Today was not a great day for me. I woke up feeling like crap. Looks like whatever I had been fighting, finally caught up to me. I ate some breakfast and went back to bed until 10 am. I woke up, asked the cooks to make me some ginger tea and have been sipping on that all day. I don’t want to push myself too hard to dive, as I would rather miss 1 day of diving than a full week because I didn’t let myself rest.
I spent the day catching up on my blog post from yesterday and organizing all my GoPro footage.
Some members of the group hooked me up with some drugs and I was good to go by 2pm. I headed out with the group to the Gosei Maru. On the way I accidently knocked over the pail of water for our boat so I got thrown overboard as retaliation. After getting the salt water out of my nose I felt even better. This was one of my favourite dives. The Gosei Maru was built in 1937 as a costal freighter and it was used as a supply ship for the Sixth Fleet submarines. She carried torpedoes and depth charges. A torpedo sank her and the damage is evident. I think what I loved about this dive the most is the depth. You could start at 8ft and explore your way all the way down to 120ft finding everything from the bridge, to cargo holds filled with torpedos and depth charges to bathrooms. You could see the holes where the torpedos ripped right through the hull of the ship. There were lots of fun spots to enter into and I had a blast exploring them.
We got back to the Thorfinn at 4pm had an hour down time and we were off to explore the “Betty Bomber”. The Betty Bomber was the nickname for the Japanese Mitsubishi G4M Bomber. She also has the nickname flying cigar because of the long tubular shape of the body and how easy it was to set fire to. It had a wingspan of 85ft, length of 66ft, weighed 29 000lbs, speed of 266mph at 14 000ft, and a range of 1875NM. It had four 12.7mm machine guns, one 20mm cannon and one 1750lb bomb. Seeing this wreck was amazing. As I started to descend I could see the shadowy figure start to appear the deeper I went. It sat at about 55ft and it was so mind blowing to see. I immediately headed for the cockpit, which had separated from the body of the plane leaving the body of the plane open for exploration. I couldn’t resist and swam my way through the body of the plane and out of the hole from which the tail had snapped off. It was a really neat dive and I knew my dad would have loved to see it. I knew that with his obsession with WWII planes, he would have wanted me to pick this dive. I’m glad I followed my instincts because it was for sure one of my favourite dives. You could see bullet holes in the wing of the plane and the ejection seat was off to the side of the wreck. One of the propellers had separated from the plane and the guide took us about 150ft out from the plane to find it. It was over grown with coral but was still manageable to make out the details of the propeller.
After a hot delicious meal I reviewed the footage and finished up the blog. Tomorrow I dive the notorious “San Francisco Maru”. It will be my deepest dive of 145ft and will be my longest deco dive as well. I look forward to the challenging dive I have a head of me
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Justin Steele
The Green Ranger