We both woke up at around 6:00 a.m. when the boat started moving, but didn’t move until a little before 7 a.m. We headed up to the galley for breakfast and the first dive briefing of the trip. We will be on two sites today – the Kiyosumi Maru & the Yamagiri Maru. Both were merchant ships sunk in February 1944 during operation Hailstone.  They were in Truk Lagoon for repair and could not escape the air raid.

We did two dives on each wreck. The Kiyosumi Maru rests on its port side and has two gaping holes from where the torpedoes hit near the bow (closer to midship). In the holds we saw a bunch of barrels and several prop blades. Captain Mike said this first dive was kind of like an appetizer and everything would just get better from here. If he is right, we are in for a heck of a week.

The second site – the Yamagiri Maru – has six cargo holds. In the 5^th one we saw spare propellers, 18“ bomb shells, generators a much more. On the stern we saw a telegraph and on the stack you could still make out part of the “Y” insignia. Our first dive on this wreck (and the third dive of the day was the longest) – we were down for two hours and ten minutes and saw pretty much the entire wreck. We went back in after dinner for our fourth and final dive of the day. Because it was a night dive, we chose to stay just n the shallower portion of the dive (no penetration). We saw crabs, cleaner shrimp, crown of thorns, giant coral eating worms (note to self – need to get the actual name) a barracuda and a mantis shrimp. It was a very relaxing dive and a great way to end the day.