gave us the option of seeing it or not. We voted to see it, and to me it seemed a good reminder that we were actually diving on ships that were sunk full of men during a war. It's easy to lose track of that while gawking at the amazing underwater sights.

coral on the Yamagiri

The next day our first dive was on the Nippo Maru, a 351 ft cargo ship which had a one man tank sitting on one of it's decks. Again, I was surprised at how small the tank was - tiny! I can't imagine getting into something like that by yourself and driving around these islands with people shooting at you. Crazy! There were also som artillery guns on wheels deck on the deck. For some reason (maybe because of the wheels?) these looked to me more like something from the Civil War than from WWII. There were also a lot of big, square water tanks in one of the holds and tons of saki bottles.



There were actually tons and tons of saki bottles in every wreck we saw. So many that Jeff now has a theory that Saki consumption may be a major factor in why the Japanese lost the war! It may sound silly reading this at home, but if you come take a look at these wrecks I guarantee you'll think he's on to something!



Our second dive that day was the Kensho Maru, a 381 ft cargo ship. In this ship Estos took us through some really amazing swim throughs. We went up and down some very skinny staircases, and since this boat is sitting right side up it felt like you were walking around in it. We went to the engine room where there were plenty of levers still intact. There was also some really nice coral on the bow gun outside.

Kensho coral encrusted bow gun

Our first dive on our fourth and last day of diving was on the San Francisco Maru. This was our deepest dive in Truk with a max depth of 165 feet. We dropped down near the bow of the boat which is the shallowest part of this wreck, but still deeper than the deepest parts of the other dives we had done. There was very little coral here, compared to the other dives we had done (I think because it is so much deeper, but didn't get that confirmed by Estos), so we got a really good look at the bow gun and the track that it spins on. Next we swam over to see the two one-man tanks that are on the starboard deck. One tank was partly on top of the other - it sort of looked like they had collided and one tank went up over the other, I imagine this happened either when the ship was being bombed or when it hit the bottom. There were some china cups and plates from the wreck displayed near the tanks also. There was another tank that we saw on the port side of the boat. Between these there were some deeper, open holds where we could see the skeletons of trucks including the chassis, steering wheel, and seat frames. All of this was in front of the bridge and when we reached that we turned around and began ascending gradually back towards the bow and the mooring line to the dive boat. This had all taken only about 15 minutes, but we needed to head back up while we still had plenty of air for the decompression stops diving at this depth would require. There wasn't much to look at on the way up, and we had to spend a good bit of time there, which is the problem with deep dives. I'm glad that most of our dives weren't this deep, but I really enjoyed this one all the same. Seeing the tanks sitting there on the decks was really neat, and seeing this one boat with so much less coral growth than the others was interesting also.

Betty Bomber engine

After a fairly long surface interval, which we spent back at the resort itself, we went back out for our final Truk dive at the "Betty Bomber", a Japanese plane which came down just a little short of a runway that had been built by the Japanese on one of the flatter islands. This plane is in fairly shallow water. It's engine of the plane is about a hundred feet away and we swam over to check that out first, then back to the body of the plane itself.





Fred coming out of the Betty Bomber



The nose was sheared off of the the body, so you could look right inside from the front. There were a gazillion little fish inside, and when I swam in they just moved over a bit to let me through. It felt a little like swimming inside an aquarium. I enjoyed it so much I went through a couple times going each way. Scattered about on the ground outside the plane were some radio parts, oxygen bottles, the ever prolific saki bottles, and a gun that looked more like a hunk of rusty metal than anything else.



Fred with the gun from the Betty Bomber



We had originally planned on four days of diving while in Truk, but we were having so much fun that we would have added a few more days, especially since the weather did not allow us to leave right away anyway, but unfortunately Fred and Jeff both had their ear infections recur, and I managed to really smash my foot on a piece of deck hardware, so we sat around a played hospital boat for the next day or two before checking out on Monday. The guys did make one short provisioning run into town, and said that it was every bit as bad as it was reported to be. I can't tell you how many people in Pohnpei described it as "a shithole". Multiple people used that exact phrase, and not all were the sort of people you'd expect that kind of language from. The boys agreed, however we also all agree that the Blue Lagoon Resort is quite nice. They have lots of security and very friendly staff in general, so if you want to dive in Truk, our recommendation is do it, but definitely stay at the Blue Lagoon.



We had to go back to the town dock again to check out of the country, then we headed north and got through the pass out of the reef a few hours later to begin our 800 mile sail to Yap.