66 Days

Heya peeps

Please keep in mind that I typed this blog 3 weeks ago before leaving for an island called Gizo (which I’ll post a blog about in the next few days). I couldn’t gain Internet access before I left so I saved this blog to post at a later stage. So here it is…

So I know I haven’t been updating my blogs on a daily basis like I should be doing and I apologise but I have spent a couple of days on an island called Tulagi which is an hour boat ride from Guadalcanal.

Here is an update on whats been happening on paradise island J hope you enjoy…

Just before our trip to Tulagi I had the privilege of meeting a really awesome German guy and is currently living in Thailand teaching people how to dive J he is really funny and constantly keeping a smile on my face. He came to the island for an interview and I’m happy to say that he got the jobJ  we made our way to Bonegi beach for a few dives. At the time I was really sick and had a problem equalizing my ears so I had to sit these dives out which was a real pain :p I wanna be in the water with every chance I have. I met a guy on the beach while waiting for the divers to come out the water, he had a really long surf board and let me have some fun with it! It was awesome J

The following day we spent most of the day loading the boat and packing our gear for our trip. The boat entered the water late afternoon and we made our way towards the island before sunset. We had 6 crew on board and made it a very nice group to go with. On the way we encountered some heavy rain! Luckily I had my rain jacket with me or else it would have been a very cold trip. Just before our arrival into Tulagi Harbour (ok its not actually a harbour- I think I only saw 2 boats our entire stay there) we came across a pod of dolphins! It was so amazing! They were jumping in and out of the water alongside the boat. It was really something to see! On arrival we walked straight off the jetty into the hotel. It was really nice and had an Islander look to it :p we were shown our rooms and settled in quite nicely J

Day 2 in Tulagi we all woke up fairly early and met over breakfast. Shortly after breakfast we loaded the boat and made our way to the USS Kanawha. She was used as an oil tanker in WWII and had some pretty heavy artillery pieces on desk (6” Guns) still with tons of live shells (about a meter in length) lying all over the deck! This vessel was sitting at about 51m under the sea and was too big to cover in one dive so we headed back to the island to have lunch and dived her stern in the afternoon. The stern sits in about 65m of water. Neil asked us to keep an eye out for the letters of her name mounted on the back and let him know which one of the letters were missing. Haha funny story actually, I was so narked (narcosis, which you can find in an earlier blog – but it’s a drunken sensation you get when going REALLY deep) by the time I got down there. I looked long and hard and found that all the letters were missing. Neil later corrected me that only one of letters had fallen off… Ooops

Day 3 in Tulagi I finally got the chance to do the wreck I’ve been waiting to do for so long! The USS Arron Ward… here is some info on her history and this is my deepest dive yet at 70.1m under the sea! Pretty scary huh?

"The Aaron Ward gave another fine example of the fighting spirit of the men of our destroyer force. Though hit nine times by both major and medium caliber shells which caused extensive damage she nevertheless avoided total destruction by the apparently superhuman efforts of all hands. The superb performance of the engineers' force in effecting temporary repairs so that the ship could move away from under the guns of the enemy battle ship largely contributed to saving the ship." — Admiral William F. Halsey, Commander, South Pacific Forces[1]

The destroyer rejoined the fleet on 6 February 1943 and soon resumed escort work. During one stint with a small convoy on 20 March she aided in driving off attacking Japanese planes. A short time later, on 7 April, she had escorted Ward and three tank landing craft from the Russell Islands to Savo. Not expecting to arrive until 1400, the destroyer went ahead at 25 knots (45 km/h) to provide Ward and the three LCTs with air cover until they reached Tulagi. At about noon the destroyer received notification of an impending air raid at Guadalcanal.

Sinking

As the ships neared their destination, Aaron Ward received orders at about 1330 to leave her convoy to cover USS LST-449 off Togoma Point, Guadalcanal. (One of the passengers on LST-449 at this time was then Lieutenant (junior grade) John F. Kennedy, later to become President of the United States.) Joining the tank landing ship at 1419, the destroyer directed her to follow her movements and zigzag at the approach of enemy aircraft. While the LST maneuvered to conform to Aaron Ward's movements, Lieutenant Commander Frederick J. Becton, CO of Aaron Ward, planned to retire to the eastward through Lengo Channel, as other cargo ships and escorting ships were doing upon receipt of the air raid warning from Guadalcanal.

Sighting a dogfight over Savo Island, Aaron Ward tracked a closer group of Japanese planes heading south over Tulagi; while swinging to starboard, the ship suddenly sighted three enemy planes coming out of the sun. Surging ahead to flank speed and putting her rudder over hard left, Aaron Ward opened fire with her 20 mm and 40 mm guns, followed shortly afterwards by her 5 inch battery. Bombs from the first three planes struck on or near the ship, and the mining effect of the near-misses proved devastating; the first bomb was a near miss, which tore holes in the side of the ship, allowing the forward fireroom to ship water rapidly; the second struck home in the engine room, causing a loss of all electrical power on the 5 inch and 40 mm mounts. Shifting to local control, however, the gunners kept up the fire. A third bomb splashed close aboard, holing her port side, near the after engine room. Having lost power to her rudder, the ship continued to swing to the left as another trio of dive bombers loosed their loads on the now-helpless destroyer. While none of these bombs hit the ship, two landed very near her port side. Twenty destroyermen had died; 59 had been wounded; seven were missing.

Coordinates: 9°10′30″S 160°12′0″E / 9.175°S 160.2°E / -9.175; 160.2 Despite the best efforts of her determined crew, and the assistance of Ortolan and Vireo, however, the destroyer settled lower in the water. When it became evident that the battle to save Aaron Ward was being lost, Ortolan and Vireo attempted to beach her on a shoal near Tinete Point of Florida Island. At 2135, however, Aaron Ward sank, stern-first, in 40 fathoms (70 m) of water, only 600 yards (550 m) from shoal water.

Discovery

On 4 September 1994, divers located the wreck of the Aaron Ward. The first dive to the wreck was made on 25 September 1994. Because of the depth, divers are limited to about 15 minutes at the wreck before beginning their return to the surface.^[1]

Awards

Aaron Ward was awarded four battle stars for her World War II service.

Later that afternoon we took a trip to the other side of the Island where we did a reef dive :p no rusted metal involved (unfortunately -lol) I did happen to see +/- at least 15 Sharks J the biggest ones must have been 3m long. They were all Grey Reef sharks and one White Tip! It was really something epic to see! We made our way back to the Island and Phillips wife and I took a walk around the island to take some photos of the sunset! It was totally worth it! It only took us 45min to get half way around and about 15min to cut through back to the hotel J when we got back I had a quick shower and rushed down for supper J Sam and myself had a really awesome chat that evening that turned into the early hours of the morning. I learnt so many cool things about hit culture, it was very interesting J We also lay alongside the boat on the jetty and gazed at the stars for a long time. I saw so many shooting stars I ran out of wishes to make – lol (o_0)

Day 4 in Tulagi and only having 3 hours sleep I struggled to get out of bed and make it to breakfast but the sun was up and the day was underway. Our first dive of the day was a New Zealand Navy ship called the Moa which helped sink a Japanese sub that was the turning point for the war (coding book was found on it). The sub sank on the western side of Guadalcanal in Visale which I’ve had the privilege to dive a few times. I also had the opportunity to meet to brothers whose Grandfather fought on the Moa and helped sinking the sub. They are very cool guys and was quite interesting listening to all their stories that there grandfather had passed down to them J  we made our way down to the wreck at about 35m and did a bit of exploring. Neil happened to find the lettering that’s normally mounted onto the stern of the ship, Which has been lost for the last 69 years! He’s dived this site numerous times and has never been able to locate it and just by some lucky chance the first time I go down with him on this wreck he finds the letters “MOA” in the silt on the sea floor, what a great discovery it was! We made our way to the surface where Neil cleaned the brass letters and placed them back into a tub of salt water to prevent rapid corrosion. We made our way to the New Zealand Resolution vessel that just happened to be in the area scanning the sea floor for new wrecks with Ewan and the brothers on board. Neil handed over this amazing discovery to the captain of the ship and was congratulated for his amazing discovery =D well done Neil!

After a long week spent diving in Tulagi we made our way back to Honiara. We off loaded the boat and cleaned our gear. I made my way upstairs to find that Adam was just about to start an enriched air diving course or known as a Nitrox course which I decided to sit in. I was super tired but the class was super interesting J 

Bubbles from divers below - cool reflection of the camera set up :)

The German guy - Philipp Ebert

Before... ---->

After :D hahaha

Celebrating Ally's birthday :)

The lounge area of the lodge we stayed in - Tulagi

Sunset on Tulagi Island

Me entering the water :)

Neils discovery

Neil being congratulated by the captain of the New Zealand Resolution ship - WELL DONE NEIL!!!

Guy in the white shirt on the left had a grandfather on board the MOA.

Guy in the white shirt on the right (Ewan) found tons of wrecks in the Solomons, including the USS Aaron Ward.

He also has a website if you interested in viewing some WWII stuff... http://www.archaehistoria.org/

Sam and I

Hoped you all enjoyed this blog! Please keep an eye out for a post on my trip to Gizo Island - Its gonna be an EPIC one!

PEACE (o_0)

111 Days

Today I did a bit of studying for my Adventures in diving course. I did allot of handy man work around the house which I really enjoy doing. I love fixing stuff. I joined Tegan for a cup of coffee at Bamboo café. It was very nice, we basically had a DMC (deep, meaningful, conversation- lol) She’s a real nice girl and I can see us becoming good friends. I made my way back home and packed my gear and made my way to the beach to do my final dive of the course – navigation. It was a very cool dive but a lil tricky. I had to do a search and recovery exercise with a compass and counting your kick cycles. Neil the sneaky bugga knew I would come pretty close to the ship wreck which made my compass go crazy which in turn made me lose my count with my kick cycles. He knew this would happen and threw me off course :P once we exited the water Neil congratulated me and said not many people recover the object so quickly J YAY.

We made our way back home and cleaned our gear and prepared for a night dive J I was pretty stoked, I was about to clock my 70^th dive.  We eventually made our way to the beach (because girls were taking forever -lol) we made our way into the water and our decent to the first hull where we decided to turn off our torches and saw hundreds of flash light fish! It’s truly something to see! I made my way to the starboard side of the ship (alone) and turned off my torch for 5 minutes and when I turned it back on again and I was surrounded by some BIG fish! It was fantastic, I really enjoy my night dives. They so calming and peaceful kind of like doing tyche. We came home and listened to tons of WWII stories from the dude staying in my room. It was very interesting J

114 Days

This morning I woke up feeling like death with having come home at the crack of dawn.  I made my way onto the patio where I bumped into Bow who invited me out for a dive with him and Adam. I got my things ready and loaded them onto the truck. Sam, Adam, Bow and Sara made our way to the beach for our dive. We were really excited because it’s not very often that we get to have a dive not having any students or guests where we can go crazy and do our own thing. We made our decent to the stern of the Hirokawa Maru at a depth of 58m with the vessel lying on its Portside. Upon reaching our depth Adam pointed out the 4 artillery pieces mounted on the ship which I had never noticed before. We made our way to the rudder and up the starboard side of the wreck were we entered a hole from where a torpedo had helped this huge vessel to the bottom of the sea! On entering Adam turned on his torch which was like day underwater, I didn’t feel bad forgetting my torch back at the shop anymore ;) we did quite a bit of exploring going in and out of different passages. Adam found 8 bullets that must have been from a box of ammunition.

On our way back to the shop we stopped and purchased some food from the side of the road which was awesome. It’s the only kind of fast food you get here on the Island J we got back to the shop and rinsed the salt water off our gear when Bow shot home to get Barbra’s dog so we could give him a wash – man it made me miss Rock Star LOTS!!! Haha this dog doesn’t like water just like my girl :P

I then had the pleasure of meeting the guy who discovered the USS Aaron Ward who will be sleeping in my room for the next two weeks. He is here for the next month or so with a vessel from New Zealand. His job is to discover lost wrecks from WWII which is quite exciting! Hopefully I can tag along one day (or a week) but we’ll see how it goes. And hopefully we find something J

Sandfly Passage

Sandfly Passage

Sandfly Passage

Sandfly Passage

Sandfly Passage The size of this rock wall is huge! (at the bottom of the wall in the centre, just to the left is a dug out canoe -if you can even see it :p ) 

Erick + me

a local shoving coconut in my face

Jess + me

115 Days

On Saturday I made my way down stairs and met a lovely old geezer that has been in the Solomon’s for 3 weeks now. He is here repairing and servicing hospital equipment and was keen on doing some diving on his stay here in Guadalcanal. Sam and I took him down to Bonegi beach for a dive on the Hirokawa Maru ship wreck. Upon entering the water and making our decent to the mast at about 30m, Sam and i came across a diver that was in trouble. One of his regulators was constantly purging HUGE amounts of air! In a case like this your tank would be depleted in a little over a minute. We rushed over to help the guy and by the time we got to him he was already making an emergency accent with his dive buddy. I felt like I was quite prepared for something like this and knew exactly what to do J Sam and I escorted the couple to the surface and then continued our dive with our guest.

Later on that afternoon I joined Tegan at the Heritage Park Hotel for a few drinks and to watch the sunset next to the pool facing the sea, it was amazing. When we were joined by a friend of Tegan’s (I’m really bad with names, sorry) but she’s a helicopter pilot here on the Island – which is friken cool! The amazing sun had set and we made our way to the Taj mahal for supper where we met 6 men from the Australian military. I had a really awesome time because they were all in my age group which is not very common on the Island –they are also extremely funny men! I should hopefully be going to a Halloween party this weekend on the base depending if I can gain access or not.

After finishing dinner we made our way to the King Solomon Hotel for a few drinks in the pub, army boys included. Ha ha it was quite funny because the boys have all these rules they have to follow when off the base.  They not allowed to have any sort of alcohol, so every sip of beer I had I made it seem as if it tasted like heaven ;) they didn’t like me very much after that =D They all had a curfew and had to be back on base at 2300 hours. Tegan, her friend and I joined a group of pilots and we had a few drinks with them which was very entertaining before making our way to club Extreme to end off the night with a lil dancing J all in all I had an awesome night- met and experienced a whole lota new things :P

Savo Island

Comfy chair @ one of the dive sites

Haha

Dug out boats

Sam + me

Road kill

Road kill

Tegan + me

Jap Bullets (8)

116 Days

Hey there all you faithful followers. I sincerely apologize for not posting anything in the last few days due to no Internet connection from our service provider. This is the case throughout the island and I hope “Telekom” would pull up their socks soon :p I am so far behind on my posts that it would be impossible to write a post for everyday that I missed.  This post will be an update of all the cool things that have been happening for the last few days… Please enjoy (o_0)

I’m going to try fill you in as best as possible from where I left off. We had a group of 21 tourists from Australia to do two and sometimes three dives a day. This meant hulling 42 tanks onto the truck every morning, driving to the yacht club, off-loading all the tanks, guests gear, putting all of it onto the boat and then waving good-bye to the guests as they head out to do some AMAZING dives (with my lip on the beach floor)! One of which is an American destroyer called the “Aaron Ward”. This is the one dive I can’t wait to do!!! Less than 500 people have ever had the chance to dive this amazing wreck with it being discovered in 1995 at a depth of 70m! In diving terms this is considered as an extremely deep dive! The vessel landed on the sea bed in an upright position, with its cannons on deck still pointing in the same direction they were last fired. I was a little disappointed that I couldn’t do this dive with the guys but you know what they say, “the best things in life are worth waiting for!”

On one of the evenings I took the boys down to Bonegi Beach for a night dive.  Four of the guys were about to clock there 100^th dive and were doing something, ummm “crazy” for their century descent. One guy came prepared wearing a Borat swim suit which was (trust me) not pleasant! After rigging up my gear I entered the water with a few of the boys and three of them shortly after entering threw their shorts onto the beach! (o_0) they were going Free Willy so to say. I hoped I wouldn’t bump into any of them during the dive and (I’ll just say) I saw things that shouldn’t be mentioned *face palm* upon exiting the water one of the girls that had been waiting on the shore hid the guys shorts which was quite a good laugh for all of us. With their fins being used to cover up there bits.

After our eventful evening we made our way back to their hotel after a really long day! I was super beat! One of the guys came up to me, shook my hand and sincerely thanked me for “the best” dive he had ever done! The feeling I got was truly amazing, I’m REALLY happy that I can make such a difference to people’s lives!  

On their last day diving in the Solomon Island I took them to Bonegi beach for an early morning dive and to see the sun rise with four guys that were willing to be up at 5am! This was one of my most memorable dives to date! My dive buddy and I made it to the front of the wreck at about 10m when out of the blue four figures started to become clear! They were about 2m in length, 4 Manta Rays in a row next to each other “flying” gracefully. My buddy and I just sat up in this weightless environment and watched these beautiful creatures pass us by! The moment only lasted about 45 seconds but what a memorable moment it was! <3 <3  

This past Saturday I did a total of four dives in one day. I took some guests for two dives in the morning and then another two dives later that afternoon with Adam. He was busy with an Advanced diving course with Anna Lisa. She’s such a cool gal and I got to know her really well J she comes from Italy and will be leaving the island soon to go back home. Later on that evening after completing our dives we were all super hungry and made our way to a Chinese restaurant in town. We sat at a table that seated 8 people with only the 3 of us eating. Shortly after ordering, the food arrived and it honestly covered up every possible space on the table! I felt like I was eating like a king! The food was really good (I really should work on my chop sticks skills – ha ha)

After only a few hours of sleep I was up early to pack my gear and loaded the boat for our trip to Tulagi. We had about 8 crew on board all such amazing and funny people, including Erick (you can read about him in my previous blogs) which would later on be my dive buddy for the day. Upon arriving at our first destination I dove into the water for the mooring line and soon found out that we were floating above the Twin Tunnels. The water temperature was amazing as per usual at about 30 degrees. Once Neil had given us a short brief we were in the water in pairs and shortly after we started our decent to the twin holes at the top of this reef. We started our descent and I realised that everyone was sinking at a much faster rate than I was. I was quite puzzled actually. We made our way to the bottom and I realised that I had left my 3kg’s of weight on-board. I was already at a depth of 20m and it was too far to go back and I’d just have to live without it. This was such an amazing dive! I saw so many different species of fish including 6 sharks!! One of which thought I must have been a really injured fish and made his way straight towards me. Now the reason for having a dive buddy is for safety reasons and I seriously was contemplating stabbing Erick with my dive knife and swimming away REAL fast (so that the shark would get him first -lol). But instead -being the nice guy that I am- just waved my arms around frantically (hoping, not to look like a retarded seal) which to my surprise scared him off =D

Before we knew it we were back on the boat and off to our next dive site which was called Sandfly passage. This was a dive I had never done before and was eager to do. The thing that made this dive so spectacular was that you’d enter the water, make your descent and get pulled along by the current. There is minimal effort needed when diving there, you can literally cross your legs and just drift à its awesome!  Erick and I eventually reached a point with 50bar left in our tanks and had been in the water for 71 minutes. We decided to make our accent. Upon surfacing we had to wait for the boat to pick us upJ  We drifted at least 3km in the time we had spent underwater (o_0) later that evening Erick and I went to the Rain Tree for supper to bid him fair well. It was time to say good bye to another good friend made here in the Solomon Islands.

Sam and I had the opportunity to buy some road kill (food purchased on the side of the road) during this week which was awesome! I also met an amazing tourist named Jess and had dinner with her listening to a band that plays cover songs at the heritage park hotel. I have also been making underwater videos which I want to make into a short film when I get home, for everyone who is interested in having a glimpse of Iron Bottom Sound.

 

 Awesome sun rise + calm seas!

rolling mountains

 Nudibranch - size of your pinky

B-17 American Bombers engine and propeller

B-17 Cockpit

Sea Cucumber (fun to play with)

from the deck of the Rain Tree Cafe

from the deck of the Rain Tree Cafe

the deck of the Rain Tree Cafe

Savo Island

Joy, lady that works with us

Bob :) 

a Local