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September 23This morning I am going on my third dive on
the Coolidge. The guide promises to take me into the ship today to see the First
Class Smoking Room. We had planned to do it yesterday, but I think he decided to
take us on a light penetration dive first to see how we handled it. Many divers
get disoriented and confused when diving inside a shipwreck. Yesterday’s dive
therefore, had us just visit the bridge and the crows nest and then briefly
inside to see some of the bathrooms in on of the accommodation sections. It was
in remarkably good shape and there were some glasses and a bottle of Old Spice
on a shelf above the sink! We also saw some more machine guns and some
3”shells, and a whole field of fire extinguishers strewn about on the sea
floor. It was not too deep a dive, but we took our time and had pre-planned deco
stops at 30ft, 20ft and 10ft. The Smoking Room is in 145ft of water. What I
really want to do is see the engine and control rooms which are at 170ft,
perhaps after today’s dive. Kate is not diving today. She has just seen enough
of the ship on the first two dives. She prefers coral and fish frankly. Today is
Monday and after the dive we are going to take the dinghy across the bay to the
town (Luganville) and get some fresh fruit, some more Vatu (local currency) and
check out with customs (vessels are required to notify customs whenever entering
or leaving one of the 4 ports-of-entry just as in Fiji). Our next port-of-entry
after this will be Port Vila, the capital, in about 6 weeks. That will also be
our last port in It is now 4:30 and we have had a very full
day. The morning dive was amazing. We went fairly deep into the ship and saw the
First Class Dining Room and NOT the smoking room as I thought we would see. The
signature piece of the wreck, a 3ft square porcelain sculpture called “The
Lady” was moved to the dining room from the smoking room 2 years ago after an
earthquake dislodged the piece. It was relocated due to damage to the smoking
room which would prevent divers from accessing The Lady. Tomorrow I am going to see the engine room,
though not the control room as both cannot be seen on one dive. Today we went
into Luganville after lunch and shopped a bit. Got a permit from Customs to
proceed South toward Port Vila. We also bought a new gasoline jug as one of our
is leaking! It was one we bought last year in Tahiti, obviously a cheap piece of
crap compared to our other jugs which are over 2 years old and are made in |
