The trip nearly had an inauspicious start, as my whole flight plan nearly got wrecked by the Northwest Airlines pilot's strike. I used up some frequent flyer miles that were due to expire at the end of this year to get me from New York to Los Angeles. Not knowing whether or not the pilots would be back from the strike, I surfed the net and found about 20 contingency flights on 4 different carriers, at 3 different airports. I ended up flying on September 17, the second day after the pilots went back to work. I joked with the ticket agent, "Now, all the pilots are well rested and it will be a nice, smooth flight, RIGHT!"
I changed to Continental Airlines in LA, and then flew 5 hours to Honolulu, (where I met up with my dive buddy Rod), 7 hours to Guam, and two more hours to Palau. For years I have used the euphemism that anything far away is "Out in Guam." I'm now qualified to state that Guam is really @#$%^7&' far away! Fortunately, I crashed with some friends in LA on the way out, so I at least got a little sleep.
Since we crossed the infernal international date line, we arrived September 19 at 8:30 PM Palau time. Some quick Palauan facts:
Palau is located in the Western Pacific at 7-30' North Latitude, 134-30' East Longitude. It is in the same time zone as Tokyo. It is an archipelago (before I started diving, I didn't even know what the word meant :-) comprised of 328 rock islands. Many are uninhabited, and the country has a total population of about 17,000 people. It is a Trust Territory of the United States, so English is widely spoken and the currency is the US Dollar.
We boarded the boat that was to be home for a week, Peter Hughes Diving's Sun Dancer II, on September 20, 1998. All vessels in the Peter Hughes fleet have some variation on the "Dancer" name. At 138', with a 26' beam, the Sun Dancer II is the flagship vessel of the fleet. We spent the first afternoon and evening gearing up and getting acclimated to our new digs.
We started diving on Monday, September 21, and basically didn't stop until noon on Saturday, September 26. Unlike the US, where the continental shelf tends to slope down gradually a fairly long distance before it descends into the ocean depths, Palau has a very short, shallow shelf that extends out from its many islands only a few hundred yards, if that, and then drops off as a sheer wall to 500' - 2000' deep. It took a little adjustment on my part to get used to the fact that we were diving with basically no bottom. On a descent, if I didn't watch my gauges carefully, I would be down 100' before I knew it. We were trying to limit depths to about 110' or so for safety and conservatism. Since many of the reefs were shallow, the main boat, the Sun Dancer II, couldn't venture close to the dive sites. In tow were two 30' jet driven dive tenders, called the Magic Bus and the Magic Tram, respectively. We would hop on the tenders for a 5 - 10 minute jaunt to the dive sites.
The weather was awesome, in the 80's every day, and mostly sunny. The water temperature was a consistent 86 degrees. It was like diving in the world's most beautiful bathtub. It rained a couple of times, but who cares? I was there to dive! The crew of the Sun Dancer II were tremendous, making all the diving effortless. The farthest I ever had to haul a tank on my back was about 12' from the transom to my seat on the dive tender. After each dive, they removed the first stage of the regulator and dried it, filled the tank to 3000 psi and replaced the first stage. That translates into my never having to change out a tank. Even better was the fact that they provided an individual bin for each and every diver to hold their gear. My weight belt, mask, fins, snorkel, dive boots and gloves were never more than 2' from my seat. About the only gear that I ever took off the tender was my wetsuit (which will go through a half life if it's not rinsed in fresh water after every dive), dive lights and my dive computer.
We hit many of the famous Palauan dive sites, such as Blue Corner, where the currents are so strong that you have to tie into dead coral using a reef hook in order not to just be blown away. After hooking in, you just add a little air to your BC and basically just fly like a kite. It feels like you've stuck your head out of a car going 60 mph! Once you have stopped thrashing around and settle in, the schools of fish that you scared away as you hooked in return and put on one hell of a show for you. Barracuda, Napoleon wrasse, jacks, tuna and sharks of all sizes and shapes commingle in a frenzy of activity.
Blue Holes are a series of small vertical caverns that feed into on immense cavern at about 100' where you exit. To add to it, Blue Corner is just a few hundred yards from Blue Holes, so we all bee lined it back to Blue Corner for more excitement.
Peliliu Cut is another current dive similar to Blue Corner, again with tons of fish. The divemasters told us that they had seen the currents at both the Cut and at Blue Corner so strong that divers who didn't make it over the lip of the wall were typically plastered right onto the wall like a swatted fly.
Ulong Channel was absolutely beautiful with some of the largest lettuce coral, and the biggest giant clam I had ever seen.
We also dove the wrecks of the Iro and the Chuyo Maru, both of which were sunk by American forces in 1944 during Operation Desecrate I. On the Iro, we saw a cuttlefish, which is akin to a squid, but slightly larger, with the ability to change its color. On the Chuyo Maru, we saw tons of Lionfish. Usually you only see them on night dives, but they were out in full force that morning.
One of my personal favorite memories of the whole trip happened in German Channel. We were waiting out our surface interval on the Sun Dancer when someone yelled "Manta!" Lo and behold, not far off the Port side, there was a giant manta ray gracefully doing barrell rolls. We scampered onto the tenders to grab our masks, snorkels and fins and hit the water running. It wasn't just one manta, it was four with wingspans of 6 to 10 feet! They are such majestic creatures. Beside that there were schools of jacks and black snappers by the thousands, all congregating just off the boat. When the surface interval ended, we geared up, dove and found a butterfly ray at about 50' while the four mantas continued to play above us. And that was the first day!
Whenever we weren't diving, we were eating an after dive snack or a meal. While we were eating, the crew was refilling the tanks and tending to all their other duties. Whenever there was a meal being served or a dive site briefing being given, they rang a ship's bell. After a week of hearing the bell six or seven times a day, it became very Pavlovian. My company has a tradition that whenever we are awarded a job, they ring a ship's bell to announce it to the whole office. The next time that they ring it, I would probably bolt out from my desk salivating and looking for my fins.
Seeing how my smaller dive trips make it difficult to take any advanced courses due to the time required, I loaded up while I was on board. I completed a NAUI underwater photography specialty course. Eventually, I will scan the slides and post them on a web site. Additionally, I completed a TDI Nitrox certification. This turned out to be a really good course considering how much diving we did on the trip. Nitrox is basically oxygen enriched air. By increasing the percentage of oxygen in the mix, the amount of nitrogen (the nasty stuff that causes the bends) absorbed by the body is reduced. The only downside is that your maximum depth limit is also reduced. So on my vacation, there I was with chemistry formulas figuring out the partial pressures and absolute atmospheres of the various gases in the mix. Stuff like that was the reason that I got out of engineering! Even though there are all kinds of U.S. Navy tables based on various Nitrox mixtures, we based all dives as if we were using regular compressed air for an extra degree of conservatism.
I completed 23 of the possible 24 dives over the course of the week. One night I was just too beat to dive, so I dove face first into my pillow. We disembarked on September 26, and spent our final night on the island at the Palau Pacific Resort. It is a very Americanized resort, as I was able to determine from the $200/night price tag. I wouldn't flinch at that price in NYC. Hell, I'd be happy! However, this was basically the third world outside the gates of the resort. Fortunately, the hotel was included in the package price.
We mucked around on Sunday, September 27 and had a really fun final dinner with others from the boat who didn't have to rush right home and get back to work :-( We arrived at the airport at 12:30 AM on Monday, September 28 to begin the long journey home. Two things made the return flights worse than the outgoing flights. First, crossing the date line going east and arriving in Honolulu at 6:00 PM ...the day BEFORE we left Guam. Ugh. Second, I didn't stop in LA on the way home. I just got my luggage (which made it from Palau to Honolulu without a hitch... miraculous) switched to Northwest Airlines and continued straight on to New York. Fortunately, I flew into Westchester County airport in order to avoid the rush hours traffic at the main NYC airports. All in all, from the time we arrived at the airport in Palau to the moment I landed in New York, 28 hours passed! Yeah, I was toasted, but my luggage made it all the way through, basically unscathed.
I was a crispy critter at work all week, but I think I'm finally coming around...
Ain't it amazing you can do when you work 200 hours of overtime in 6 weeks?
And I would do it again in a heartbeat...