First of all a big thanks to Craig of Black Cat Divers for letting download the Poseidon config software onto his Mac so that I could change my gases on the Rebreather this morning. Deeper dives require trimix gases and the Poseidon rebreather is a little unique in needing a Bluetooth link from a Mac or PC to set it up. Most other units can be changed on the hand sets which would make things much simpler.
So on with the diving.
Our first dive this morning was on the Aikoku Maru which sits upright in 63m of water so is quite a deep dive at around 40m to the top of the bridge and a little over 50m to the holds This ship was Japanese merchant raider, and quite large, originally she was 150m in length but everything forward of the bridge was destroyed in the catastrophic explosion that sank her in seconds during the American raid on Truk. So sudden was the sinking that the anti aircrafts guns still point to the sky as if still fighting her last battle. Part of the vessels role during the war was also as a troop transport and many hundreds of Japanese soldiers died instantly in the blast. Their remains littered the accommodation areas and in 1984 approximately 400 were removed and cremated before being laid to rest at the Tomb of the unknown soldier in Tokyo, there are however some remains still onboard and like any war grave she should be treated with respect.
Diving rebreather is perfect for this type of wreck, as it makes 40 minutes on the wreck and a total run time of 100 minutes very practical, diving open circuit the decompression obligation increases so and the amount of gas you need to carry becomes prohibitive.
The second dive was a bit of a washout for me due to a rebreather problem so I'll end today's entry here.
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