On her first trip, The Truk Siren and her crew were excited to welcome on board a group of Australian divers from Scuba Culture and Dive Adventures as well as a guest from Canada!
As Truk is a remote destination, most of the guests arrived quite tired from their long travels. Jon (former cruise director from the Fiji Siren) and Leo (former cruise director from the Palau Siren) did the initial Siren familiarization tours and talks, boat, safety and dive briefings. As this group was strictly all about technical diving the first afternoon was dedicated to gear set up and filling stage bottles and rebreather bottles.
The diving began the second morning exploring the first of many wrecks in the lagoon. The group absolutely loved the diving where depths of the wrecks range from as shallow as 3 or 4 meters at the top of the masts down to 60 meters plus. Many of the ‘penetration’ dives were only at depths of between 25 to 35 or 40 meters, making Truk a destination not only for technical, tri-mix or rebreather divers but good for recreational divers as well. The current seemed always to be light to none – making the diving quite easy. Always the guests came up from the dives saying ‘GREAT DIVE’ as they explored the engine rooms, wheel houses, Japanese Zeros (the small planes used by the Kamikaze pilots), Cargo Holds, and the outside of the history filled wrecks.
One dive was done on the ‘Betty Bomber’ – one of the Japanese bombers that sits on a sandy bottom at only 18 meters. So much of these old wrecks are still intact. Engine Rooms with all the tools neatly hung on the walls, shoes, bottles, dishes, toilets (or heads as they are called on ships), instrumentation, wiring, large Anti-Aircraft guns on the decks and so much more.
Adding to the history and magnificence of these wrecks are the corals and marine life that are now covering the huge pieces of steel. 70 years of being submerged has allowed the coral formations to grow with such intensity and cover some of the upper decking, while being submerged in the water has preserved the integrity of the inside of the ships.
During the trip the crew and guests celebrated the birthday of John Salamy one night with a nice birthday cake, a rousing rendition of Happy Birthday, and for the guests, many spirits, cocktails and bottles of wine.
With just over 30 dives provided for this initial group on our 10 day voyage (with many days offering ‘dive deck open’ from 2pm to 10pm) the guests / divers were allowed the opportunity to do as much or as little diving as they preferred.
The last evening was spent anchored up just off the white sandy beaches on the Island of Weno, and four of the guests were floating in the water for about hours until sunset with other getting massages, tanning, relaxing, reading and just chatting about the past 9 days of diving.
The final morning all enjoyed a big breakfast, final packing of dive gear and clothing before we got together on the sun deck for the group photo.
Safe travels to all of our initial guests and we look forward to seeing you next time.
Learn more about S/Y Truk Siren at: http://sirenfleet.com/liveaboards/truk.html
