Why the Odyssey Liveaboard?

Over the years, I've been lucky enough to dive in Truk Lagoon on more than one trip. I've been both shore-based and based on the liveaboard Odyssey.

The big advantage of the liveaboard is that you can kit up with more than one tank, and drop in directly over each wreck, and avoid the pain (even though it may be only 20 minutes) of a bumpy ride in a small boat with a lot of kit, which may include a substantial camera rig.

Similarly, you can hang on the solid deco bar of the Odyssey at 20-feet for long deco stops, something we required after long and sometimes deep dives. Keen on underwater photography, we routinely needed 45-minutes of deco after investigating the Japanese staff car in the bowels of the San Francisco Maru. My wife even took a book to read during these stops!

And once you are safely back on the aft deck (Odyssey has diver elevator making reboarding easy), you can immediately take a shower without the bother of those pesky mosquitoes. Don't confuse this experience with that of the quirky Thorfinn, which does not move and uses a small boat for dive trips, just like the shore-based option.

The dive guides on Odyssey also provide both practical and historical briefings on each wreck, using as a reference the classic volume by Dan E. Bailey World War II Wrecks of Truk Lagoon. I have a copy but was bemused to find a used volume on Amazon now priced at more than $4000)! www.trukodyssey.com

John Bantin