July 17-19, 2013
We finally saw a decent weather window coming up for the ~90 mile (as the crow flies) trip to Rongelap. We were anxious to get going at the first opportunity. We were hoping to be able to catch an extended window, make it to Rongelap, get checked in and get permission to go to Rongerik, see a bit of Rongelap, and make it all the way to Rongerik (another 30 miles into the wind), in the same light wind period.
So, we were all ready to go by Wednesday afternoon. The wind was definitely calming down and shifting a little more north of east, but it still looked a bit iffy. Stephen had run out to the point--in the clear, he thought--in his dinghy earlier and said it looked good.
We weren't quite ready when Westward II was, so they went ahead on out. As soon as they did, Dave said "Let's just wait a bit and see what they report." Their first report was "it wasn't too bad", so we went ahead an hauled our anchor. But we hadn't even gotten out of the anchorage before we got another VHF call from Westward II, indicating they were coming back. The wind had moderated but the waves were still big enough that motorsailing into them would be a problem.
So we enjoyed our (hopefully) last sunset at Bikini, and prepared to get up early and get going the next morning. Sure enough, after the dark, the wind lay down even more, and shifted to about 070 degrees. At dawn I got up and collected another weather forecast, and it still looked good. So we finished breakfast and our final preps, and set off from Bikini about 0915.
The direct route from Bikini to Rongelap passes just north of Alinginae Atoll. If the wind was down and the seas flat calm, we would have motored straight to Rongelap, passing norht of Alinginae. But once we got going, the wind and waves were such that we opted to use Alinginae would provide a good wind/wave break. Instead of motoring almost straight upwind on the most direct course, we motorsailed SE to the SW corner of Alinginae, then hugging the Alinginae coast as much as we dared at night, motored upwind in the lee provided by the atoll. It was a great plan, and mostly worked, but we found that the "lee" petered out about halfway up the south coast. Then it was slow-going... motoring into light winds, seas, and a light current. We only made 3.5 knots for a few hours.
We had wanted to stop briefly at Alinginae just to see it, but we had been delayed so long at Bikini that we felt we were running out of time. And the timing to leave Bikini and stop at Alinginae was not good for going on to Rongelap, if we found Alinginae untenable. And we are supposed to have permission from Rongelap to stop there anyway.
We had nearly a full moon and great conditions while motoring along Alinginae. There was enough moon to see the breakers off to port when we got in close. With the CM93 (CMap) chart off by nearly a half a mile, we were relying on the Google Earth charts that we had made, to keep us out of trouble. (The Navionics iPad chart was off too, and the Garmin didn't have much detail).
Finally about midnight we cleared the SE corner of Alinginae, and were able to tack (still motorsailing) up into the gap between Rongelap and Alinginae, where we got some relief from the wave action from Rongelap Atoll. All this time, Westward II was 2-3 miles behind us.
We had all along toyed with the idea of just skipping Rongelap altogether, and continuing on to Rongerik, which it looked like we could reach without too much trouble by late afternoon. For this reason, we had had Challenger, who was in Rongelap ahead of us, pay our $50 fee to the "acting mayor" at Rongelap, and get permission for us to go straight to Rongerik. Westward II, on the other hand, is on a different schedule than we are, and they opted to go to Rongelap no matter what.
So, while we were underway, we got another forecast, and it just didn't look like there'd be another window soon that would let us keep going eastward. The timing and conditions being right, Soggy Paws tacked off (still motorsailing) to head around the SE tip of Rongelap. While Westward II slowed down and headed for the SE pass at Rongelap, planning to go in at first light.
Both of us had mixed feelings about our choices...and still do. It's terrible to come all this way, and then have to skip places you'd really like to see. And neither Westward II or ourselves wanted to split up, as we've found we're very compatible in temperament, cruising style, and cruising speed. But we're starting to feel the time pressure to get moving, to be able to see all the other "important" (ie World War II relic) atolls down the way, and still get back to Kwajalein in time to fly out in early October.
Long story short, the predicted shift from ENE to ESE winds, which would make our tack from the SE corner of Rongelap to the NW corner of Rongerik a pleasant sail, didn't happen. Instead of 12-13 ESE, we had 15-18 ENE... right in our face. So it was a wet and windy day. We actually t-t-t-acked 3-4 times! But we arrived in the anchorage at Rongerik before sunset, exhausted and salty.
We again used our Google Earth charts to chose where we would enter through the wide western pass area at Rongerik, and to watch for isolated coral heads on the way across the atoll to the anchorage on the east side. With the sun behind us, it was easy.
Of course, almost minutes after we got our anchor set, the wind eased back to 12-13 knots and shifted SE, only a few hours late.
For a crow-flies distance of 116 NM, we covered roughly 145 NM in 32 hours, unfortunately having to motor at (mostly) low RPM's the whole time. Had we tried to just sail it, we'd have spent probably another 24 hours tacking around.
So we made it ~100 more miles to windward. Only 2 more hops to go before we make it to the eastern Ratak chain of islands. Then all our sailing will theoretically be at good sail-able angles to the wind. (Time for the wind to finally drop to zero, as Dave promised months ago :P).
Sunday, July 28, 2013
Saturday, July 27, 2013
Another TWO WEEKS in Bikini
July 6-18
Once we finished diving with the M/V Windward, we wanted to take a couple of days to show Westward II around the rest of the atoll, do a little maintenance, and then take off for "points east".
Unfortunately, during those 2-3 days, our weather window closed firmly. We did get prepped to leave one day, but the conditions were a lot squallier that day than we'd expected, so we opted to hang out and wait for better weather.
While we were waiting, Dave discovered that our staysail stay was pulling up the deck it was fastened to. One closer inspection, he found a welded aluminum bracket under the deck had broken the welds. We think this likely happened during the sustained 40-knot winds on our way up from Wotho the week before.
As we were exploring around the mostly-defunct facilities at Bikini, we had noticed a bunch of aluminum stock on a rack. We also had toured the well-equipped machine shop, and talked with Nario, the acting mayor there. So Dave took some measurements and the old bracket in to Nario, and asked if he could help fashion a new stronger bracket. In a couple of days' time, we had a 2-3x stronger bracket, cut and welded to fit the bracing area, and extended to tie into more strong parts of the boat. In a few hours, Dave had it installed, and we were good to go.
Meanwhile, Selena and I were invited to take our laundry in to their laundry facilities, and we did a couple of loads of laundry.
Nario wouldn't accept payment for anything, but we did reciprocate with some brownies, extra flour, DVDs, and a few other goodies that Nario and the other guys asked for.
The anchorage at Bikini Island is a little swelly, and it was always exciting to land the dinghy, and get it high enough up the steep beach. There is a 4-6 foot tidal range, which made it painful to drag the dinghy up. We finally dug our huge dinghy wheels out of deep storage in the forepeak. This helped a little bit, but was still a struggle in the soft sand. But mostly we took turns--one person staying in the dinghy, dashing in close in a lull in the swell, and dropping the other person off. Much easier than dealing with trying to get the dinghy ashore high up on the beach. The anchorage at Enyu is much less swelly, and there's an old concrete pier where we could leave the dinghy in the water.
During this two week period, we did some bommie diving, lots of beachcombing, and a lot of exploring on the old facilities at Enyu. After talking with Edward (the Bikini divemaster who was on the M/V Windward), we knew that we hadn't yet found all the old buildings and bunkers from the atomic bomb testing days. So we looked more closely at our Google Earth pictures, picked off a few likely spots, and went bushwhacking with a hand-held GPS. We found several more bunkers, some old houses, and old maintenance/construction facility, and even an old explosives bunker.
It was puzzling to see just how much stuff was just left behind and abandoned in one era or another. In what must have been the cookhouse at the bunk area for construction workers in the 90's, for example, there was still nearly a full case of Skippy Extra Crunchy Peanut Butter (among other things) on the pantry shelves. Dave wanted to take some, but I found a date code that said it was out of date in 1994!! Still smelled like peanut butter, but nah... we're not that hard up for peanut butter. But this was small stuff... In the same facility, there were generators, watermakers, 2 different whole machine shops. Out in the airport area, left over from the 2000-2007 "Dive Resort" era, there 3 huge tanks of fuel (diesel, gasoline, and av gas), another big warehouse with spare parts, tractors and tires, etc etc etc. Interesting poking around, but it made us sad (and angry) at the waste.
I spent a few hours snorkeling in the shallow waters we were anchored in, and found 3 big anchors...2 big "Navy" anchors and a hug mushroom anchor. No doubt all left behind after the bomb testing was finally called off.
We hung out and kept watching the weather. Our next planned stop was Rongelap Atoll, 85 miles almost straight to windward, so we needed a fairly perfect weather window.
When we had first mapped out this "counter clockwise" route through the Marshalls, I had questioned the advisability of going all the way to Bikini first. (that was what the scheduled connection with M/V Windward demanded). Dave assured me that it would be mid-summer, and we'd have an easy time of just motoring east in the calms. Well, so far, there haven't been any calms!
But, after 10 days of waiting, we did finally see a window coming up... with light ENE winds forecast. So we got ready to head for Rongelap.
Once we finished diving with the M/V Windward, we wanted to take a couple of days to show Westward II around the rest of the atoll, do a little maintenance, and then take off for "points east".
Unfortunately, during those 2-3 days, our weather window closed firmly. We did get prepped to leave one day, but the conditions were a lot squallier that day than we'd expected, so we opted to hang out and wait for better weather.
While we were waiting, Dave discovered that our staysail stay was pulling up the deck it was fastened to. One closer inspection, he found a welded aluminum bracket under the deck had broken the welds. We think this likely happened during the sustained 40-knot winds on our way up from Wotho the week before.
As we were exploring around the mostly-defunct facilities at Bikini, we had noticed a bunch of aluminum stock on a rack. We also had toured the well-equipped machine shop, and talked with Nario, the acting mayor there. So Dave took some measurements and the old bracket in to Nario, and asked if he could help fashion a new stronger bracket. In a couple of days' time, we had a 2-3x stronger bracket, cut and welded to fit the bracing area, and extended to tie into more strong parts of the boat. In a few hours, Dave had it installed, and we were good to go.
Meanwhile, Selena and I were invited to take our laundry in to their laundry facilities, and we did a couple of loads of laundry.
Nario wouldn't accept payment for anything, but we did reciprocate with some brownies, extra flour, DVDs, and a few other goodies that Nario and the other guys asked for.
The anchorage at Bikini Island is a little swelly, and it was always exciting to land the dinghy, and get it high enough up the steep beach. There is a 4-6 foot tidal range, which made it painful to drag the dinghy up. We finally dug our huge dinghy wheels out of deep storage in the forepeak. This helped a little bit, but was still a struggle in the soft sand. But mostly we took turns--one person staying in the dinghy, dashing in close in a lull in the swell, and dropping the other person off. Much easier than dealing with trying to get the dinghy ashore high up on the beach. The anchorage at Enyu is much less swelly, and there's an old concrete pier where we could leave the dinghy in the water.
During this two week period, we did some bommie diving, lots of beachcombing, and a lot of exploring on the old facilities at Enyu. After talking with Edward (the Bikini divemaster who was on the M/V Windward), we knew that we hadn't yet found all the old buildings and bunkers from the atomic bomb testing days. So we looked more closely at our Google Earth pictures, picked off a few likely spots, and went bushwhacking with a hand-held GPS. We found several more bunkers, some old houses, and old maintenance/construction facility, and even an old explosives bunker.
It was puzzling to see just how much stuff was just left behind and abandoned in one era or another. In what must have been the cookhouse at the bunk area for construction workers in the 90's, for example, there was still nearly a full case of Skippy Extra Crunchy Peanut Butter (among other things) on the pantry shelves. Dave wanted to take some, but I found a date code that said it was out of date in 1994!! Still smelled like peanut butter, but nah... we're not that hard up for peanut butter. But this was small stuff... In the same facility, there were generators, watermakers, 2 different whole machine shops. Out in the airport area, left over from the 2000-2007 "Dive Resort" era, there 3 huge tanks of fuel (diesel, gasoline, and av gas), another big warehouse with spare parts, tractors and tires, etc etc etc. Interesting poking around, but it made us sad (and angry) at the waste.
I spent a few hours snorkeling in the shallow waters we were anchored in, and found 3 big anchors...2 big "Navy" anchors and a hug mushroom anchor. No doubt all left behind after the bomb testing was finally called off.
We hung out and kept watching the weather. Our next planned stop was Rongelap Atoll, 85 miles almost straight to windward, so we needed a fairly perfect weather window.
When we had first mapped out this "counter clockwise" route through the Marshalls, I had questioned the advisability of going all the way to Bikini first. (that was what the scheduled connection with M/V Windward demanded). Dave assured me that it would be mid-summer, and we'd have an easy time of just motoring east in the calms. Well, so far, there haven't been any calms!
But, after 10 days of waiting, we did finally see a window coming up... with light ENE winds forecast. So we got ready to head for Rongelap.
Monday, July 22, 2013
Diving the Wrecks at Bikini - Finally
July 1-5, 2013
Ever since I first met Dave, and he was trying to woo me into sailing around the world with him on Soggy Paws, Dave has been talking about sailing to Bikini and diving the wrecks there. We finally did it this past week.
This was a culmination of years of cruising in this direction, and about 2 years of gathering information from cruisers and online sources about how to dive at Bikini. According to SSCA articles we have saved in our Marshall Islands folder, in 2005 and 2006, groups of cruisers on boats cruised together to Bikini, and dove the wrecks under the guidance of the dive operation set up by the Bikini Council. But in 2007, the combination of the economic downturn, and failure of Air Marshall Islands to maintain flyable airplanes, closed the Bikini Dive operation. I don't know the exact date, but I understand that at least one group of divers got stuck on Bikini for a month, due to a broken airplane. Now the airport and related maintenance facilities, and the Dive Resort, are closed down and falling into disrepair. There is typically a skeleton crew of 4-6 people occupying the main island and maintaining the facilities owned/supported by the U.S. Department of Energy and Lawrence Livermore Labs.
For a couple of years, there was no way to dive at Bikini. But in 2009, a liveaboard dive boat-based dive operation was started. Since then, in the summer months, the M/V Windward or the M/V Indies Trader, have taken dive charter groups to Bikini. It would have been easy to book a dive trip to Bikini with the Windward, from Majuro or Kwajalein. Interested? contact Pete Mesley http://lust4rust.co/). But this is a pretty expensive option--I think $6,500 USD per person for a 10-day dive trip to Bikini. Since there is no other way for most divers to get to Bikini, they can name their price.
Last July, after going to the Bikini website, (bikiniatoll.com), we contacted "Bikini Jack" Niedenthal, a former U.S. Peace Corp worker, who has become the administrator for Bikini tourism operations. The requirements posted on the website, for diving at Bikini, say this:
QUOTE
The Local Government Council is allowing certain types of vessels to visit Bikini Atoll and dive on the wrecks provided definitive prior arrangements are made with Bikini Atoll Divers.
These vessels or yachts must be completely self-contained, and must include:
*adequate international communications equipment
*housing, dining facilities, and supplies (all food, water, medical equipment, etc)
*all equipment needed to fill tanks and take care of divers, including any nitrox, oxygen or specialized medical equipment
*preferably have a helicopter for medical evacuation purposes
During such visits our local government will send along a diver and up to two Local Government Council representatives--at the vessel owner's expense--to make sure that no artifacts are removed from the ships.
END QUOTE
We told him we'd like to organize a group of boats to go to Bikini and dive the wrecks. His response was very discouraging. In addition to the transportation costs and per-diem expense of the "diver and up to 2 council representatives" ($100 per person per day), we would have to pay a "diving fee" of $125 per diver per day. And still supply all our own equipment, boats, air fills, plus feed and house the "representatives". There was ZERO interest in working with us to pull a group together. ZERO interest in negotiating the fees for a group visit to something more reasonable. Dave went back and forth a couple of times by email with Jack, but finally gave up in disgust. We figured we'd have to wait until we got to Majuro to work something out.
Meanwhile, we met Rick and Sue from s/v Panacea, who were temporarily working at Kwajalein, at the SSCA Gam last November. Rick said he was cruising to Bikini in May/June, and that they might be able to get permission to dive at Bikini from another avenue. This turned out to be via some of the contractors at Kwaj working for Lawrence Livermore Labs and the Department of Energy. They worked with the DOE rep at Kwajalein, who is responsible for Bikini, and felt they could get permission from him to dive at Bikini. But that didn't really happen. Hence our first trip to Bikini the last week of May, where we did a lot of "bommie diving", but no wreck diving.
Because there is only a lackadaisical skeleton crew at Bikini, it IS possible for a cruising boat to show up and basically just flaunt the rules and dive the wrecks on their own (surreptitiously). We know of one or two cruising boats that have done this. But that's not the way we work--that doesn't jibe with our "Clean Wake" policy. Leaving a clean wake is important to cruisers--because we have all experienced the sad situation where misbehavior by a prior cruiser has ruined things for all the subsequent cruisers. No matter how much we wanted to take a peek at the Saratoga, and how unreasonable we thought the rules were, we just don't do that.
However, we are fortunate to have hooked up with the Aussie boat Westward II while we were in Fiji. They are passionate divers, too, and were heading for the Marshalls to dive as well. We exchanged diving information last August, and got them fired up to spend the next summer diving in the Marshall islands with us. Fortunately, Stephen and Selena arrived in Majuro several months ahead of us, and took the time to go talk to the Indies Trader group personally, about organizing some dives on the wrecks in Bikini in conjunction with one of the M/V Windward's summer Bikini diving charters. Stephen spent quite a bit of time working this angle--including several emails and at least one meeting with the owner of the Indies Trader company. He finally got things to the point where he was assured that we would be able to dive if we were in Bikini when the M/V Windward was there. But Stephen could never nail down the price. The Windward had never done this before, and so hadn't really considered a diving package for cruisers. But by the time we got ready to head out to Bikini for the diving, the crew on Windward had gotten to know Stephen pretty well, and they assured him "Don't worry about it, we'll take care of you." So we went to Bikini on the second trip with high hopes.
In the end, it all worked out OK. Not only did the weather cooperate to a "T", but we got to do 5 dives on the deep wrecks, at an affordable price.
What Windward does is pick up the dive groups in Ebeye (Kwajalein Atoll), and then overnight to Bikini. Each night they anchor in the lee of Bikini island, and each day they go out to the wreck area (all the primary wrecks are within a mile box about 3 miles WSW of Bikini island). In the morning, they "live boat" a different wreck each day, and in the afternoon, they moor to the Saratoga. The Saratoga, an Aircraft Carrier, is big enough that 6 or 7 dives are needed to really explore the whole thing. So we arranged to dinghy out to the Windward each afternoon, bringing all our equipment, and do a "No Decompression Recreational Air Dive" on the Saratoga.
We were personally checked out and escorted on most of the dives by Pete Melsey, the owner/operator of Lust for Rust, the outfit that had chartered the Windward for this trip. Basically, since these dives are at the very edge (depth-wise) of the recreational dive limits, he wanted to make sure we didn't kill ourselves. Needless to say, we had the same goal!! So in spite of the excitement about finally diving the Saratoga, we did very conservative dives, staying within recreational limits, and doing much longer than normal safety stops. We were able to see much of the interesting parts of the Saratoga. The only "penetration" we did was a very short excursion into the flight deck, escorted by Pete, to see the Helldiver airplane. (pics later).
Meanwhile, the other divers, sporting mixed gas or rebreathers, and all doing decompression dives, were going all over the ship, at depths to 170 feet, for a couple of hours. Crazy stuff! If we were 40 years younger...
We ended up doing 4 dives on the Saratoga and 1 dive to see the propellers on the Nagato, the Japanese battleship that directed the Pearl Harbor attack. The Saratoga is sitting upright, and the "island" comes up to about 45 feet. The deck of the Sara is about 90-100 feet deep. We spent most of our time in and around the island. The Nagato sunk upside down. The huge propellers are within our depth limits, but the interesting parts of the superstructure that are reachable, are way to deep for us. But the props are huge and even that was an interesting dive.
Anyway, in a long-winded way...We had a great time (thanks Pete to from Lust for Rust, and Chris and Brian from M/V Windward). One more line off our Bucket List!!
Ever since I first met Dave, and he was trying to woo me into sailing around the world with him on Soggy Paws, Dave has been talking about sailing to Bikini and diving the wrecks there. We finally did it this past week.
This was a culmination of years of cruising in this direction, and about 2 years of gathering information from cruisers and online sources about how to dive at Bikini. According to SSCA articles we have saved in our Marshall Islands folder, in 2005 and 2006, groups of cruisers on boats cruised together to Bikini, and dove the wrecks under the guidance of the dive operation set up by the Bikini Council. But in 2007, the combination of the economic downturn, and failure of Air Marshall Islands to maintain flyable airplanes, closed the Bikini Dive operation. I don't know the exact date, but I understand that at least one group of divers got stuck on Bikini for a month, due to a broken airplane. Now the airport and related maintenance facilities, and the Dive Resort, are closed down and falling into disrepair. There is typically a skeleton crew of 4-6 people occupying the main island and maintaining the facilities owned/supported by the U.S. Department of Energy and Lawrence Livermore Labs.
For a couple of years, there was no way to dive at Bikini. But in 2009, a liveaboard dive boat-based dive operation was started. Since then, in the summer months, the M/V Windward or the M/V Indies Trader, have taken dive charter groups to Bikini. It would have been easy to book a dive trip to Bikini with the Windward, from Majuro or Kwajalein. Interested? contact Pete Mesley http://lust4rust.co/). But this is a pretty expensive option--I think $6,500 USD per person for a 10-day dive trip to Bikini. Since there is no other way for most divers to get to Bikini, they can name their price.
Last July, after going to the Bikini website, (bikiniatoll.com), we contacted "Bikini Jack" Niedenthal, a former U.S. Peace Corp worker, who has become the administrator for Bikini tourism operations. The requirements posted on the website, for diving at Bikini, say this:
QUOTE
The Local Government Council is allowing certain types of vessels to visit Bikini Atoll and dive on the wrecks provided definitive prior arrangements are made with Bikini Atoll Divers.
These vessels or yachts must be completely self-contained, and must include:
*adequate international communications equipment
*housing, dining facilities, and supplies (all food, water, medical equipment, etc)
*all equipment needed to fill tanks and take care of divers, including any nitrox, oxygen or specialized medical equipment
*preferably have a helicopter for medical evacuation purposes
During such visits our local government will send along a diver and up to two Local Government Council representatives--at the vessel owner's expense--to make sure that no artifacts are removed from the ships.
END QUOTE
We told him we'd like to organize a group of boats to go to Bikini and dive the wrecks. His response was very discouraging. In addition to the transportation costs and per-diem expense of the "diver and up to 2 council representatives" ($100 per person per day), we would have to pay a "diving fee" of $125 per diver per day. And still supply all our own equipment, boats, air fills, plus feed and house the "representatives". There was ZERO interest in working with us to pull a group together. ZERO interest in negotiating the fees for a group visit to something more reasonable. Dave went back and forth a couple of times by email with Jack, but finally gave up in disgust. We figured we'd have to wait until we got to Majuro to work something out.
Meanwhile, we met Rick and Sue from s/v Panacea, who were temporarily working at Kwajalein, at the SSCA Gam last November. Rick said he was cruising to Bikini in May/June, and that they might be able to get permission to dive at Bikini from another avenue. This turned out to be via some of the contractors at Kwaj working for Lawrence Livermore Labs and the Department of Energy. They worked with the DOE rep at Kwajalein, who is responsible for Bikini, and felt they could get permission from him to dive at Bikini. But that didn't really happen. Hence our first trip to Bikini the last week of May, where we did a lot of "bommie diving", but no wreck diving.
Because there is only a lackadaisical skeleton crew at Bikini, it IS possible for a cruising boat to show up and basically just flaunt the rules and dive the wrecks on their own (surreptitiously). We know of one or two cruising boats that have done this. But that's not the way we work--that doesn't jibe with our "Clean Wake" policy. Leaving a clean wake is important to cruisers--because we have all experienced the sad situation where misbehavior by a prior cruiser has ruined things for all the subsequent cruisers. No matter how much we wanted to take a peek at the Saratoga, and how unreasonable we thought the rules were, we just don't do that.
However, we are fortunate to have hooked up with the Aussie boat Westward II while we were in Fiji. They are passionate divers, too, and were heading for the Marshalls to dive as well. We exchanged diving information last August, and got them fired up to spend the next summer diving in the Marshall islands with us. Fortunately, Stephen and Selena arrived in Majuro several months ahead of us, and took the time to go talk to the Indies Trader group personally, about organizing some dives on the wrecks in Bikini in conjunction with one of the M/V Windward's summer Bikini diving charters. Stephen spent quite a bit of time working this angle--including several emails and at least one meeting with the owner of the Indies Trader company. He finally got things to the point where he was assured that we would be able to dive if we were in Bikini when the M/V Windward was there. But Stephen could never nail down the price. The Windward had never done this before, and so hadn't really considered a diving package for cruisers. But by the time we got ready to head out to Bikini for the diving, the crew on Windward had gotten to know Stephen pretty well, and they assured him "Don't worry about it, we'll take care of you." So we went to Bikini on the second trip with high hopes.
In the end, it all worked out OK. Not only did the weather cooperate to a "T", but we got to do 5 dives on the deep wrecks, at an affordable price.
What Windward does is pick up the dive groups in Ebeye (Kwajalein Atoll), and then overnight to Bikini. Each night they anchor in the lee of Bikini island, and each day they go out to the wreck area (all the primary wrecks are within a mile box about 3 miles WSW of Bikini island). In the morning, they "live boat" a different wreck each day, and in the afternoon, they moor to the Saratoga. The Saratoga, an Aircraft Carrier, is big enough that 6 or 7 dives are needed to really explore the whole thing. So we arranged to dinghy out to the Windward each afternoon, bringing all our equipment, and do a "No Decompression Recreational Air Dive" on the Saratoga.
We were personally checked out and escorted on most of the dives by Pete Melsey, the owner/operator of Lust for Rust, the outfit that had chartered the Windward for this trip. Basically, since these dives are at the very edge (depth-wise) of the recreational dive limits, he wanted to make sure we didn't kill ourselves. Needless to say, we had the same goal!! So in spite of the excitement about finally diving the Saratoga, we did very conservative dives, staying within recreational limits, and doing much longer than normal safety stops. We were able to see much of the interesting parts of the Saratoga. The only "penetration" we did was a very short excursion into the flight deck, escorted by Pete, to see the Helldiver airplane. (pics later).
Meanwhile, the other divers, sporting mixed gas or rebreathers, and all doing decompression dives, were going all over the ship, at depths to 170 feet, for a couple of hours. Crazy stuff! If we were 40 years younger...
We ended up doing 4 dives on the Saratoga and 1 dive to see the propellers on the Nagato, the Japanese battleship that directed the Pearl Harbor attack. The Saratoga is sitting upright, and the "island" comes up to about 45 feet. The deck of the Sara is about 90-100 feet deep. We spent most of our time in and around the island. The Nagato sunk upside down. The huge propellers are within our depth limits, but the interesting parts of the superstructure that are reachable, are way to deep for us. But the props are huge and even that was an interesting dive.
Anyway, in a long-winded way...We had a great time (thanks Pete to from Lust for Rust, and Chris and Brian from M/V Windward). One more line off our Bucket List!!
Thursday, July 11, 2013
Passage from Hell - Wotho to Bikini
The trip from Wotho to Bikini should have been an easy one. The forecast was for 12-13 knots ENE, and "scattered showers". The course was 85 miles NW, and should have have been an easy close reach in moderate conditions. We debated whether to make this a short overnight passage or a long day arrive-in-the-dark passage.
Dave hates overnights, so he was the one advocating the daytime passage. The rest of us (me, and Stephen and Selena from Westward II) prevailed, and we scheduled our departure for late in the afternoon.
We left our protected anchorage mid-morning, and went out and anchored near the island in the NW corner of the Wotho atoll, for a snorkle and a beachcomb. About 4pm, we hoisted the dinghies, picked up anchor, and exited the lagoon through the wide opening on the western side. We angled SW going out, so the sun setting in the WNW wasn't directly in our eyes. It was pretty easy to see the widely scattered coral "bommies" on the way out, and avoid them.
As we rounded the NW tip of the atoll, with all our sails set, the conditions were good, we were making our course, and congratulating ourselves on picking a good weather window. By early morning, our GPS said we'd be in Bikini.
But, about 9pm, on the "girls' watch", we started getting squalls. Selena and I got about one squall an hour for the rest of our watch (until 1am). Mostly the wind would go up to about 20-25 knots for a few minutes, switch a little more on our nose, it would rain a little, and then the wind would die down to 5-10 knots. At one point, the wind died out enough that I let all the sail out, and then turned the engine on, and of course 10 minutes later, the wind was back up to 20 knots and we were overpowered again. Frustrating conditions, but not terrible. I didn't get much book reading done, as I was too busy winching the genoa in and out in response to the wind changes.
"The boys" (Stephen and Dave) took over around 1am, and I was sure that Dave would have a much easier watch than I had. The forecast hadn't been predicting that much weather activity, and it should be just about over.
After a trying watch, I fell sound asleep below. About 3am Dave logged that we were sailing direclty toward our waypoint at Bikini, now 40 miles away, at 5 knots. That was the last log entry he made. Sometime between then an my next log entry 5:30 am, all hell broke loose. I logged at 0530 "Mother of all squalls--30+ knots, motorsailing with just a double-reefed main and staysail". The wind and commotion of getting the last of the genoa in in the increasing winds had woken me from a deep sleep around 5am. I never got a chance to go back to sleep.
At 0745, we checked in on our SSB on the Yokwe Net, reporting that we were 17 miles from Bikini, squally conditions and "wind still 20+ knots". But right after that check-in, things got much worse. For the next 3 hours, we had winds in the 30-40 knot range, and the seas quickly built to 10-15 feet. It was really scary. It's the worst weather either Dave or I had been at sea in in any cruising sailboat... after many years and many miles of cruising.
We considered heaving-to, but being relatively close to Bikini, where we knew we had a a sheltered anchorage with good holding, we carried on. We kept the engine on to maintain control, rolled in about half of our staysail, and eased the double-reefed main. We felt fortunate that the wind had shifted a little more to the east, so we weren't really hard on the wind, and we were still making our course to Bikini even in those conditions. We trimmed the sails to maintain about 5-6 knots. We tried to keep our forward progress as high as we could, to get in as soon as possible, but not too fast, as we'd start crashing through the big waves instead of sailing over them.
Amazingly, Westward II was right beside us through all this. We always try to stay reasonably close when cruising in company, for companionship and someone else to talk to, as much for anything else. But when the stuff hits the fan, it tends to be "everyone for himself". The crews make different decisions about sail plans and course changes, and the boats tend to spread out. But after an hour or so of the horrific weather, I looked out and there was Westward II a quarter mile away. It was comforting to have them right there--though they wouldn't have been much help in those conditions, if something had gone really wrong. They were happy to have us there, also, especially since we'd been in to Bikini before and knew the anchorage pretty well.
Just before noon, we went through the wide opening in the reef at the south end of Bikini Atoll, with Westward II right behind us. The wind was still in the 20-25 knot range, but inside the atoll, the seas were down to a manageable "heavy chop". We were only a mile downwind from the anchorage we'd left at Enyu Island a few weeks before. Whew! We made it!!
Just then, Westward II called us and said their engine had quit. Stephen has been fighting fuel filter issues ever since taking on a bad lot of fuel somewhere in Fiji or on the way to the Marshalls, several months before. He had just changed his filters again before we left Wotho. We offered to come back and give them a tow in, but they felt it was safer and easier in the conditions to just sail on in.
We dropped anchor in a nice sandy spot, and left a big area for them to sail onto anchor behind us. Fifteen minutes later, they came ghosting in under mainsail, and dropped their anchor.
Throughout the rest of the day, the wind eased and the sun came out. We had a big breakfast, and a nap, before we started cleaning up the boat and sorting things out belowdecks. Since we had expected an easy passage, stuff wasn't stowed as well as it should have been. But nothing was lost overboard, nothing broken down below. (Thanks mostly to Dave's always-meticulous preparations).
When I got a chance, I collected the weather forecast again, and nothing in the forecast, either the night before or the morning after, hinted at anything like the weather we had experienced. But the next day, the Discussion from Guam for the Micronesia atolls west of us, talked about a TUTT.
"MAIN WEATHER MAKER ACROSS EASTERN MICRONESIA IS A VIGOROUS UPPER-LOW AND TUTT NORTHWEST OF THE MARSHALL ISLANDS. DEEP CONVECTION CONTINUES TO DEVELOP EAST OF THE TUTT."
That's a weather term I have never heard before (or since). Our friends on Carina in Pohnpei emailed us this definition from the National Weather Service site: "A TUTT (Tropical Upper Tropospheric Trough) is a trough, or cold core low in the upper atmosphere, which produces convection. On occasion, one of these develops into a warm-core tropical cyclone."
When we were in the middle of it, I had been thinking it seemed like a tropical storm suddenly brewing up. But this never did develop any further, apparently. The atolls east and south and west of us never reported anything near as strong nor as sustained as what we experienced.
So, bottom line, when the Weather Guessers start talking about Upper Level Troughs, especially near the ITCZ, pay attention!
Dave hates overnights, so he was the one advocating the daytime passage. The rest of us (me, and Stephen and Selena from Westward II) prevailed, and we scheduled our departure for late in the afternoon.
We left our protected anchorage mid-morning, and went out and anchored near the island in the NW corner of the Wotho atoll, for a snorkle and a beachcomb. About 4pm, we hoisted the dinghies, picked up anchor, and exited the lagoon through the wide opening on the western side. We angled SW going out, so the sun setting in the WNW wasn't directly in our eyes. It was pretty easy to see the widely scattered coral "bommies" on the way out, and avoid them.
As we rounded the NW tip of the atoll, with all our sails set, the conditions were good, we were making our course, and congratulating ourselves on picking a good weather window. By early morning, our GPS said we'd be in Bikini.
But, about 9pm, on the "girls' watch", we started getting squalls. Selena and I got about one squall an hour for the rest of our watch (until 1am). Mostly the wind would go up to about 20-25 knots for a few minutes, switch a little more on our nose, it would rain a little, and then the wind would die down to 5-10 knots. At one point, the wind died out enough that I let all the sail out, and then turned the engine on, and of course 10 minutes later, the wind was back up to 20 knots and we were overpowered again. Frustrating conditions, but not terrible. I didn't get much book reading done, as I was too busy winching the genoa in and out in response to the wind changes.
"The boys" (Stephen and Dave) took over around 1am, and I was sure that Dave would have a much easier watch than I had. The forecast hadn't been predicting that much weather activity, and it should be just about over.
After a trying watch, I fell sound asleep below. About 3am Dave logged that we were sailing direclty toward our waypoint at Bikini, now 40 miles away, at 5 knots. That was the last log entry he made. Sometime between then an my next log entry 5:30 am, all hell broke loose. I logged at 0530 "Mother of all squalls--30+ knots, motorsailing with just a double-reefed main and staysail". The wind and commotion of getting the last of the genoa in in the increasing winds had woken me from a deep sleep around 5am. I never got a chance to go back to sleep.
At 0745, we checked in on our SSB on the Yokwe Net, reporting that we were 17 miles from Bikini, squally conditions and "wind still 20+ knots". But right after that check-in, things got much worse. For the next 3 hours, we had winds in the 30-40 knot range, and the seas quickly built to 10-15 feet. It was really scary. It's the worst weather either Dave or I had been at sea in in any cruising sailboat... after many years and many miles of cruising.
We considered heaving-to, but being relatively close to Bikini, where we knew we had a a sheltered anchorage with good holding, we carried on. We kept the engine on to maintain control, rolled in about half of our staysail, and eased the double-reefed main. We felt fortunate that the wind had shifted a little more to the east, so we weren't really hard on the wind, and we were still making our course to Bikini even in those conditions. We trimmed the sails to maintain about 5-6 knots. We tried to keep our forward progress as high as we could, to get in as soon as possible, but not too fast, as we'd start crashing through the big waves instead of sailing over them.
Amazingly, Westward II was right beside us through all this. We always try to stay reasonably close when cruising in company, for companionship and someone else to talk to, as much for anything else. But when the stuff hits the fan, it tends to be "everyone for himself". The crews make different decisions about sail plans and course changes, and the boats tend to spread out. But after an hour or so of the horrific weather, I looked out and there was Westward II a quarter mile away. It was comforting to have them right there--though they wouldn't have been much help in those conditions, if something had gone really wrong. They were happy to have us there, also, especially since we'd been in to Bikini before and knew the anchorage pretty well.
Just before noon, we went through the wide opening in the reef at the south end of Bikini Atoll, with Westward II right behind us. The wind was still in the 20-25 knot range, but inside the atoll, the seas were down to a manageable "heavy chop". We were only a mile downwind from the anchorage we'd left at Enyu Island a few weeks before. Whew! We made it!!
Just then, Westward II called us and said their engine had quit. Stephen has been fighting fuel filter issues ever since taking on a bad lot of fuel somewhere in Fiji or on the way to the Marshalls, several months before. He had just changed his filters again before we left Wotho. We offered to come back and give them a tow in, but they felt it was safer and easier in the conditions to just sail on in.
We dropped anchor in a nice sandy spot, and left a big area for them to sail onto anchor behind us. Fifteen minutes later, they came ghosting in under mainsail, and dropped their anchor.
Throughout the rest of the day, the wind eased and the sun came out. We had a big breakfast, and a nap, before we started cleaning up the boat and sorting things out belowdecks. Since we had expected an easy passage, stuff wasn't stowed as well as it should have been. But nothing was lost overboard, nothing broken down below. (Thanks mostly to Dave's always-meticulous preparations).
When I got a chance, I collected the weather forecast again, and nothing in the forecast, either the night before or the morning after, hinted at anything like the weather we had experienced. But the next day, the Discussion from Guam for the Micronesia atolls west of us, talked about a TUTT.
"MAIN WEATHER MAKER ACROSS EASTERN MICRONESIA IS A VIGOROUS UPPER-LOW AND TUTT NORTHWEST OF THE MARSHALL ISLANDS. DEEP CONVECTION CONTINUES TO DEVELOP EAST OF THE TUTT."
That's a weather term I have never heard before (or since). Our friends on Carina in Pohnpei emailed us this definition from the National Weather Service site: "A TUTT (Tropical Upper Tropospheric Trough) is a trough, or cold core low in the upper atmosphere, which produces convection. On occasion, one of these develops into a warm-core tropical cyclone."
When we were in the middle of it, I had been thinking it seemed like a tropical storm suddenly brewing up. But this never did develop any further, apparently. The atolls east and south and west of us never reported anything near as strong nor as sustained as what we experienced.
So, bottom line, when the Weather Guessers start talking about Upper Level Troughs, especially near the ITCZ, pay attention!
Sunday, July 7, 2013
Wotho Atoll for a Couple of Days
June 26-28
After breakfast and some after-passage cleanup, we went with Westward in one dinghy to shore, taking the jugs of water and some bags of clothing donated for distribution in the outer islands by a group in Majuro. We found the acting chief, Hiram, and the others at their family complex, and exchanged names and pleasantries. Hiram spoke pretty good English, as did a coup
The village is a small but sprawling village running along the shore. There is a beautiful beach with turquoise water, and the village is shaded with palm trees and breadfruit trees. Most of the houses are small, from what we saw they are mainly used to keep things dry... cooking, sleeping, and eating are done outside in outbuildings. Most of the houses are equipped with a small 220-watt solar array on a pole, with a small charge controller/inverter/distribution panel.
One of Westward's contacts in Majuro works for the Marshall Islands Public Works department, and they had asked Stephen to check up on the Wotho watermaker. It had just been installed for the village a few weeks before. So our first stop on our "village tour" was at the watermaker. It was an interesting affair, "a watermaker in a box", built by Spectra, powered by 2 large solar panels and 2 L16 golfcart batteries. The "salt" water supply was being taken from the old village well--a brackish well. The output was a long thin plastic tube that they ran into the big plastic tank, equipped with a faucet. They run the watermaker every day until the tank is topped off. Anyone in the village needing drinking water, just brings a jug and taps the tank.
A quick taste test on the water coming out of the watermaker, and a listen to the pump going, and both Stephen and Dave felt that it wasn't quite operating properly. After a round of emails with Majuro, and second visit to the watermaker, Stephen confirmed that something wasn't quite right. But it was making water that was a lot better quality than the brackish well water they had before. He spent a couple of hours with the guy who was in charge of the watermaker, going over proper procedures for running and flushing the system. He relayed the info back to Majuro, with some suggestions on what might be wrong, and suggestions on proper training of the islanders, and a simple manual in Marshallese.
Meanwhile, Dave and I got asked to take a look in Hiram's family radio shack. Their radio had been "acting up". A quick look at the knobs revealed that the mic gain was really high. We dialed that back and got a good radio check from someone on another atoll. The outer island Marshallese have quite a radio network going--basically an open party line on 8113.5.
As soon as they found out that we knew something about radios, several more decrepit radios were produced from around the village. We tried to see if there was something easy/obvious that was wrong with them, but basically we're not electronic techs, and couldn't help them with their broken radios. The did ask us some questions about the proper length for an inverted V antenna for their 8113.5 frequency. After a look in our reference material in my computer, we drew a diagram for a proper inverted V, and gave them the formula for proper antenna length based on the frequency they wanted to talk on.
Our limited information on Wotho indicated their were about 80 people on the island, but right now there is only 23, and they are expecting a plane from Majuro to take a few more of the villagers to Majuro. We didn't get a good grasp of whether this was normal summertime "vacation", or actually an evacuation of the vulnerable people from the drought-stricken northern atolls. Nobody seemed to be too concerned, one way or the other.
The day before we left, we spent an interesting morning in the village trading for glass fishing floats and shells. We had seen the glass floats in Majuro for sale in the $50 range, so we knew that was what the "city" price was. But we got ours for a couple of squid-type fishing lures, a jar of instant coffee, a can of Corned Beef, and an old snorkeling mask. It was a little confusing as to who owned what thing we were trading for, but in the end, us and Westward each had a big glass ball and a couple of nice shells, and Westward had a couple of small glass balls. Everyone was smiling and felt they had "made out" in the trade, plus all felt it had been an entertaining morning.
We spent one evening with an old guy from the village, out walking on the reef for lobster. Stephen set this up, and didn't question the time that the guy said we were going to go. When I heard about it, I didn't think it was the right time, because it wasn't "low tide rising" as we'd been told on other islands. But the old guy assured us it would be good, so we went anyway--2 villagers and Dave, Stephen, and I motoring out with our tiny 5hp motor, in the dark, to an island about 2 miles away. We beached the dinghy, made our way around to the windward side, and faithfully walked the reef with gloves, nets, and headlamps, and saw nary a lobster. We surmised later that the islanders would normally go out just before dark, and just hang out waiting for the right tide. But in our case, the right tide would have been about 1am, and we weren't interested in sitting in the sand waiting for 3-4 hours. But we all enjoyed the excursion anyway--once we were back safe and sound on our boats.
Though we would have enjoying hanging out at Wotho and exploring some more, we had a date at Bikini to go diving with the M/V Windward, so we moved on--leaving Friday afternoon for another easy overnight to Bikini.
After breakfast and some after-passage cleanup, we went with Westward in one dinghy to shore, taking the jugs of water and some bags of clothing donated for distribution in the outer islands by a group in Majuro. We found the acting chief, Hiram, and the others at their family complex, and exchanged names and pleasantries. Hiram spoke pretty good English, as did a coup
The village is a small but sprawling village running along the shore. There is a beautiful beach with turquoise water, and the village is shaded with palm trees and breadfruit trees. Most of the houses are small, from what we saw they are mainly used to keep things dry... cooking, sleeping, and eating are done outside in outbuildings. Most of the houses are equipped with a small 220-watt solar array on a pole, with a small charge controller/inverter/distribution panel.
One of Westward's contacts in Majuro works for the Marshall Islands Public Works department, and they had asked Stephen to check up on the Wotho watermaker. It had just been installed for the village a few weeks before. So our first stop on our "village tour" was at the watermaker. It was an interesting affair, "a watermaker in a box", built by Spectra, powered by 2 large solar panels and 2 L16 golfcart batteries. The "salt" water supply was being taken from the old village well--a brackish well. The output was a long thin plastic tube that they ran into the big plastic tank, equipped with a faucet. They run the watermaker every day until the tank is topped off. Anyone in the village needing drinking water, just brings a jug and taps the tank.
A quick taste test on the water coming out of the watermaker, and a listen to the pump going, and both Stephen and Dave felt that it wasn't quite operating properly. After a round of emails with Majuro, and second visit to the watermaker, Stephen confirmed that something wasn't quite right. But it was making water that was a lot better quality than the brackish well water they had before. He spent a couple of hours with the guy who was in charge of the watermaker, going over proper procedures for running and flushing the system. He relayed the info back to Majuro, with some suggestions on what might be wrong, and suggestions on proper training of the islanders, and a simple manual in Marshallese.
Meanwhile, Dave and I got asked to take a look in Hiram's family radio shack. Their radio had been "acting up". A quick look at the knobs revealed that the mic gain was really high. We dialed that back and got a good radio check from someone on another atoll. The outer island Marshallese have quite a radio network going--basically an open party line on 8113.5.
As soon as they found out that we knew something about radios, several more decrepit radios were produced from around the village. We tried to see if there was something easy/obvious that was wrong with them, but basically we're not electronic techs, and couldn't help them with their broken radios. The did ask us some questions about the proper length for an inverted V antenna for their 8113.5 frequency. After a look in our reference material in my computer, we drew a diagram for a proper inverted V, and gave them the formula for proper antenna length based on the frequency they wanted to talk on.
Our limited information on Wotho indicated their were about 80 people on the island, but right now there is only 23, and they are expecting a plane from Majuro to take a few more of the villagers to Majuro. We didn't get a good grasp of whether this was normal summertime "vacation", or actually an evacuation of the vulnerable people from the drought-stricken northern atolls. Nobody seemed to be too concerned, one way or the other.
The day before we left, we spent an interesting morning in the village trading for glass fishing floats and shells. We had seen the glass floats in Majuro for sale in the $50 range, so we knew that was what the "city" price was. But we got ours for a couple of squid-type fishing lures, a jar of instant coffee, a can of Corned Beef, and an old snorkeling mask. It was a little confusing as to who owned what thing we were trading for, but in the end, us and Westward each had a big glass ball and a couple of nice shells, and Westward had a couple of small glass balls. Everyone was smiling and felt they had "made out" in the trade, plus all felt it had been an entertaining morning.
We spent one evening with an old guy from the village, out walking on the reef for lobster. Stephen set this up, and didn't question the time that the guy said we were going to go. When I heard about it, I didn't think it was the right time, because it wasn't "low tide rising" as we'd been told on other islands. But the old guy assured us it would be good, so we went anyway--2 villagers and Dave, Stephen, and I motoring out with our tiny 5hp motor, in the dark, to an island about 2 miles away. We beached the dinghy, made our way around to the windward side, and faithfully walked the reef with gloves, nets, and headlamps, and saw nary a lobster. We surmised later that the islanders would normally go out just before dark, and just hang out waiting for the right tide. But in our case, the right tide would have been about 1am, and we weren't interested in sitting in the sand waiting for 3-4 hours. But we all enjoyed the excursion anyway--once we were back safe and sound on our boats.
Though we would have enjoying hanging out at Wotho and exploring some more, we had a date at Bikini to go diving with the M/V Windward, so we moved on--leaving Friday afternoon for another easy overnight to Bikini.
Kwajalein to Wotho Atoll
June 28, 2013
We left the North Pass at Kwajalein (the closest one to Roi-Namur) at about 11am on Tuesday morning. The conditions, finally, were GREAT for diving, and not so great for sailing. Isn't it always that way??!! We briefly discussed staying another day to take advantage of the calm conditions, but all our dive gear was packed away, and we're on a mission to get back to Bikini by Saturday.
Challenger had sailed south back to Ebeye a few days before--with plans to hook back up with us in a week or two.
So it was just us and Westward II. While in Majuro in May, in the midst of a severe drought in the northern atolls, Westward II had volunteered to carry a bunch of water to distribute to islands in need, in 1-gallon jugs. They had packed their aft head with water. They also were given several large bags of clothing by a ladies group in Majuro. They had thought they'd been able to distribute these items within a week or two of loading them onboard, but their prop problems changed their plans, and they ended up in Kwajalein. Now 6 weeks later, they were anxious to get the stuff out of their aft head.
So we scheduled a stop in remote Wotho Atoll. Wotho is about 100 miles WNW from Kwaj--just a short overnight sail. Because of the light conditions, we left in the morning, hoping for a morning landfall at Wotho. Our first hour on passage, the wind was light enough that Dave and I hauled out the Code Zero sail from the forepeak and got it all ready to go. Our ETA at Wotho was about noon the next day, and we wanted to get in earlier than that.
Not a half an hour after we got the Genoa furled and the Code Zero set, the wind started picking up to a steady 10-15 (from 5-10 knots). We held on for a few minutes with the Code Zero, surfing down the face of the swell at about 8 knots. But it looked like the wind was there to stay, so we furled the Code Zero and put the Genoa back out. We enjoyed a nice evening of steady breeze and were making 5-6 knots. By the middle of the night, the wind had picked up another knot or two, and we were doing 7.5 knots, with an ETA at Wotho about 4am. We kept taking in more and more of the genoa, trying to slow down. But if we reduced sail too much, we'd roll a lot. And besides, it was beautiful sailing conditions--the seas were laying down and we had about 12-14 knots on the beam, and a full moon.
So we rounded the southern tip of Wotho about 5am. It was Dave's watch, and he rolled in the genoa and sailed slowly in the lee of the atoll, arriving at the "pass" about 7am. That was still too early to head in to an unmarked pass, with no real charts, looking straight into the sun. But we did it anyway.
We have a fairly good Google Earth picture of the area (converted to a chartlet by GE2KAP and pulled into our Maxsea/OpenCPN charting programs), and felt confident we could get into the village anchorage safely. It just so happened that Westward II got there ahead of us, so we had the novel experience of following someone ELSE in. It was easy--the pass was a wide opening. The bottom jumped from "bottomless" to about 60 feet in the space of one boat length, and then it gradually shallowed up to about 45 feet. With the sun low on the horizon to the east (roughly the direction we were going), the visibility wasn't great, but we went slowly and could see well enough in the clear water.
An hour later, we dropped anchor off the beach south of the small village, on the island in the NE corner of the atoll. An hour or so later, the "acting chief" was alongside in a small boat, along with a couple of his brothers. He checked our paperwork, to make sure we had the appropriate permission from the Marshall Islands Internal Affairs to stop in their atoll. There is no charge for stopping at Wotho, so no money changed hands. The acting chief, Hiram, invited us ashore to look around.
We left the North Pass at Kwajalein (the closest one to Roi-Namur) at about 11am on Tuesday morning. The conditions, finally, were GREAT for diving, and not so great for sailing. Isn't it always that way??!! We briefly discussed staying another day to take advantage of the calm conditions, but all our dive gear was packed away, and we're on a mission to get back to Bikini by Saturday.
Challenger had sailed south back to Ebeye a few days before--with plans to hook back up with us in a week or two.
So it was just us and Westward II. While in Majuro in May, in the midst of a severe drought in the northern atolls, Westward II had volunteered to carry a bunch of water to distribute to islands in need, in 1-gallon jugs. They had packed their aft head with water. They also were given several large bags of clothing by a ladies group in Majuro. They had thought they'd been able to distribute these items within a week or two of loading them onboard, but their prop problems changed their plans, and they ended up in Kwajalein. Now 6 weeks later, they were anxious to get the stuff out of their aft head.
So we scheduled a stop in remote Wotho Atoll. Wotho is about 100 miles WNW from Kwaj--just a short overnight sail. Because of the light conditions, we left in the morning, hoping for a morning landfall at Wotho. Our first hour on passage, the wind was light enough that Dave and I hauled out the Code Zero sail from the forepeak and got it all ready to go. Our ETA at Wotho was about noon the next day, and we wanted to get in earlier than that.
Not a half an hour after we got the Genoa furled and the Code Zero set, the wind started picking up to a steady 10-15 (from 5-10 knots). We held on for a few minutes with the Code Zero, surfing down the face of the swell at about 8 knots. But it looked like the wind was there to stay, so we furled the Code Zero and put the Genoa back out. We enjoyed a nice evening of steady breeze and were making 5-6 knots. By the middle of the night, the wind had picked up another knot or two, and we were doing 7.5 knots, with an ETA at Wotho about 4am. We kept taking in more and more of the genoa, trying to slow down. But if we reduced sail too much, we'd roll a lot. And besides, it was beautiful sailing conditions--the seas were laying down and we had about 12-14 knots on the beam, and a full moon.
So we rounded the southern tip of Wotho about 5am. It was Dave's watch, and he rolled in the genoa and sailed slowly in the lee of the atoll, arriving at the "pass" about 7am. That was still too early to head in to an unmarked pass, with no real charts, looking straight into the sun. But we did it anyway.
We have a fairly good Google Earth picture of the area (converted to a chartlet by GE2KAP and pulled into our Maxsea/OpenCPN charting programs), and felt confident we could get into the village anchorage safely. It just so happened that Westward II got there ahead of us, so we had the novel experience of following someone ELSE in. It was easy--the pass was a wide opening. The bottom jumped from "bottomless" to about 60 feet in the space of one boat length, and then it gradually shallowed up to about 45 feet. With the sun low on the horizon to the east (roughly the direction we were going), the visibility wasn't great, but we went slowly and could see well enough in the clear water.
An hour later, we dropped anchor off the beach south of the small village, on the island in the NE corner of the atoll. An hour or so later, the "acting chief" was alongside in a small boat, along with a couple of his brothers. He checked our paperwork, to make sure we had the appropriate permission from the Marshall Islands Internal Affairs to stop in their atoll. There is no charge for stopping at Wotho, so no money changed hands. The acting chief, Hiram, invited us ashore to look around.
Thursday, June 27, 2013
Diving in North Kwajalein - Part 2
In the week or so that we were in the Roi-Namur area of Kwajalein, we managed to do 8 wreck dives. "A week of diving and you only made 8 dives!?" you say. Yes, it's quite a process to make a pair of dives.
First, there's the motor down to the dive area, and get the dive gear set up and loaded into the dinghies (about an hour and a half to two hours).
The real challenge is motoring out in the dinghies to the dive site (marked accurately, we hope, by a GPS waypoint) and getting an anchor set. For safety's sake, we always try to take more than one dinghy. All our dinghies are of a size that 4 people with dive gear would be too cramped, so we ended up 2 by 2 in sometimes 3 dinghies.
Most of the airplane wrecks are in water over 100 feet deep. We could have chosen to "live boat" the dive in pairs (where one pair stays on the surface with the dinghies and the other goes down, and then switch off). But instead, Westward II volunteered to drop their big (for a dinghy) Danforth anchor with 250 feet of heavy polypropylene line on it. So the procedure we used was this. Dave and I would take the GPS and try to sit as still as possible over the waypoint in our dinghy, and Stephen and Selena from Westward II would motor upwind in their dinghy and drop the anchor, with the idea that they'd end up right over the waypoint when they dropped back on the anchor. It mostly worked. Once the anchor was set, we would then tie (with 2 separate lines) to the back of Westward II's dinghy. When Jerry on Challenger was with us, sometimes he would set his (smaller) Danforth anchor, and then tie up as well. None of us wanted to surface and find one or more $5,000 dinghies gone, so redundancy was the name of the game.
Soggy Paws' dive anchor is an inadequate (for this kind of diving) folding claw-type anchor, that we usually hand-set in a good spot. We would drop this straight down to hang just off the bottom (so it wouldn't get snagged on anything) to use as a marker as to where the dinghies actually were.
So figure another hour to get out to the dive site, anchors set, dinghies rafted up, gear on, and in the water ready to descend.
With the water over 100 feet deep, and visibility only about 40-50 feet, we couldn't tell from the surface whether we were in the right spot. At least once we went on a dive and never saw the airplane we were supposed to be diving on. That one was a big one--it's hard to miss a C-46 cargo plane!! Visibility was not that great that day, and we were using a vector from another airplane. We turned around too soon, but Steve and Selena kept going and found it OK, with only minutes to spare on their bottom time.
But most of the time, the waypoint was accurate enough, and our navigational skills good enough, that we found what we were looking for fairly quickly. Several times we even found "extra airplanes". Basically, there are airplanes strewn all over on the bottom in that area, so it's unlikely to go down and NOT find any airplanes at all.
That said, here is what we managed to see in our 8 dives:
1. Japanese Zero - shot down in Feb 1944 during the Battle of Kwajalein
2. 4 SBD dive bombers (we actually saw 6 on this dive).
3. F4U Corsair (there were a couple of SBD's around the F4U as well)
4. B-25 twin engine bomber
5. C-46 twin engine cargo plane (we didn't find it, but Westward II did)
6. 13 SBD's (we stopped counting at about 7 or 8, but there were "planes everywhere")
7. The "Sand Island Wreck", an old wooden German freighter
8. Japanese Ship Eiko Maru #2 - sunk in Jan/Feb 1944
Plus of course, the two airplanes side-by-side in 25-35' feet, half buried in the sand, right next to where we anchored.
For the wrecks in 100+ feet of water, our bottom time is limited to about 10-15 minutes. We all have dive computers that tell us when we must start ascending to stay within the "no decompression" dive tables. Then we have to ascend slowly and stop at around 20 feet for 5 minutes to let the nitrogen slowly release from our tissues before surfacing. This is called a "safety stop". So total dive time is usually around 25 minutes.
Then--almost as hard a time as getting the anchor down, is pulling the anchor by hand in 100 feet of water. Even though we checked it just before we started our ascent, to make sure it would come free easily, at least once the anchor got stuck on something on the bottom, and we had to leave a buoy on it, and come back later to dive down and free it up.
With such deep dives, we needed to spend 2 hours on the surface to "off-gas" the nitrogen before we did another dive. Lunch time!! So by the time we finished our 2nd dive, it would be about 4:30 and time to head for the anchorage again. Some days we only got one dive in--mostly because of weather issues (wind or squalls).
When they scrapped these planes, they just pushed them off a barge into deep water, and many of them landed nose-down. The SBD's were obsolete and already superseded by the Helldiver, by the end of the war, that's why there are so many of them on the bottom here.
It was pretty cool. We took lots of pictures. We hope to share them with you some day soon! In the meantime, the two dive sites I listed in the previous post have some pictures of some of the planes.
First, there's the motor down to the dive area, and get the dive gear set up and loaded into the dinghies (about an hour and a half to two hours).
The real challenge is motoring out in the dinghies to the dive site (marked accurately, we hope, by a GPS waypoint) and getting an anchor set. For safety's sake, we always try to take more than one dinghy. All our dinghies are of a size that 4 people with dive gear would be too cramped, so we ended up 2 by 2 in sometimes 3 dinghies.
Most of the airplane wrecks are in water over 100 feet deep. We could have chosen to "live boat" the dive in pairs (where one pair stays on the surface with the dinghies and the other goes down, and then switch off). But instead, Westward II volunteered to drop their big (for a dinghy) Danforth anchor with 250 feet of heavy polypropylene line on it. So the procedure we used was this. Dave and I would take the GPS and try to sit as still as possible over the waypoint in our dinghy, and Stephen and Selena from Westward II would motor upwind in their dinghy and drop the anchor, with the idea that they'd end up right over the waypoint when they dropped back on the anchor. It mostly worked. Once the anchor was set, we would then tie (with 2 separate lines) to the back of Westward II's dinghy. When Jerry on Challenger was with us, sometimes he would set his (smaller) Danforth anchor, and then tie up as well. None of us wanted to surface and find one or more $5,000 dinghies gone, so redundancy was the name of the game.
Soggy Paws' dive anchor is an inadequate (for this kind of diving) folding claw-type anchor, that we usually hand-set in a good spot. We would drop this straight down to hang just off the bottom (so it wouldn't get snagged on anything) to use as a marker as to where the dinghies actually were.
So figure another hour to get out to the dive site, anchors set, dinghies rafted up, gear on, and in the water ready to descend.
With the water over 100 feet deep, and visibility only about 40-50 feet, we couldn't tell from the surface whether we were in the right spot. At least once we went on a dive and never saw the airplane we were supposed to be diving on. That one was a big one--it's hard to miss a C-46 cargo plane!! Visibility was not that great that day, and we were using a vector from another airplane. We turned around too soon, but Steve and Selena kept going and found it OK, with only minutes to spare on their bottom time.
But most of the time, the waypoint was accurate enough, and our navigational skills good enough, that we found what we were looking for fairly quickly. Several times we even found "extra airplanes". Basically, there are airplanes strewn all over on the bottom in that area, so it's unlikely to go down and NOT find any airplanes at all.
That said, here is what we managed to see in our 8 dives:
1. Japanese Zero - shot down in Feb 1944 during the Battle of Kwajalein
2. 4 SBD dive bombers (we actually saw 6 on this dive).
3. F4U Corsair (there were a couple of SBD's around the F4U as well)
4. B-25 twin engine bomber
5. C-46 twin engine cargo plane (we didn't find it, but Westward II did)
6. 13 SBD's (we stopped counting at about 7 or 8, but there were "planes everywhere")
7. The "Sand Island Wreck", an old wooden German freighter
8. Japanese Ship Eiko Maru #2 - sunk in Jan/Feb 1944
Plus of course, the two airplanes side-by-side in 25-35' feet, half buried in the sand, right next to where we anchored.
For the wrecks in 100+ feet of water, our bottom time is limited to about 10-15 minutes. We all have dive computers that tell us when we must start ascending to stay within the "no decompression" dive tables. Then we have to ascend slowly and stop at around 20 feet for 5 minutes to let the nitrogen slowly release from our tissues before surfacing. This is called a "safety stop". So total dive time is usually around 25 minutes.
Then--almost as hard a time as getting the anchor down, is pulling the anchor by hand in 100 feet of water. Even though we checked it just before we started our ascent, to make sure it would come free easily, at least once the anchor got stuck on something on the bottom, and we had to leave a buoy on it, and come back later to dive down and free it up.
With such deep dives, we needed to spend 2 hours on the surface to "off-gas" the nitrogen before we did another dive. Lunch time!! So by the time we finished our 2nd dive, it would be about 4:30 and time to head for the anchorage again. Some days we only got one dive in--mostly because of weather issues (wind or squalls).
When they scrapped these planes, they just pushed them off a barge into deep water, and many of them landed nose-down. The SBD's were obsolete and already superseded by the Helldiver, by the end of the war, that's why there are so many of them on the bottom here.
It was pretty cool. We took lots of pictures. We hope to share them with you some day soon! In the meantime, the two dive sites I listed in the previous post have some pictures of some of the planes.
Monday, June 24, 2013
Diving in North Kwajalein - Part 1
We have been up at the north end of Kwaj for about 10 days now. The first couple of days, the wind was blowing so hard, it was not possible to go out into the atoll and dive the wrecks.
We did manage to sneak in a dive in on the Japanese Zero the first afternoon we arrived. It is in about 60 feet, just off the entrance channel to the Roi Base area. It was close enough that we went by dinghies when the wind eased off to 15-17 knots for a few hours. We took pictures, but unfortunately, we do not have internet here, so we can't share them.
For you armchair divers and future Marshalls divers, the best place to start following along with us (and get waypoints) is at the Kwajalein Scuba Club website. They have done a really good job of listing information about all the known wrecks within Kwajalein Atoll. Sometimes they also cross link to Dave Fortin's excellent website, which has a wreck page for each known wreck. Unfortunately, Dave Fortin was based at the south end of the atoll, so his info on the Roi area wrecks is a little thin, but he does have pictures of some of them.
http://kwajaleinscubaclub.com
Even though Roi-Namur is a restricted military base, part of the Ronald Reagan Missile Test Range, we were told we could go right up into the anchorage area (200 feet from the beach on the base). When the wind is blowing out of the ENE (the normal direction), this anchorage is scenic and reasonably protected. Nice sand bottom in about 20 feet. The closer you tuck in to the generators, the more protected you are. There was already one cruising boat here, plus a Roi-based boat on a mooring, but we still managed to get 3 more 40+ boats up in the anchorage. But Opus, the first boat, definitely had the best spot. If the wind picks up, or shifts further south than about 080 degrees, you end up with a nasty chop in the anchorage.
We were anchored right off this beautiful beach lined with palm trees, but could not go ashore. However, we found that we COULD go ashore on what's known as the Yokahama Pier--the pier about quarter mile east--where the ferry and the small boats come and go from. What's more, we found that there, we could use the washing machines, shop at the little store (Tue-Thur-Sat), get water in jugs, buy ice, and sometimes buy diesel/gasoline. This is all in a gated compound at the base of the pier. It is there for the use of the Marshallese that live on "3rd Island" (proper name Ennubirr). Our anchorage spot: 09-20.17N / 167-20.35E
With the wind forecast to blow 18-20 knots for a couple of days, there was no reason to stay in the Roi-Namur base anchorage (and several reasons to leave). So our little group (Westward II, Challenger, and Soggy Paws) moved down to the island known locally as 6th Island. It's proper name is Edgigen, but since no one is sure how to pronounce it properly, everyone just calls it 6th Island.
We are not sure why this is the most popular local anchorage, other than it is 4 miles from the base and the giant radar there, well protected from ENE to ESE, is uninhabited, and has a nice sandy beach, which we CAN go ashore on. There are several islands between the base and 6th island which look also reasonably protected.
3rd Island, where the Marshalese workers live, like Ebeye, is densely populated with Marshalese. The ferry from Roi-Namur runs back and forth daily between the base and 3rd Island, bringing workers to the base. And bringing their wives/girlfriends, etc (free) to the little compound to do the laundry, shop, and hang out.
We hung out at 6th Island for a few days, waiting for the wind to die down. We dove a few of the bommies that are very close--and marked with white "isolated danger" bouys. These coral mounds typically come up from the bottom of the lagoon (90-120 feet deep) to where they are usually visible from the surface (and Google Earth). Some are as shallow as 5 feet at the top, others come up to 25 feet. The bommies close in to the eastern edge of the atoll make good foul-weather dive spots, especially on a rising tide, when the clear water outside the atoll is pouring in. However, the coral growth varies--some better than others--and the fish life is minimal. In 3 or 4 dives, we only saw one or two sharks and almost no big fish. We did see a number of turtles, however.
We did a little beachcombing on 6th Island. Dave and I walked in the shallows around the north end of the island, and found some WWII-era debris. We couldn't identify the one large metal object--maybe something from a landing craft from the assault on Kwajalein in Feb 1944, but we did find the heavy bronze end cap from a 5" shell, and some bullets and other bits of debris. Stephen on Westward II said he found similar stuff around the south end of the island. Anyone interested in a short summary of the Battle of Kwajalein should check Wikipedia.
We also had a nice evening ashore on 6th Island, having a barbecue on the beach (and burning our paper trash).
Finally the wind started easing off so we could dive the airplane wrecks that are mostly located on the inner western edge of the atoll, a few miles south of Roi-Namur. Looking at Google Earth, we spied a narrow sand ledge close to the first wrecks we wanted to dive. These turned out to be a decent anchorage in mild conditions, only 2.5 miles from Roi Namur and 3 miles from 6th Island. So for a few days, we did a daily "commute" to the dive area in our sailboats. Our anchor spot was at 09-21.088N / 167-26.409E, dropping the anchor in about 30-45 feet, in sand, on an upslope, and hanging back in about 15 feet sand, with the reef only 100 yards behind us. Challenger and Westward II anchored about 50 yards either side of us. With winds LESS than 15 knots, this is OK as a day anchorage only. If the wind gets up higher, it's quite unnerving being there, backed up to the reef. And at least one day, we waved off from anchoring there when the winds ended up a couple knots higher than the forecast. Needless to say, we all backed down hard and snorkeled our anchors before we left to go diving in the dinghies.
As we went to drop our anchor, Dave said "we can't drop here, there's a coral head". So we edge a boat-length right and dropped. When I went out to snorkel our anchor, I discovered the "coral head" was actually 2 airplanes, side-by-side facing up the sand bank in about 25-35 feet of water. These were not on any waypoint list we had, and were there first of 3 or 4 "new" airplane wrecks we discovered. These would make very good hookah-depth dives or novice diver dives--assuming the don't get covered up periodically by sand.
Only one of the airplane wrecks in the Roi area (the Zero), that we know of, are actual WWII downed planes. Most of those in the "airplane graveyard" are ones discarded by U.S. forces, after the end of the war. After capturing Kwajalein in January 1944, the U.S. set up an airfield and a maintenance facility on Roi-Namur. We could tell the 2 planes we found were discarded planes, as they had an airplane prop sitting in the cockpit, rather than out front where it belongs.
This is getting long... and it's time to go diving again (a nice sunny day)... I'm going to send this off and continue with our diving in Part 2.
We did manage to sneak in a dive in on the Japanese Zero the first afternoon we arrived. It is in about 60 feet, just off the entrance channel to the Roi Base area. It was close enough that we went by dinghies when the wind eased off to 15-17 knots for a few hours. We took pictures, but unfortunately, we do not have internet here, so we can't share them.
For you armchair divers and future Marshalls divers, the best place to start following along with us (and get waypoints) is at the Kwajalein Scuba Club website. They have done a really good job of listing information about all the known wrecks within Kwajalein Atoll. Sometimes they also cross link to Dave Fortin's excellent website, which has a wreck page for each known wreck. Unfortunately, Dave Fortin was based at the south end of the atoll, so his info on the Roi area wrecks is a little thin, but he does have pictures of some of them.
http://kwajaleinscubaclub.com
Even though Roi-Namur is a restricted military base, part of the Ronald Reagan Missile Test Range, we were told we could go right up into the anchorage area (200 feet from the beach on the base). When the wind is blowing out of the ENE (the normal direction), this anchorage is scenic and reasonably protected. Nice sand bottom in about 20 feet. The closer you tuck in to the generators, the more protected you are. There was already one cruising boat here, plus a Roi-based boat on a mooring, but we still managed to get 3 more 40+ boats up in the anchorage. But Opus, the first boat, definitely had the best spot. If the wind picks up, or shifts further south than about 080 degrees, you end up with a nasty chop in the anchorage.
We were anchored right off this beautiful beach lined with palm trees, but could not go ashore. However, we found that we COULD go ashore on what's known as the Yokahama Pier--the pier about quarter mile east--where the ferry and the small boats come and go from. What's more, we found that there, we could use the washing machines, shop at the little store (Tue-Thur-Sat), get water in jugs, buy ice, and sometimes buy diesel/gasoline. This is all in a gated compound at the base of the pier. It is there for the use of the Marshallese that live on "3rd Island" (proper name Ennubirr). Our anchorage spot: 09-20.17N / 167-20.35E
With the wind forecast to blow 18-20 knots for a couple of days, there was no reason to stay in the Roi-Namur base anchorage (and several reasons to leave). So our little group (Westward II, Challenger, and Soggy Paws) moved down to the island known locally as 6th Island. It's proper name is Edgigen, but since no one is sure how to pronounce it properly, everyone just calls it 6th Island.
We are not sure why this is the most popular local anchorage, other than it is 4 miles from the base and the giant radar there, well protected from ENE to ESE, is uninhabited, and has a nice sandy beach, which we CAN go ashore on. There are several islands between the base and 6th island which look also reasonably protected.
3rd Island, where the Marshalese workers live, like Ebeye, is densely populated with Marshalese. The ferry from Roi-Namur runs back and forth daily between the base and 3rd Island, bringing workers to the base. And bringing their wives/girlfriends, etc (free) to the little compound to do the laundry, shop, and hang out.
We hung out at 6th Island for a few days, waiting for the wind to die down. We dove a few of the bommies that are very close--and marked with white "isolated danger" bouys. These coral mounds typically come up from the bottom of the lagoon (90-120 feet deep) to where they are usually visible from the surface (and Google Earth). Some are as shallow as 5 feet at the top, others come up to 25 feet. The bommies close in to the eastern edge of the atoll make good foul-weather dive spots, especially on a rising tide, when the clear water outside the atoll is pouring in. However, the coral growth varies--some better than others--and the fish life is minimal. In 3 or 4 dives, we only saw one or two sharks and almost no big fish. We did see a number of turtles, however.
We did a little beachcombing on 6th Island. Dave and I walked in the shallows around the north end of the island, and found some WWII-era debris. We couldn't identify the one large metal object--maybe something from a landing craft from the assault on Kwajalein in Feb 1944, but we did find the heavy bronze end cap from a 5" shell, and some bullets and other bits of debris. Stephen on Westward II said he found similar stuff around the south end of the island. Anyone interested in a short summary of the Battle of Kwajalein should check Wikipedia.
We also had a nice evening ashore on 6th Island, having a barbecue on the beach (and burning our paper trash).
Finally the wind started easing off so we could dive the airplane wrecks that are mostly located on the inner western edge of the atoll, a few miles south of Roi-Namur. Looking at Google Earth, we spied a narrow sand ledge close to the first wrecks we wanted to dive. These turned out to be a decent anchorage in mild conditions, only 2.5 miles from Roi Namur and 3 miles from 6th Island. So for a few days, we did a daily "commute" to the dive area in our sailboats. Our anchor spot was at 09-21.088N / 167-26.409E, dropping the anchor in about 30-45 feet, in sand, on an upslope, and hanging back in about 15 feet sand, with the reef only 100 yards behind us. Challenger and Westward II anchored about 50 yards either side of us. With winds LESS than 15 knots, this is OK as a day anchorage only. If the wind gets up higher, it's quite unnerving being there, backed up to the reef. And at least one day, we waved off from anchoring there when the winds ended up a couple knots higher than the forecast. Needless to say, we all backed down hard and snorkeled our anchors before we left to go diving in the dinghies.
As we went to drop our anchor, Dave said "we can't drop here, there's a coral head". So we edge a boat-length right and dropped. When I went out to snorkel our anchor, I discovered the "coral head" was actually 2 airplanes, side-by-side facing up the sand bank in about 25-35 feet of water. These were not on any waypoint list we had, and were there first of 3 or 4 "new" airplane wrecks we discovered. These would make very good hookah-depth dives or novice diver dives--assuming the don't get covered up periodically by sand.
Only one of the airplane wrecks in the Roi area (the Zero), that we know of, are actual WWII downed planes. Most of those in the "airplane graveyard" are ones discarded by U.S. forces, after the end of the war. After capturing Kwajalein in January 1944, the U.S. set up an airfield and a maintenance facility on Roi-Namur. We could tell the 2 planes we found were discarded planes, as they had an airplane prop sitting in the cockpit, rather than out front where it belongs.
This is getting long... and it's time to go diving again (a nice sunny day)... I'm going to send this off and continue with our diving in Part 2.
Monday, June 17, 2013
Another stop in Candyland
We spent Friday night anchored off Ebeye, to socialize with Westward II. They had been stuck in Kwaj while we were in Bikini, to deal with their broken prop. The day we arrived, a new prop was winging it's way via DHL from Canada to Ebeye. Stephen was tracking the progress via the internet on an hourly basis. Turns out it went via Seoul, Korea and Hong Kong, but did arrive in Kwaj and get delivered to them at the wharf on Ebeye by the Ebeye postmaster.
On Saturday morning we pulled into Kwaj Base (about 3 miles south of Ebeye), on another sponsored visit by Rick and Sue from s/v Panacea, who are working in Kwaj. We were again greeted on the dock by the security team, complete with a very eager drug-sniffing dog. But this time we knew the drill and a friendly security guy handed us our badges and we were done.
We were dismayed to find that a few days previously, Rick had severely injured his bicep (while cleaning up Panacea after their trip back from Bikini), and was in Hawaii waiting for surgery. Sue was planning on flying to Honolulu to be with him for the surgery, on the next flight out (Tues). This meant we'd have to check out of the base before Sue left. But Geoff, one of the Panacea crew on trip to Bikini, agreed to pick up the sponsorship for our visit.
We had a busy few days at USAKA (US Army Kwajalein Atoll) pronounced "you-saka" by the residents.
- A few good meals at the Louis Zamperini Dining Hall ($7 all you can eat meals)
- A Burger King meal and a pizza meal at the Food Court
- A windy day of diving wrecks (Asakaze Maru and Prinz Eugen) using a boat hired from Ebeye
- A nice meal aboard Soggy Paws for Sue and Geoff, and exchanging photos of our Bikini trip
- A day trip to USAKA by Stephen and Selena on Westward II, to buy SCUBA gear and eat pizza
- Stocking up at the Shopette, the tiny Exchange, and the Surfway grocery store.
- Trying to catch up and get ahead on our internet banking, etc
- Checking out the mooring we plan to use when we leave Soggy Paws in Oct/Nov
- Topping off our water tanks
- Repairing the leaky closed chocks
The short term plan is for us to spend about 2 months "out island", so I needed to get caught up from our 2-3 weeks away, and then get 2 months ahead on paying bills, and managing tenants at our rental. Dave thinks I'm just doing Facebook when I'm on the internet, but he has no idea how much time it takes to stay on top of our finances and rentals (he hasn't written a check or looked at bill in 7 years). Plus of course, there's the SSCA correspondence, personal correspondence, and keeping track of where our cruising friends are.
For such a high-tech base, the internet situation is ridiculous, and is the only serious downside to being in the base area. Out at Ebeye, only 3 miles away, the Marshall Islands Telco has great wifi at not-too-bad speed. But on base, wifi is probably seen as a serious security risk. So the only wifi available is in the Food Court, and I can't pick it up on the boat. So we have to lug our laptops into the Food Court to get internet. In the off-meal hours, there are more people in the Food Court doing internet than there are eating.
Other than the Food Court, residents get their internet in their quarters by... *gasp* ...dialup!!. Yes, the antiquated dailup system has not been replaced by cable internet like the rest of the United States. It's not that the internet pipe isn't available. There is super high speed internet available on base for work-related purposes--however, there are serious restrictions on using the work network for personal use.
Because we are not residents of the base, we cannot shop at the Surfway grocery store by ourselves. I had to get Geoff to escort me through the checkout line and use his ID. But we could shop at the Shopette (a kind of convenience store/liquor store) and the tiny Exchange using our retired military ID card...this quirk is probably because the government subsidizes one store and the contractors subsidize the other store. (I believe the numbers of people on base are about 20 true U.S. Army personnel and about 2,000 contractors).
Fortunately, we had done a huge restocking in Majuro, so I only needed a few things, plus the fresh fruits and veggies. The base gets a weekly flight with fresh veggies from Hawaii, so it's pretty fresh. (In contrast, Ebeye, a few miles away, is restocked by ship from Guam every 2 weeks). At least on the base, we didn't have to schlep our groceries by hand back to the base.
Transportation on the base is interesting. There are only a few official cars. Everyone else gets around on "beach cruiser" bicycles. Almost every bike has a good sized basket on the handles or a pair over the rear wheel. For big things, people have bicycle carts (like modified dock carts). For even bigger things, you borrow a car or rent a golf cart with a small truck bed for a couple of hours. Some people have carts modified to suit their special purpose... some have dive tank racks built in, some have fishing pole holders built in, and some are made for kids or animals.
Since there is no ATM on Ebeye, Challenger and Westward II handed us their debit cards to get some cash for them. We left the base with our pockets bulging!
Dave spent some time with Geoff, working on Panacea's alternator and starter (had gotten wet with salt water and quit working on their trip back from Bikini). They didn't manage to get either one working, but got them off the engine, thoroughly doused with Corrosion X, and boxed up and sent to Hawaii to be rebuilt.
When Sue left to join Rick in Honolulu, she left us the key to their quarters, and Dave and I spent two pleasant evenings hanging there--hot showers, air conditioning, and Armed Forces Network TV!!
We finally pulled out of USAKA on Wednesday, June 10, and joined our friends on Challenger, Westward II, and Trigger, anchored off Ebeye.
On Saturday morning we pulled into Kwaj Base (about 3 miles south of Ebeye), on another sponsored visit by Rick and Sue from s/v Panacea, who are working in Kwaj. We were again greeted on the dock by the security team, complete with a very eager drug-sniffing dog. But this time we knew the drill and a friendly security guy handed us our badges and we were done.
We were dismayed to find that a few days previously, Rick had severely injured his bicep (while cleaning up Panacea after their trip back from Bikini), and was in Hawaii waiting for surgery. Sue was planning on flying to Honolulu to be with him for the surgery, on the next flight out (Tues). This meant we'd have to check out of the base before Sue left. But Geoff, one of the Panacea crew on trip to Bikini, agreed to pick up the sponsorship for our visit.
We had a busy few days at USAKA (US Army Kwajalein Atoll) pronounced "you-saka" by the residents.
- A few good meals at the Louis Zamperini Dining Hall ($7 all you can eat meals)
- A Burger King meal and a pizza meal at the Food Court
- A windy day of diving wrecks (Asakaze Maru and Prinz Eugen) using a boat hired from Ebeye
- A nice meal aboard Soggy Paws for Sue and Geoff, and exchanging photos of our Bikini trip
- A day trip to USAKA by Stephen and Selena on Westward II, to buy SCUBA gear and eat pizza
- Stocking up at the Shopette, the tiny Exchange, and the Surfway grocery store.
- Trying to catch up and get ahead on our internet banking, etc
- Checking out the mooring we plan to use when we leave Soggy Paws in Oct/Nov
- Topping off our water tanks
- Repairing the leaky closed chocks
The short term plan is for us to spend about 2 months "out island", so I needed to get caught up from our 2-3 weeks away, and then get 2 months ahead on paying bills, and managing tenants at our rental. Dave thinks I'm just doing Facebook when I'm on the internet, but he has no idea how much time it takes to stay on top of our finances and rentals (he hasn't written a check or looked at bill in 7 years). Plus of course, there's the SSCA correspondence, personal correspondence, and keeping track of where our cruising friends are.
For such a high-tech base, the internet situation is ridiculous, and is the only serious downside to being in the base area. Out at Ebeye, only 3 miles away, the Marshall Islands Telco has great wifi at not-too-bad speed. But on base, wifi is probably seen as a serious security risk. So the only wifi available is in the Food Court, and I can't pick it up on the boat. So we have to lug our laptops into the Food Court to get internet. In the off-meal hours, there are more people in the Food Court doing internet than there are eating.
Other than the Food Court, residents get their internet in their quarters by... *gasp* ...dialup!!. Yes, the antiquated dailup system has not been replaced by cable internet like the rest of the United States. It's not that the internet pipe isn't available. There is super high speed internet available on base for work-related purposes--however, there are serious restrictions on using the work network for personal use.
Because we are not residents of the base, we cannot shop at the Surfway grocery store by ourselves. I had to get Geoff to escort me through the checkout line and use his ID. But we could shop at the Shopette (a kind of convenience store/liquor store) and the tiny Exchange using our retired military ID card...this quirk is probably because the government subsidizes one store and the contractors subsidize the other store. (I believe the numbers of people on base are about 20 true U.S. Army personnel and about 2,000 contractors).
Fortunately, we had done a huge restocking in Majuro, so I only needed a few things, plus the fresh fruits and veggies. The base gets a weekly flight with fresh veggies from Hawaii, so it's pretty fresh. (In contrast, Ebeye, a few miles away, is restocked by ship from Guam every 2 weeks). At least on the base, we didn't have to schlep our groceries by hand back to the base.
Transportation on the base is interesting. There are only a few official cars. Everyone else gets around on "beach cruiser" bicycles. Almost every bike has a good sized basket on the handles or a pair over the rear wheel. For big things, people have bicycle carts (like modified dock carts). For even bigger things, you borrow a car or rent a golf cart with a small truck bed for a couple of hours. Some people have carts modified to suit their special purpose... some have dive tank racks built in, some have fishing pole holders built in, and some are made for kids or animals.
Since there is no ATM on Ebeye, Challenger and Westward II handed us their debit cards to get some cash for them. We left the base with our pockets bulging!
Dave spent some time with Geoff, working on Panacea's alternator and starter (had gotten wet with salt water and quit working on their trip back from Bikini). They didn't manage to get either one working, but got them off the engine, thoroughly doused with Corrosion X, and boxed up and sent to Hawaii to be rebuilt.
When Sue left to join Rick in Honolulu, she left us the key to their quarters, and Dave and I spent two pleasant evenings hanging there--hot showers, air conditioning, and Armed Forces Network TV!!
We finally pulled out of USAKA on Wednesday, June 10, and joined our friends on Challenger, Westward II, and Trigger, anchored off Ebeye.
Back to Kwajalein
We finally left Bikini on June 5. The wind wasn't perfect for a sail back to Kwaj, but it was as good as it was going to get. The wind had shifted towards the north another 5 degrees and dropped a few knots (065 deg at about 17 knots). We waited an extra day to let the seas go down some, but it wasn't enough. And if we waited any longer, we'd find the wind strengthening again.
We left Enyu, the southern island at Bikini, about 2pm, in company with Challenger. We had hoped to be able to make the course for Roi Namur at the NE end of Kwajalein atoll. But when we got out there and saw the huge seas, we opted for the easier course--to go west around the NW tip of Kwaj, and down "the back side". This allowed us to sail on a close reach rather than hard on the wind, and was a much more comfortable course.
The first afternoon and evening was pretty nasty. We were close-hauled in fairly high winds (18-22kts across the deck) and big seas, so the leeward deck was aslosh with water pretty much all the time. We had a double-reefed mainsail, the staysail, and a tiny bit of genoa out--trying to find a speed that didn't pound into the seas too much.
Our closed chock on the leeward side, which is sealed into the deck with caulking, sprang a leak and was draining salt water into our dish cupboard. This has always been a leaky spot for us, and we have a bowl strategically placed in that cupboard to catch drips. But this cereal bowl wasn't cutting it in these conditions. I noticed water dribbling out of the cupboard underneath the sink and investigated. The area under the sink was aslosh too. So we put a big tupperware box under the leak in the cupboard, and checked it and under the sink every 30 minutes, bailing if necessary. And of course, picture this with the boat heeled 15-20 degrees and getting tossed around in the big waves. And of course, it was while I was trying to cook dinner also... Not fun.
But, on the other hand, we were happy it wasn't happening on the other tack, as that closed chock drains into a bunch of electronics (our nav station, etc).
By dawn the next morning, the wind had moderated some, and we eased out a bit more sail. We could make 6.5 knots comfortably, and were going to round the NW tip of Kwaj before sunset. Most of the afternoon we were only seeing 15-18 knots across the deck.
Once we rounded the corner, we needed to harden up (sail closer to the wind) to stay close in sailing down the in the lee of Kwajalein. We had a fairly pleasant dinner, sailing on the level, no seas, and making our course. But through the 2nd night, the wind dropped and shifted back east, until about 4am, Dave gave up sailing and started the engine.
We motored in through South Pass about 8am, and were at anchor off the island/town of Ebeye, next to our friends on Westward II by mid-day on Friday, June 7.
-----
Sherry & Dave
In the Marshall Islands for the summer.
http://svsoggypaws.blogspot.com
At 06/14/2013 10:18 PM (utc) our position was 09°20.17'N 167°30.35'E
http://svsoggypaws.com/currentposition.htm
We left Enyu, the southern island at Bikini, about 2pm, in company with Challenger. We had hoped to be able to make the course for Roi Namur at the NE end of Kwajalein atoll. But when we got out there and saw the huge seas, we opted for the easier course--to go west around the NW tip of Kwaj, and down "the back side". This allowed us to sail on a close reach rather than hard on the wind, and was a much more comfortable course.
The first afternoon and evening was pretty nasty. We were close-hauled in fairly high winds (18-22kts across the deck) and big seas, so the leeward deck was aslosh with water pretty much all the time. We had a double-reefed mainsail, the staysail, and a tiny bit of genoa out--trying to find a speed that didn't pound into the seas too much.
Our closed chock on the leeward side, which is sealed into the deck with caulking, sprang a leak and was draining salt water into our dish cupboard. This has always been a leaky spot for us, and we have a bowl strategically placed in that cupboard to catch drips. But this cereal bowl wasn't cutting it in these conditions. I noticed water dribbling out of the cupboard underneath the sink and investigated. The area under the sink was aslosh too. So we put a big tupperware box under the leak in the cupboard, and checked it and under the sink every 30 minutes, bailing if necessary. And of course, picture this with the boat heeled 15-20 degrees and getting tossed around in the big waves. And of course, it was while I was trying to cook dinner also... Not fun.
But, on the other hand, we were happy it wasn't happening on the other tack, as that closed chock drains into a bunch of electronics (our nav station, etc).
By dawn the next morning, the wind had moderated some, and we eased out a bit more sail. We could make 6.5 knots comfortably, and were going to round the NW tip of Kwaj before sunset. Most of the afternoon we were only seeing 15-18 knots across the deck.
Once we rounded the corner, we needed to harden up (sail closer to the wind) to stay close in sailing down the in the lee of Kwajalein. We had a fairly pleasant dinner, sailing on the level, no seas, and making our course. But through the 2nd night, the wind dropped and shifted back east, until about 4am, Dave gave up sailing and started the engine.
We motored in through South Pass about 8am, and were at anchor off the island/town of Ebeye, next to our friends on Westward II by mid-day on Friday, June 7.
-----
Sherry & Dave
In the Marshall Islands for the summer.
http://svsoggypaws.blogspot.com
At 06/14/2013 10:18 PM (utc) our position was 09°20.17'N 167°30.35'E
http://svsoggypaws.com/currentposition.htm
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