Diving Thoughts

The Sutsuki was originally a Momi Class destroyer and was built in the early 1920′s. They were fast, so despite their age, the Japanese decided that these destroyers would be useful for reinforcing Guadalcanal. At this time the Sutsuki was heavily damaged. Subsequently she was damaged again in a collision with a ship that tore off 80 foot of her bow. Apparently as a result she had to steam backwards for many miles to get to safety.  She had a false bow fitted and was converted for use as a patrol boat. She was designated Patrol Boat 34 when she sank.

One source I read claimed that she was not damaged in the Hailstone attacks, but sank after a fire in July 1944. She now lies between 3 and 15 metres.

We did this as a night dive, and it was a really interesting dive. Trevor, Rita and myself were joined by David and Catheryn. Although strictly speaking we joined them as we dived from their RIB instead of our little fibre glass bucket.

There was a lot of soft coral on the wreck. The engine room was quite tight, with an entrance through a narrow skylight. It took David 2 attempts to find the right one on the way out. There was quite a lot of machinery scattered about. Back on deck there were depth charges, a winch, and a large sake bottle.

Note to buddies: Those powerful lights that many of us had on this trip were great, most of the time. But take your gauge/computer to the torch beam instead of the other way round, particularly on the safety stops when everyone is clustered together. That way you’re not waving a powerful light around in your buddies’ eyes. Also think about switching to a less powerful light on the stops.

Sutsuki Patrol Boat

• Displacement: 935 tons
• Length: 280 feet
• Beam: 26 feet
• Engine: 2 turbines
• Depth: 3 – 15 m.

Our Dive

• Depth:15.2 m.
• Time: 55 minutes
• Gas:  Air

Graphic courtesy of Captain Lance Higgs of S.S. Thorfinn.

On board Thorfinn we met Cindy, one half of the husband and wife team who organise the diving and everything else. She’s a Brit and her husband Rob is an American. They are both experienced divers, and while Cindy likes fish, Rob’s passion is cave diving, and he had a wealth of great stories. They were very organised, yet very friendly and accommodating. I would say they are a valuable addition to the Thorfinn.

We were on-board a day early because of the way the flights had worked out, and were very fortunate that there were only two existing customers there. Consequently everyone had cabins, except for me and Rita, who selflessly sacrificed ourselves by sleeping on other people’s floors.

After an extensive briefing and a brief lunch, we were all ready for the 2pm dive.

S.S. Thorfinn

The S.S. Thorfinn was built in Norway in 1954 as an Antarctic whaler. Captain Higgs eventually acquired her and used her in a variety of roles before converting her into a diving liveaboard. She can take 22 guests in 11 cabins, and is spacious and very comfortable. Charters are usually for 7 days. They’ve also got a salt water hot tub on the boat, which is lovely and warm when you get back after a dive.

S.S. Thorfinn (Photo: Catheryn Chu)

The Diving

They offer up to 5 dives a day, and the dive times are usually 8am, 11am, 2pm, 5pm and an 8pm night dive, after dinner. Diving is done from tenders, which take divers out to the various wrecks. That means that fewer divers on each wreck. The Thorfinn will move during the week to allow you chance to dive a different group of wrecks. All in all, it is a  flexible arrangement and worked very well. Having smaller groups on each wreck is a definite plus. A few years ago while we were diving on the Heian Maru the old Truk Aggressor turned up.  Trying to get out of a narrow hold, while 20 Aggressor divers were barging their way in was no fun at all.

They have two large 30ft RIBs with canopies that can take 8 divers comfortably and we had 11 on it for one dive later in the week. There are also 8 under-seat compartments for storing personal dive gear, which stays on the boats.   Fong’s group were on one, and most of the SCDC people were on the other.

There are also and two smaller open boats. Andreas, Andreas’s rebreather, Trevor, Rita and I were on one of those. These are slower, much less comfortable, and don’t have a lid so you need to be careful of sunburn (although not with the weather we had). Fortunately most of the trips out to the wrecks are relatively short. On each boat there is at least one dive guide and a boatman.

Captain Higgs imposes some rigid safety stops to avoid the risk of DCI. These consist of:

• 18 metres: 1 minute
• 9 metres: 2 minutes
• 5 metres: 10 minutes

Given the amount of diving available, these seem to be sensible precautions, and have been in operation for a number of years.

Hanging around at 5 metres for 10 minutes can get a bit dull on the deeper wrecks, where there’s nothing much to see, although one group were fortunate enough to be buzzed by a dolphin. Before the trip I’d made up some laminated sheets with descriptions of the various wrecks on them. Each morning we’d look at the schedule for the day then take the sheets for those wrecks with us to read on the stops.

Trevor and me on a safety stop (photo: Lau Wing Kee). This must be on the San Francisco Maru, as Trevor had to borrow a regulator immediately before that dive, which is why his octopus is dragging

On 1st April, after well over a year of planning, we set off for some wreck diving in Truk Lagoon. I can’t take any of the credit for this year’s worth of planning, as it was Trevor who did all the hard work as usual. We ended up with enough interest to charter the entire S.S. Thorfinn liveaboard. So it was that 22 of us set off for Micronesia on the afternoon of the 1st April. Most of us were on the 4:30pm Cathay flight to Manila where we would meet up with Trevor, Andreas and Gabi, before changing to Continental Micronesia. Continental Micronesia aren’t my least favourite airline, that accolade goes to Aeroflot in the late 80’s, but they’re certainly down there. Having a monopoly doesn’t give them much incentive to improve, and sure enough they haven’t.

The Cathay flight was uneventful, but then we had to go to the transit desk in Manila to get our Continental boarding passes. The Transit desk at Manila airport would make a good case study for an operations management course. This ultra-efficient operation seemed to consist of a girl who took your passport and asked you a number of questions. She then put the passport on top of  a pile that were already there, meaning that the later passports got processed before the earlier ones – Last-In-First-Out in computer speak. (Fortunately Kimberly, who was waiting for a conference call, suggested that this probably wasn’t the best idea). One bloke would do all the work, including asking all the same questions that the girl had asked, but he would type the answers into a computer. He’d also have to type in your name and details into the system because it didn’t look as though there was any automation at all. Meanwhile 4 other guys would stand around and have a chat or play computer games. It was all very frustrating, and made us all glad that we had plenty of time between flights.

Once on the plane to Guam we got our meal served, just as I remembered it from 4 years ago, with a plastic fork and plastic spoon for safety’s sake. And a metal knife. I can only assume that on 10th September 2001 Continental Airlines bought a job lot knives and are going to carry on using them until international terrorists have stolen them all for their own nefarious purposes.

I can’t remember what film they were showing, primarily because Continental wanted USD 3 for a headset, which, as an added bonus, you can then use on any future Continental flights that you might make. So the only real entertainment was provided by the bloke several seats in front of us wondering whether the loud repetitive roaring noise was coming from the engines, or from a sleeping Robert Ho who was next to him.

Arriving at Guam  is always a cause for concern, as it is administered by the US, which means negotiating the lovely ladies and gentlemen of their immigration service, whose primary role seems to be to make sure that no-one gets into the country. We didn’t want to get in, we were only in transit, but unfortunately that didn’t make a blind bit of difference. We were all half a sleep at 4:30 in the morning and all of us seemed to have different immigration forms. The procedures seem to be so complex, and the Continental staff didn’t appear to know who needed what forms, so I was dreading the experience. Consequently I was really surprised to find that not only had I managed to fill in the correct forms, but that the woman behind the counter was civil and even smiled. I can only assume that she’s new to the job and will be fired when her supervisor finds out.

But I was lucky, as not all of us had such a pleasant experience with the immigration people. Few of us would have suspected that sweet, lovely, little Brenda was in fact an internationally wanted terrorist traveling on a stolen Australian passport. Or perhaps a Mossad agent bent on assassination. Fortunately Guam immigration were on the case, and she spent the best part of an hour trying to convince them that her passport wasn’t stolen, that in fact it was a new passport that had only been issued a couple of weeks earlier.

Meanwhile Joerg had managed to escape from the airport and was running around trying to find Sophie, who had sensibly stayed with us. It turned out that Cathay in Hong Kong had told him he could only check his bags to Guam instead of Chuuk, so he had to go out and get them, then check in again. Actually Cathay had tried it with us as well, but we kept pushing them, and eventually the girl behind the Cathay desk made some phone calls and finally relented. Joerg’s obviously nicer and less pushy than the rest of us.

As we waited for our 8:20am flight, the dawn was beautiful as the sun came up over our plane. It was nice that we weren’t the only ones who were up early – as you can see from Catheryn’s photos the pilot was there running through his pre-flight checks.

Captain performing pre-flight checks (Photo Catheryn Chu)

We arrived at Chuuk at 10am local time, having travelled for almost 20 hours. Fortunately only Robert Ho’s bag was damaged this time. Last time I did this trip we had 3 or 4 casualties. And the first time I went, they offloaded all the dive bags in Guam (except Robert’s) because it had been raining and they were worried about the extra weight. So perhaps Continental Micronesia are improving after all!

We were met by Captain Lance Higgs from the Thorfinn, and some of his crew. It took two runs to get us and all our gear to the wharf where the Thorfinn was tied up, and since the Chuuk roads were in a dreadful state, we’d have been quicker walking. We’d have been up to our knees in mud as well, so I think all of us were happy enough to stick with the van. Sadly the area around the airport looked even more run-down than on my previous visit in 2006. But it was good to have finally arrived after 18 hours of travelling.

William Lindesay OBE is presenting a lecture called “Great Wall Revisited” at The Royal Geographical Society – Hong Kong on Thursday 17 December 2009. Mr. Lindesay is the first person in modern times to walk the whole 2,500km length of the wall, in 1987, following in the footsteps of William Geil who published the first ever book on the wall in November 1909. Over the last 5 years, Mr. Lindesay has been comparing Mr. Weil’s wall of 100 years ago with the Wall today. He will be presenting photographs and commentary of this comparison.

The talk is at 2/F Olympic House, So Kong Po, Causeway Bay. Drinks Reception 6.30 pm; Lecture 7.30 pm

There are more details on the RGS – HK website.

According to the BBC, Palau is intending to create the world’s first shark sanctuary by banning all commercial shark fishing in its waters. Johnson Toribiong, Palau’s President, announced this on Friday at the UN General Assembly. It will protect 600,000 sq km of ocean.

Palau gains a lot of income from their tourism, a mainstay of which is scuba diving. When I was there several years ago, I found it had a very high concentration of sharks, primarily grey reef sharks.

There are questions as to whether Palau will be able to enforce the ban as they only have one patrol boat. According to the BBC’s report, a recent aerial survey found 70 boats fishing in the area, most of them apparently illegally. However the fishermen still need to land their catches, so with improved monitoring, and international cooperation in tracking and sharing information on illegal fishing boats, perhaps things need not seem so bleak.

Palau is also intending to review its current position on whaling, where it has sided with countries which are pro-hunting, such as Japan. The President is planning bilateral meeting with Japan to discuss it based on the most recent scientific data. He has said that he wants Palau’s position to take a position that “will not lead to the depletion and extinction of whales”.

Perhaps this new shark sanctuary could make Palau an even more attractive destination for divers.

You can get more information from the BBC’s website.

Tue 25 Nov:  We were up quite early and checked in with Fox Glacier Guiding about the glacier hike we’d got planned. As expected, it was off, partly because of the incessant rain, but mainly because the access road to the glacier had been washed away. In fact the news was even worse, as the roads north and south were both blocked by either landslides or flooding. And still it kept on raining. The locals seemed confident that the road north would clear quickly once it stopped raining, but I was more skeptical. Having seen size of the drainage channels, I should have had more faith!

Around 10am we headed north to Franz Josef Glacier, the slightly better known of the 2 west coast glaciers, and we were able to get up to a viewpoint overlooking it. There we bumped into a couple of Department of Conservation people who were repairing the viewpoint. They pointed out the channel where the river below the glacier normally runs. The river was several times its normal size and had engulfed the track that led up to the base of the glacier. We decided to view it from a distance!

By the time we left Franz Josef, the rain has stopped and judging from the traffic, the way north was open. We decided to chance it.

The road was still incredibly wet and we did come across the occasional landslide, but it was passable. Not doing the glacier hike had put us a day ahead of schedule, but we decided to try and spend that time up in the Nelson or Marlborough regions,  where hopefully the weather was better. In fact Nelson was having just as much rain as we were, but fortunately it had improved by the time we got there.  Anyway that meant we had a long day’s driving ahead of us.

We stopped for a very late lunch in Hokitika, a really pleasant town that used to have a big jade, or pounamu,  industry. Pounamu is also known as greenstone, NZ jade or nephrite. Its importance has reduced in recent years, but pounamu carving is still an important part of the local economy, and there are a number of shops and carvers. We contributed to the economy by buying some nice presents for the family. The staff at the cafe where we had lunch were all very friendly and the cafe itself has a massive collection of teapots all around its walls – very unusual.

We went through Greymouth, which is one of the major population centres on the west coast and is a port, from which coal is exported. It also houses Monteith’s brewery, and we’d been sampling their products throughout our trip.

Despite the brewery, we didn’t stop in Greymouth. Instead we pressed on to Punakaiki, or the pancake rocks. These are made of limestone, which has been heavily eroded. There are also a series of blowholes which are very active at high tides.

We also saw a Weka there, which is a sort of flightless woodhen which is endemic to New Zealand. A lot of New Zealand’s birds are flightless, most famously the Kiwi. This is because up until the arrival of man, they had very few predators, so they lost the ability to fly. Anyway this weka was very patient, and allowed us to take a number of photographs before it wandered off into the bushes.

After spending some time on the rocks, we carried on to a large cave not far from the side of the road, which was quite interesting.

We carried on north and finally got to Charleston, which is between Punakaiki and Westport. It was founded as a gold mining town during a major gold rush in 1867. Now it is a lot smaller, with probably around 500 people living there. From our point of view it was the last place we were likely to be able to get a bed for the night before we turned inland towards Nelson. We stayed at a lovely little backpackers run by a woman who used to own a Westport guesthouse, but had moved south for a bit of peace and quiet. There were only 4 guest rooms, but they were very nice rooms. It’s a shame we didn’t get more time to enjoy them, but that plan fell apart as soon as we got to the pub.

We walked in to meet the landlord, who was the rudest person we’d met in New Zealand and didn’t make us feel at all welcome. However there were a couple of locals in there who assured us that he was always like that. After we’d complimented him on his pies, which were very good, and he found out that we were from Hong Kong where he’d been 6 times for the rugby sevens, he turned out to be a really good bloke. The others there were a mixed group, including the owner of another backpackers who also has a stock of good local greenstone and does some carving. Then there were a bloke who runs a company supporting the mining industry and one of his people. The company owner was originally a geologist who had worked all over Asia. He was very knowledgeable, and was complaining about the price of coal dropping from $300 a ton to $100 a ton because of a bunch of US bankers being idiots.

From them we found out a bit more about Charleston and life on the west coast. For instance I had thought that the tour guides who stay there in the tourist season would be very welcome. In a sense they are because they’re a friendly bunch and bring in some extra money, but what would be more useful to the local community is families who are there year-round. Then their children will support the school bus and the father can help out with the volunteer fire brigade.

It turned out that everyone except the landlord were part of the volunteer fire brigade, he’d left because he got fed up of Auckland imposing petty regulations that didn’t acknowledge the particular issues of local, rural life. It turns out that the fire brigade is most active with car crashes, which they blamed on tourists driving on the wrong side of the road! We promised to be very careful!

All in all it was one of the most memorable days we spent in New Zealand. Not for the scenery, which was impressive, albeit shrouded in rain all day, but for the people we met along the way. The guides who had to give us the bad news about our cancelled glacier hike, the staff at the cafe in Hokitika, the DOC guys at Franz Josef, but most of all the group we met in the pub at Charleston.

We found the West Coast people that we met to be a little reserved at first, even stand-offish. But after a few beers, they opened up and seemed to be very independent people, who live down on the west coast in tough conditions so that they don’t have people telling them what to do all the time. The ones we met in Charleston were quite critical of the Helen Clark government, the nanny state as they called it, and were more optimistic about John Key who had recently won the election.

The Royal Geographical Society in Hong Kong have a talk this evening entitled Namibia: Survival of the Fittest. This is about a 7 day foot race over some of the most harsh but beautiful terrain on earth. Three of the participants were Joanna Eades, Michael Wellstead, and ex-SCDC member Keith Futcher. Keith was one of the people who helped to teach me to dive in the early 90′s. And I needed a lot of help!

Anyway the talk is tonight (Monday, 20 July 2009), at the Pacific Place Conference Centre, 5/F One Pacific Place, Admiralty. There is a Drinks Reception at 6.30 pm, followed by the Lecture at 7.30 pm

More information from the Royal Geographical Society (HK)’s Website.

The BBC website has some video of a 4 metre high wave near Pohnpei in Micronesia. They filmed it with a high definition camera in super slow motion. As a result it shows the first images of underwater spiralling vortices created by the wave action.

The area is well known in the surfing community, and the waves that the surfers come for have travelled more than 5,000km, which helps explain their size and power.

The video is well worth seeing aand is on the BBC website.

Mon 24 Nov: It was raining lightly when we set off towards Haast Pass. We stopped to look at some waterfalls, then stopped at Davis Flats for a walk up a Bridle path. The path goes all the way up to Haast Pass, but we were only going to go part of the way. It was a nice track alongside the river, heading gradually upwards. Quite muddy in places, but fairly easy walking. Eventually we crossed the river and headed up through some woods, before finally turning round and heading back the way we came. It was a lovely walk and the high point of the day.

Back in the car and the rain picked up a bit and by the time we reached Haast Pass itself, it was bucketing down. As we drove down the other side the engine started to smell, so we pulled off just after a bridge and left it to cool down, while we went for a look at the river, which was cascading down a narrow gorge.

Back in the car we carried on heading towards Haast, when we had the chance to be heroes. Well, perhaps that’s a slight exaggeration, but it sounds good. We had slowed down significantly because of the torrential rain, but not everyone had been quite so cautious. We came around a bend to find someone flagging us down, and with a huge truck on one side of the road we didn’t have a lot of choice but to stop. In the ditch on the left hand side up to its wheel arches in mud/water was an 18 seat tour bus towing a trailer carrying bikes. The large truck was there to pull it out, which looked as though it was going to be a bit tricky. Our part in the proceedings wasn’t as dramatic – we got to ferry 2 of the stranded passengers into Haast. It turned out that they were part of a group of around 12 Germans who were doing a cycling tour of New Zealand. Given how hilly it was, we were impressed, although they did say that they’d take the bus up the hills, and cycle down them. We dropped them off at a hotel in Haast, and stopped there for lunch, hoping the rain would clear.

By the time we left it was still pelting down, but the Germans’ driver had turned up. They had managed to get his bus out of the ditch, and it only seemed to have minor damage to the front. I think they’d abandoned their plans for the rest of the day because as we left they were getting stuck into large quantities of alcohol and all having a good laugh about their experience. That was in stark contrast to what our 2 passengers had been saying about the driver while they were in our car.

We headed north. The rain did ease up a bit, but had been so heavy the roads were running with water and visibility wasn’t great. Finally we made it to Fox Glacier, and headed into town to find somewhere to stay. Then we checked with Fox Glacier Guiding, with whom we had arranged to do a full day glacier hike  the following day. They weren’t very optimistic that it would be going but told us to check back in the morning.

We tried driving down to Lake Matheson, which has spectacular views of Mounts Cook and Tasman on a clear day. This wasn’t a clear day, and the road had so much water on it, that we turned round and  opted for an early dinner and a beer in our backpackers instead.  We had expected the West Coast to be wet. And it is!

Last week Google launched Google Earth 5.0, which allows people to virtually explore the world’s oceans. There are thousands of photographs and videos of underwater scenery and marine life. The Ocean layer includes content from National Geographic, as well as clips and photos from award-winning documentaries from the BBC. Dive spots and shipwrecks are also shown.

Find out more and download the latest version from Google.

The UK’s Guardian has an article from Martin Williams, a 22 year resident of Hong Kong, on some of his favourite rural getaways. So see what you think of his suggestions and see if there are places that you prefer. The article is here.

Sun 23 Nov: After several great days in Fiordland it was time to leave. We set off from Manapouri relatively early and stopped in Te Anau for petrol. We found the best pie shop we’d been to so far on the trip and sampled venison and mint lamb pies, as well as a cornish pasty.

Suitably sated and we found ourselves retracing our steps towards Kingston. Inevitably we ran into the Kingston Flyer again, this time as it was setting off from Kingston, and Rita got some video of it.

We pushed on towards Wanaka, past Arrowtown, which is a historic mining town. After a wrong turn which meant we drove almost all the way into Arrowtown, then out again without actually seeing it, we took a slight detour over a lovely, hilly road, full of hairpin bends and spectacular views. It was a really nice drive. In fact the only problem was that the hills meant radio reception was awful. But since we were so busy looking at the views, that was no real hardship.

Wanaka itself was a pleasant town alongside a nice lake. We took another slight detour here to go to Rippon winery. Since I was driving, the onerous task of trying out the local wines fell to Rita – it’s a tough job but someone had to do it.  Since we knew we were going to be driving through the region, we’d made a point of looking for a Rippon wine at the Te Anau supermarket that morning, and we’d spotted a white wine, an Osteiner, a grape I’d not heard of. Now Rita was lucky enough to try it, along with a sauvignon blanc, a Riesling and 2 Pinot Noirs. We ended up buying the Osteiner, so at least I got to try it later on, and I have to say it was very good.

From there we headed on past Lake Hawea and up to Makarora where there was a holiday park. Actually this holiday park was the centre of some adventure tour operators, who combine flights in a small plane, with camping, hiking, white water rafting and cycling. They’ve got a variety of different alternatives and durations, and half the guys working there seemed to be British. We had a couple of beers sitting outside the bar listening to an English guy and a Scot talking about fishing. They’d both obviously spent a fair amount of time living in New Zealand, and it was interesting to find out something about a sport about which I know very little.

The weather was detiorating and it looked as though our good fortune was about to run out. We were to find out how much it had run out when we set off the following morning.