Heat Miser
Contributor
The scene is set in Sept 2019, when a naive Advanced Open Water diver, with approximately 75 dives under his belt, sees a local dive store Facebook post, about a dive tour to Bikini and wires off a $650 (AUD 1000) deposit. At the time, I had never been on a livaboard dive trip. I had been on a couple of diving holidays in the Maldives and racked up four dives a month, for the previous two years since certification. To say, I really didn’t know what I was signing up for, is an understatement. Fortunately I had two years to work out how I was going to get up speed and luckily for me Perth Scuba were retailers of rEvo. After a try dive I signed up for an Air Dil no deco course using their rental unit, run by Josip Bicanic of Dive Addiction Cave and Teck instruction, two months later I bought an Expedition Micro with CE lung upgrade from Perth Scuba.
Fast forward to Jul 20 2023, after two trip postponements due to COVID, the trip finally comes around four years later. By this time I had gained a few more cents, but more importantly a couple of hundred hours of rebreather experience. Then I get the phone call from the travel agent saying the price of flights to the Marshall Islands had gone up and they were going to have to reprice. Fortunately Josip at Dive Addiction was on the case, with a quick couple of checks it was confirmed that we could alternatively fly via Phillipines to Truk and then bunny hop on United to the Marshall Islands, and only pay for the additional food/lodging and gases at Truk. The Dive Addiction solution to the problem, throw in 12 epic dives/ 7 days in Truk on top of 12 epic dives in Bikini, I.e. go big or don’t go.
In Truk the Blue Lagoon Resort is well set up for the tech diver. We were there for the 7 night / 12 dive package and typically dove one 60 meterish ,196 feet dive in the morning and one shallower 40m meters, 131 feet dive in the afternoon. Really there are so many wrecks, available at Truk, that you could stay for a month. Your boat skipper and dive guide takes you out in the morning, leaving at 8 am and back before lunch. Then you meet back at the dive shop at 2 pm for a second dive, in the afternoon.
The Blue Lagoon rooms have been recently renovated to what I would call 3 star standard, there’s a widescreen TV and air conditioning, and all the rooms I saw have lagoon views. I would suggest you bring an Apple TV or chromecast dongle if you want to stream from your computer. The internet drops in and out but is sufficiently fast to download and save movies for later.
I had decided to sit out the second and third dive on the third day after a headache and slight fever the night before. When Last (our skipper) tossed my revo into the cleaning tank, I noticed a very small but infrequent bubble coming from the DSV. Rather than sleep I spent the rest of the afternoon outside the CCR room trying to fix it.
The next day I had to cut the morning dive short by an hour when the bubble occurred again at 53m, 174feet, in the engine room of the Amigasan Maru. Unfortunately that was Joseph’s favourite dive - cut short by my flakey DSV. During the lunch break and after four attempts to fix the DSV with a new barrel, new o-rings and even just walking away and letting Damien and Joseph (buddies) rebuild it, we couldn’t get the DSV to hold a Neg.
After an emergency phone call to All About Scuba in Melbourne. I had a new DSV being delivered to Bikini by a dive buddy meeting us there. A special thanks must be made to Ronald (All about Scuba) , Susan (Bikini Buddy) and Rubens at Deep Blue Ventures for pulling that together for me on a minutes notice.
Thus, I missed day fours afternoon dive and was feeling a touch apprehensive about my ability to dive Bikini. I went back to my room to see if I could have another go, in the cooler climate controlled, dry air conditioning. The thin o-ring that sits around the mouth price of the barrel had extruded. But not sufficiently to stop the barrel from going in the DSV. It could only be seen with the aid of the magnifying glass on an iPhone. After another five attempts and on my last o-ring kit, I finally got it seated properly. I ran back down to the CCR room to fit the loop on the unit and see if that had fixed the leak.
The next morning with the renewed enthusiasm of a successful rebuild, I bounced out of bed at 6.30 am to sort out my unit early. I would recommend CCR divers go down and do your build early (before breakfast) because when the dive shop starts up the compressors at 7.30 to 8am the heat in the CCR room becomes stifling.
Just before I hop on the boat, someone comes up and says the boss wanted to see me. I go into the shop and there I meet the owner, Gradvin Aisek, he has heard about my problems from the other guides and is concerned that I am diving a faulty unit. He had a group of divers there in the previous months and one had the skin bends and doesn’t want any one taking extra risk, simply because they have travelled a long way to dive at Truk. I thank him for his concern, explain what the problem was, and confirm I will show Last, our skipper, that there are no more bubbles coming from the unit, before departing. That day we dived our deepest and furthest away dive, the Oute, at 60 meters. It turned out to be the best dive of the trip.
The one regret I have is that we weren’t able to dive as planned with buddy Jenny Ough. Jenny passed away, diving on the Sanko Harvest in March. She was constantly on our thoughts and she would have loved the photo ops and penetration, but may have been slightly disappointed in the wine selection at the bar.
Dives at Truk:
Shinkok Maru 40.9m 1 he 33 min
Kensho Maru 34.3 m 1 hr 31 min
Shotan Maru 48.6 m 1 hr 54 min
Momokawa Maru 39.5 m 1 he 32 min
San Francisco 55.4 m 2 hr 2 min
Amangisan Maru 53.1 m 1 he 1 min
IJN Oite 60.7 m 2 hr 8 min
Unkai Maru 37.5 m 2 hr 9 min
Hoki Maru 40.9 m 1 hr 25 min
Regards
Greg
Fast forward to Jul 20 2023, after two trip postponements due to COVID, the trip finally comes around four years later. By this time I had gained a few more cents, but more importantly a couple of hundred hours of rebreather experience. Then I get the phone call from the travel agent saying the price of flights to the Marshall Islands had gone up and they were going to have to reprice. Fortunately Josip at Dive Addiction was on the case, with a quick couple of checks it was confirmed that we could alternatively fly via Phillipines to Truk and then bunny hop on United to the Marshall Islands, and only pay for the additional food/lodging and gases at Truk. The Dive Addiction solution to the problem, throw in 12 epic dives/ 7 days in Truk on top of 12 epic dives in Bikini, I.e. go big or don’t go.
In Truk the Blue Lagoon Resort is well set up for the tech diver. We were there for the 7 night / 12 dive package and typically dove one 60 meterish ,196 feet dive in the morning and one shallower 40m meters, 131 feet dive in the afternoon. Really there are so many wrecks, available at Truk, that you could stay for a month. Your boat skipper and dive guide takes you out in the morning, leaving at 8 am and back before lunch. Then you meet back at the dive shop at 2 pm for a second dive, in the afternoon.
The Blue Lagoon rooms have been recently renovated to what I would call 3 star standard, there’s a widescreen TV and air conditioning, and all the rooms I saw have lagoon views. I would suggest you bring an Apple TV or chromecast dongle if you want to stream from your computer. The internet drops in and out but is sufficiently fast to download and save movies for later.
I had decided to sit out the second and third dive on the third day after a headache and slight fever the night before. When Last (our skipper) tossed my revo into the cleaning tank, I noticed a very small but infrequent bubble coming from the DSV. Rather than sleep I spent the rest of the afternoon outside the CCR room trying to fix it.
The next day I had to cut the morning dive short by an hour when the bubble occurred again at 53m, 174feet, in the engine room of the Amigasan Maru. Unfortunately that was Joseph’s favourite dive - cut short by my flakey DSV. During the lunch break and after four attempts to fix the DSV with a new barrel, new o-rings and even just walking away and letting Damien and Joseph (buddies) rebuild it, we couldn’t get the DSV to hold a Neg.
After an emergency phone call to All About Scuba in Melbourne. I had a new DSV being delivered to Bikini by a dive buddy meeting us there. A special thanks must be made to Ronald (All about Scuba) , Susan (Bikini Buddy) and Rubens at Deep Blue Ventures for pulling that together for me on a minutes notice.
Thus, I missed day fours afternoon dive and was feeling a touch apprehensive about my ability to dive Bikini. I went back to my room to see if I could have another go, in the cooler climate controlled, dry air conditioning. The thin o-ring that sits around the mouth price of the barrel had extruded. But not sufficiently to stop the barrel from going in the DSV. It could only be seen with the aid of the magnifying glass on an iPhone. After another five attempts and on my last o-ring kit, I finally got it seated properly. I ran back down to the CCR room to fit the loop on the unit and see if that had fixed the leak.
The next morning with the renewed enthusiasm of a successful rebuild, I bounced out of bed at 6.30 am to sort out my unit early. I would recommend CCR divers go down and do your build early (before breakfast) because when the dive shop starts up the compressors at 7.30 to 8am the heat in the CCR room becomes stifling.
Just before I hop on the boat, someone comes up and says the boss wanted to see me. I go into the shop and there I meet the owner, Gradvin Aisek, he has heard about my problems from the other guides and is concerned that I am diving a faulty unit. He had a group of divers there in the previous months and one had the skin bends and doesn’t want any one taking extra risk, simply because they have travelled a long way to dive at Truk. I thank him for his concern, explain what the problem was, and confirm I will show Last, our skipper, that there are no more bubbles coming from the unit, before departing. That day we dived our deepest and furthest away dive, the Oute, at 60 meters. It turned out to be the best dive of the trip.
The one regret I have is that we weren’t able to dive as planned with buddy Jenny Ough. Jenny passed away, diving on the Sanko Harvest in March. She was constantly on our thoughts and she would have loved the photo ops and penetration, but may have been slightly disappointed in the wine selection at the bar.
Dives at Truk:
Shinkok Maru 40.9m 1 he 33 min
Kensho Maru 34.3 m 1 hr 31 min
Shotan Maru 48.6 m 1 hr 54 min
Momokawa Maru 39.5 m 1 he 32 min
San Francisco 55.4 m 2 hr 2 min
Amangisan Maru 53.1 m 1 he 1 min
IJN Oite 60.7 m 2 hr 8 min
Unkai Maru 37.5 m 2 hr 9 min
Hoki Maru 40.9 m 1 hr 25 min
Regards
Greg
