From Clare

The main excitement for me this year was the Easter trip to Indonesia, more specifically off the north coast of Irian Jaya, the Indonesian western end of the Papua island. The trip was planned about 18 months ago, when a friend from the diving club, Tim Camp, got in touch with a Dutchman called Max Ammer who has been hunting for World War II wrecks off Irian Jaya for the last 15 years. We arranged a two week trip to do a mixture of diving on known sites and some hunting for new wrecks, starting in Sorong & ending in Biak. We were based on a locally built, wooden vessel 27m long, with masts & sails but also a motor called Shakti. The crew were Indonesian except for the two dive guides – who come from Cornwall – and Max.

Indonesia is a land of bureaucracy. All our passports, and no less than 3 passport photos went off for 3 days to get the “permit” to allow Shakti to leave the jurisdiction of the Sorong harbourmaster. However, that gave us time to go to the Raj Ampat islands, which we were told have the best coral in the world. I was sceptical, but after a day’s diving there am convinced that it has the best coral walls I have seen! We also dived the wrecks of two P47’s which were ditched (and pilots survived) and a Japanese zero, which had been shot down.

Getting back to Sorong we went diving on some local wrecks. Sorong is a large estuary so the visibility is very much the same as in Portland harbour – around 2m at worst and 8m at best. It was a bit surreal diving there, very much the same as a UK wreck but with tropical fish – and wearing a thin wetsuit rather than a drysuit. The paperwork was delayed a day so we headed just outside Sorong for our first wreck hunt. Max, Tim & a few others went to a Papuan village to talk to the local headman and “borrow” 3 fisherman – in this case one was wearing a blue hard hat, hard hats seem to be a badge of honour in Paua. They claimed to have seen an aircraft at approx 30m, one wing up & the other buried in coral. The first boat went out, to be faced with three fishermen pointing in different directions, found nothing & concluded that it was the wrong reef. The group I was in I were kitted up by then & rapidly cooking, so went in almost at random. Found no aircraft but Cherry, the dive guide, found a wobbegong shark – a strange almost frilly animal, 2m long, lying under a rock. Julie & I got a tour of the village when the boat took the fishermen back. It was quite large, our “tour guide” claimed it was 1000m long but we walked it too quickly for that. Houses range from wooden on stilts to quite modern looking concrete. At the centre of the village is the old church, and they are building a new one. I found many of the food plants recognisable from the Caribbean - paw-paw, small bananas, breadfruit.

Finally the papers arrived so we set off east – on Good Friday. Our first stop was Amsterdam - a beautiful small tropical island. The first dive was on a pontoon with two landing craft, and a number of others scattered around. In between dives we went onto Amsterdam Island. There are four inhabitants - one woman, two men & their pig. Their houses are made of flattened out oil drums. The island is covered in old metal from when it was an ammo dump in WW2 - oil drums, ammo boxes, part of a truck & Max found an old helmet.

Easter Saturday we didn’t dive – it isn’t a good idea to dive constantly for several days, so we returned to the water on Easter Sunday, starting with a dive on one of Max's pet aircraft wrecks, A P40N Kittyhawk which crashed on 18 October 1944. The RAAF pilot was then listed as MIA for 54 years before Max lifted the body in 1998, when he was identified by dental records.

We then went into Manokwari harbour. The second dive was a Japanese ship, the Shinwo Maru, intact & lying on her port side. The brief said go through the hole in the bow, then through the holds until you can't go any further and then you come out & find the aft superstructure leading to the engine room. I had great fun finding our way through, past a hold full of saki bottles. The third dive was also a lovely wreck - although very small. A anti-submarine vessel, she is in 18m of water and covered in soft corals & fish.

The adventure started as we surfaced, to see our two tenders had been joined by a local Navy patrol boat. One of our team was on board negotiating with the Navy, another was in one of our boats and various armed guards were waving sub-machine guns around. We were then all transferred onto the navy boat back to the base, where they took all our names before letting us come back to the boat. It appears that a local guy is trying to make it compulsory for all divers in this area to dive with (and pay) him and has persuaded the local navy to add a new and improved permit system, requiring in addition to the “standard” clearance from the harbourmaster, police & ministry of tourism, a “letter of recommendation” from a senior official in the ministry of tourism. Max was able to sort it all out, but it took a day – and there’s not a lot to do in Manokwari….

We did get an evening ashore, watching traditional Papuan dancing – one of Max’s friends in Manokwari is a member of a group that works to keep the traditional music and dance alive. The dancing was very energetic and involved painted paddles. We also ate some traditional local food – quite interesting except for a sort of sago porridge which looked like wallpaper paste and tasted of nothing!

We then had a couple of days looking for aircraft wrecks – and not finding anything! However, on our second to last day we got to Numfor island, and after the usual fishermen had been borrowed, we did find a wreck, of a small landing craft. It's a gorgeous little wreck, with the landing ramp down, overgrown with corals. It's a bit eerie thinking hat we are probably the first westerners to see it since it was sunk almost 60 years ago. The fisherman also had heard of a larger wreck, which had masts “within 5m of the surface” but that was many years ago, and advise us to go to the next village.

On arrival we got the usual hand shakes from the fisherman. We were lead about 1/2 mile inland to what is clearly the local head- man's house. The house is on stilts, and half the village follows us in. Max & some of the men poured over the charts and talk wrecks. It is clear that many of the people here are literate - each village has a church & a school. With some diagrams we left, and exchanged a bag of sweets for some coconut water, and three of the fishermen came back with us.

A search with the magnetometer (metal detector) showed no targets, so we changed tack & went across to the headland near the village to look for a plane. Again, no luck but a nice reef dive with some interesting fish. However, when we surfaced we were surrounded by a flotilla of little canoes, all with outriggers, full of the village children who had come out to see if there were any more sweets. Throwing sweets had the effect of a general "abandon canoe" order as they swam after sweets and then back into the canoes. Tim & Max then added to the show by jumping off the side of the ship & were almost mobbed by these children all of whom seem as at home in or on the water as on land. The sad thing is that according to the missionary Tim and some of the others met earlier in the trip, the infant mortality rate in these villages can be as high as 40% - and this is backed up by what we have heard from the fishermen. Apparently the local treatment for diarrhoea is to withhold water, and for fever is to wrap up the child, both of which cannot help.

On the last day we woke up to see another perfect desert island. Some of us went looking for reputed landing craft (plural) snorkelling. About 30 mins later we had found - 6 - all clearly visible from the surface. The last dive was magical. The landing craft were on clean white sand, with the craft an oasis of fish, coral & soft corals. Most were upright, but the second was upside down. Went down to the bows to see underneath, looked at the computer and saw 30.2m - amazingly clear water. The 6 craft were in two groups, between the groups we swam over featureless sand. Again the stern areas were full of glass fish, in crystal clear water, followed by clown fish, shrimps & a moray eel.

Overall, it was disappointing that we didn’t find most of the wrecks we were looking for – but the experience of being there, and meeting some of the people in the villages was quite amazing. Although we ran foul of officialdom both in the delays in Sorong and the incident in Manokwari harbour, we also met some very helpful and friendly people who did their best to sort out these problems.

Apart from overseas, we have managed to dive around the UK – varying from Devon to the Firth of Forth and SW Wales. The east coast is definitely quite a bit colder than the west. One of the highlights was diving with a small curious seal close to the Isle of May in the Firth of Forth – and capturing it on video. I’ve also managed to get back up the odd hill or two this year, mostly locally in the peak district, but David & I met up with a friend who lives in Perth and managed to go up 4 Munros next to Loch Tay on a glorious clear day.

David, although unable to go to Indonesia hasn't exactly been staying at home. Although theoretically based in Faslane until recently, this year he has been to Lithuania, Germany, Rhodes, Bahrain, Kuwait, Malaysia (twice), Dublin and Estonia (twice)! Although not in the Gulf during the "war" two of his ships were involved (hence the visits to Kuwait & Bahrain) so it was a pretty tense time.

David’s parents came over from Australia for the summer, and spent some of the time here with us. David’s Uncle Julian got us all tickets for Henley Royal Regatta, so we had a fun day out, all dressed up, watching the rowing. David managed to get two weeks’ leave while they were here, although he did have to work one day, going up to Rosyth to do a ready for sea inspection – but he took John with him to see one of his ships.

Re work, I’m still mostly working on the Trent 900 engine for the Airbus A380. We’ve started testing engines this year, and these are really huge – the fan is 116” diameter! Most of the testing I’m interested in is scheduled for Feb / March next year, so it’s a bit quiet at the moment but that won’t last.

By David

As usual Clare is far more organised than me, so I am taking her letter and adding a postscript. I have now started a new job, at the MoD in London. It’s a big change – going from Faslane which is a relatively small base, and with 9 ships & a squadron staff, to wearing a suit behind a desk! I am working on “future tri-service and multinational command and control”, The general idea being that it would be good if all the services can talk and pass information to each other in an efficient and timely manner. I work for an Army Colonel and have a Major working for me, with Marines & RAF also in the office, so very much a “joint services” job. It is a bit too far to commute every day, so the RN give me a flat to live in during the week. For those that know London, it is at Limehouse, near Canary Wharf. I am sharing with another RN Commander, but he leaves in the summer, if all goes to plan a good friend of mine will move in after him. For those few of you in the services you can find me on Chots under D CBMJ6-cbmcomddev. Sleeping bag is at the short trail for anyone needing a place to stay in the big city.

One piece of bad news is that my uncle Des had a stoke last week, it is too soon to say how much this will effect him, but on his side are his overall fitness (better than mine) and an endless supply of determination; our hopes and prayers are with him and his family this Christmas.

On a happier note the very end of the year brings with it the last of the major anniversaries that the family have had to celebrate this year. My Mum and Dad clock up 40 years of wedded bliss, and will be surrounded by all their grandchildren for the day. Again our thoughts will be with them all.

Wishing you all a happy Christmas and a prosperous new year.

Love

David & Clare