Mother's Day, my fiance's birthday, my best friend's absolutely fabulous Greek Pizza recipe, touring a Coast Guard ship, hanging out at the beach and cooking out with my boys and my friends, and doing two amazing dives, one on a WWII era sea plane and one on a WWII German cruiser, put all these things together and what do you have? You have my favorite kind of weekend where every experience is one to treasure for a lifetime! I wanted for my fiance's birthday to be more than special this year because in years past I haven't been able to do much due to lack of funds and traveling that we were doing at the time or lack of boating and navigating skills to take him out diving or bake a cake due to my lack of a stove in my BQ, etc..., so this year HAD to be different, better, especially considering that MY birthday in February entailed receiving 2 rings, becoming engaged, and going to a National Hockey League game to watch the Vancouver Canucks play in VANCOUVER on my actual birthday! I knew I could never top that, and I certainly wasn't trying to, but I did want to plan and at least partially cook a meal for him for once (now that I have a house and stove to cook in), plan and take him on a really cool dive for once (now that I have resources down here to graciously assist me with that), bake a cake, sing happy birthday, and blow the candles out with him, and I was able to arrange all of these things with the help of a few friends and my boys! It certainly didn't hurt that it so happened to be Mother's Day on his birthday this year too, so my fiance made me feel that all the fun plans were for me too while we celebrated his big day. What a sweetheart! :)
It's been years since I've dove on Kwajalein. Since entering the scuba diving world again a couple of years ago, I have been diving exclusively on Roi, so I can't thank our diving host enough for two of the most amazing dives I've ever been on. One was on what's called a PBM Mariner, which was a patrol bomber "flying boat" used in WWII and dumped like so many planes after the war in the Pacific Ocean when it was no longer needed. It's a massive plane fairly in tact still as it sits silently on the bottom of the ocean. It's a sea plane, and I believe the first I've seen underwater with the floats underneath the wing for the "splash down" landing they were designed for. As we descended upon the top of the plane, a lion fish bowed up on my darling dive buddy, showing his barbarous, beautiful, poisonous fins. Leaving him to his solitary place at the head of the plane, we cruised around the back and sides for the short time we had on this deeper dive. It was quite a sight to see, and there's nothing really to describe it. I simple can't wait to dive it again!
The second dive was on the Prinz Eugen, a German Admiral Hipper-Class Heavy cruiser used during WWII and which sank after surviving 2 nuclear bombs during Operation Crossroads (the nuclear bomb testing in Bikini atoll) in 1946. According to wikipedia.com, "She survived the Able and Baker tests (July 1946), but was too radioactive to have leaks repaired. In September 1946, she was towed to Kwajalein Atoll and capsized on 22 December 1946 over Enubuj reef, where she remains to this day." One of the propellers sticks up out of the water, and I have seen it many times on boat rides and sails through the lagoon. I have even snorkeled around it, but never dove it in my almost 15 years on island, and I never knew what I was missing beneath the surface until now. It just goes to show that you can never really know a book by it's cover or a boat by it's propeller, so to speak, until you've have a chance to see inside it or at least view the "big picture" underneath the water. Amazing weekend! Couldn't ask for anything better...
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