|
Unkai Maru 305’. Dive 1, Log #281. Built 1905, lies upright decks at 100’, older freighter, fairly intact.
 We descend amidships and move towards the bow. Artillery casings and gas masks litter the deck. I take photos of the 6” deck gun and plaque (BOC, British Ordinance Corporation, 1897, must of been captured) and then a few shots of divers and the bow.
We move towards the stern and I shoot a few shots of divers framed by the wreck. A bit disappointing overall for the fairly long deco of 10 mins we have to do.
Fujikawa Maru, 437’(rest of day) - Dive 2, Log #282. Lies upright, decks at 60-75’
We drop down on the forward part of the wreck and after a couple of shots of the bow gun, we drop into the first hold and find it pretty full of airplane parts and barrels. Then we swim into hold 2 and find it full of Zero fuselages and wings. It’s hard to shoot where other divers have stirred up the silt, however. We spend most of the dive there shooting them and are surprised by the depth – 90’. After that we go up to the first cabin area and shoot a couple of cooperative anemone fish.
I run out of film and Marcia continues to shoot as go up the kingposts. We do our deco obligation near the top and then another 9 mins on the hang bar to be safe.
Dive 3, Log #283, 1:36 mins at 96’
Young Matt (Vern) leads us on a deep penetration dive of the main wheelhouse and cabin, as well as the machine shop and engine room. We dart in and out progressively deeper as I shoot various openings and artifacts, including the galley, head and piles of sake bottles.
Then Matt leads us up, over and down through a hatch into the main center compartment that leads vertically down past several catwalks into the engines. The cylinder heads are each around 4’ in diameter and around 6 in a single row. Peering in through an opening, we can see “R2D2”, the old air compressor (and a famous shot). But we want a close up look and Matt leads on.
The overhead gets less and less and the viz drops as previous divers have silted it up. It improves as we get into the machine shop spaces and Matt stops and shows us the various sites such as the old telephone still hanging on a wooden wall and a generator with a large Mitsubushi logo on it (most wood has long since rotted away on these wrecks – which makes most of them fairly open in their interiors and holds, so the wood here is unusual). There lots of tools, vices and lathes hanging in place just as they were when the ship went down 60 years ago.
I get a bit stuck in a corner trying to maneuver around into a tight stairway with the camera, but finally we twist into the small compartment to see the holy grail of R2D2.
After a couple of shots in the cloudy water we make our way out back into the engine compartment and the main spaces and up and out the top of the main wheelhouse. We’ve been down a bit deeper and longer than I thought to 96’, (it’s easy to do when you don’t have a water column or bottom as a reference), but I’m shocked to find that I owe 23 mins of deco already, lucky I have 1000# of gas left.
We start up slowly and do a couple of deep stops, and I do a few mins at 35’ and then very slowly go up to the top of the mast at 20’ for another few mins. Still my computer has added time and I now owe 30 mins at 10’ with no deep stops owed! We follow Matt over to the hang bar. Its nice to have that spare bottle of 30% there.
What’s really weird is that for several days Marcia and I have been keeping the same profiles, with the same deco schedules on our similar computers and her computer now is in the green, no-deco required, and I’m slammed with 30 mins! So everyone goes up and I sit on the bar for a half an hour even though I know I’m way safe. I actually curled myself around it and dozed off a bit. This thing needs a TV. Finally I crawl up the ladder, more  than a bit waterlogged after a 1.5 hour dive.
(I don’t have any more problems with the computer, an Oceanic Data Pro Plus. Later, in talking with the guides and my dive shop, we feel I blew it’s little mind by doing 3 deco dives in a row!)
Dive 4, Log #284 Night Dive 1:07 for 63’
It’s a little tough to find in the open water in the dark as the surface current carries us away. I hit the ship just aft of amidships and swim forward to find Marcia. We move very slowly along shooting macro, I use my 3x lens mostly.
Dip over the edge and continue forward. Find a large sponge growth.
About then my main dive light fails. I bang it around and get it to work again while held upside down. Marcia calls me R2D2 as I have small lights on each of my two strobes and a red tank cylume, as well as a back up dive light, so it’s no big deal that this one goes bad.
We finish our rolls – I shot some nice soft coral and Roseanne hangs out with us after Phil surfaces and spots another nice leaf scorpion fish. We swim up and over to the Odyssey with a mid-water safety stop.
|
