Our first dive site for the day was the Nippo Maru. The 353 ft. long freighter is resting almost on an even keel with a list to the port. While the dive deck was open for about 4 ½ hours, we opted to do one long dive instead of two.

We swam to the jug (which was on the superstructure) and hit the engine room first. It had a lot of ambient light in it, making it very cool to swim around. We started at the top of and swam down to the bomb damage at around 150 ft. Again, the engine room was one of the highlights of this site. We then swam toward the stern dipping into the aft two cargo holds to take a look around. The stern is very interesting, as the reef is starting to shoal over onto it. From there, we made our way back towards the superstructure where we peaked into the galley, the bathrooms, the helm station (complete with R2D2’s cousin and a telegraph machine). On the way to the bow, we saw three artillery guns and a tank. At the bow was the bow gun with a gas mask hanging on it. We used the mooring line to complete our decompression obligation. It was the perfect morning dive.

After lunch, we went to the Heian Maru. The largest ship in Truk, the Heian is a former luxury passenger/cargo liner that was converted into a submarine tender during the war. The ship rests on her port side in about 120 ft of water. The plan was to do a longer dive after lunch and possibly a shorter one before dinner. Given that we are diving the San Francisco Maru (a deep wreck) tomorrow morning, we will not be allowed to dive after 6:30 p.m.

We started in the engine room. We tooled around in there for a while before heading to cargo holds to check out the 20 & 25 ft. long torpedoes. We made our way back to the bow and saw the name and Japanese lettering on the boat (ironically enough, the Japanese inscription on the boat stands for peace and tranquility). On our way back, we spotted one of the dive guides and asked him if he could show us the human remains that are in the engine room (we couldn’t see them on our first pass). He obliged and off we went to the engine room again. Once in, Mark pointed out where the human remains are and then gave us a quick tour of the engine room – we saw more than had before as we zig-zagged through. It really is an impressive (and disorienting) engine room. We finished the dive and completed our deco obligation on the hang bar on the boat.

After a short surface interval, we hopped back in the water again for a quick dive. This time, we made our way to the stern to take a look at the props. From there, we swam back along the side of the ship and checked out the hard coral before surfacing.