Filed at 12:45 am under Diving by glennstu
Iakwe,
This week on Discovery is shark week, one of my favorite weeks of the year television wise. It sure has brought back lots of memories of my time on Roi and the great diving there. Tonight they had a show on the 10 deadliest sharks. Unfortunately I missed the first half of the show because 2 of the sharks on the list I dove with off Roi. Those were the white tip and the grey reef shark. I saw and swam with a number of those as well as nurse sharks and black tips while on Roi. There are tiger sharks there but I never saw one nor did anyone I can think of. But shortly before I arrived a tiger was caught either on Roi or Enniburr. My friend had its jaw. Watching all these shows is making me crave going diving again. Read more »
Filed at 11:45 pm under Diving by glennstu
Posted February 1, 2008
“I swim like a fish in the sea all the time, if that’s what it takes to be free I don’t mind” – Toots Hibbert
Sunday mornings on Roi-Namur for me meant it was time to go diving. The local activity center provides Bayliner boats for fishing, diving, and other water activities. The Roi-Namur Dolphins SCUBA club has several buildings on the Lagoon side of the island near the marina where members can store their equipment. So my Sundays would start early, with a hearty breakfast skillfully prepared in the cafeteria. Next, I would load any equipment I had in my apartment onto the trailer on the back of my bike and ride down to the SCUBA shack as we termed it. There I would gather the rest of my equipment to be loaded onto the boat. You could comfortably fit 4 divers onto a boat and 5 if you needed to in a pinch. Four was optimum as you had 4 ways to split the rental cost but you weren’t too packed. So while the other guys got ready the day’s captain would head over to the marina and sign out the boat then steer it over to the SCUBA dock where the crew could load the boat. Today we would be heading towards Speedball, a favorite site due to the large school of sharks that frequent it. I think the site got its name because it is close to where in ancient times they would launch Speedball missiles from or something like that if my memory serves me well for a change. Read more »
Filed at 11:02 pm under Travel and Diving by glennstu
One of the best things about working on Roi-Namur was that once a year I got to take a one-month vacation. Typically I would stop in Honolulu for a couple of days to get use to civilization again. It is quite an adjustment to go from an island of about one hundred people where nothing moves faster than maybe 20 mph to a bustling city the size of Honolulu. I would see more people in one city block than Kwaj and Roi put together. I would always stay at the Ohana on Lewers St. (spelling?). It was close to the beach and there always seemed to be a lot of activity going on. There was also a breakfast place I like to go to close by. They had pancakes with cocoanut syrup on it that was very delicious. The rest of the time I would usually spend in Seattle with my children. I was always careful to return to the Marshall Islands in enough time so that I would not have to pay US income taxes. That was another benefit to living there.
Something I could have done was to visit San Carlos, Mexico on my vacation time but I didn’t. Instead I went there last weekend with my company’s dive club. Read more »
Filed at 12:19 am under Island Life and Travel and Diving by glennstu
I got involved in some hunting last weekend. There is no large game in the jungles of Kwajalein atoll so the sportsman must seek his game in and around the water for the most part. Sunday I awoke to a gloriously splendid day. The skies were blue and the air was warm as usual. It was my day to go diving. The week prior my friend Jeff had lost his dive knife on the wreck of a Japanese cargo ship that had been sunk during the battle here. He asked if we could go back to it to try to find it so we did. But we didn’t have any luck finding the knife. For our second dive we chose a coral head off of Third Island. It was beautiful there as usual. We saw the usual assortment of fish, coral, and sharks…. Read more »
Filed at 10:53 pm under Island Life and Diving and Cultural by glennstu
Sunday night here we had a Karaoke to benefit the Enniburr Children’s Christmas fund. We earned $401 towards our fund, which is to buy Christmas presents for the children there. That is not the amazing part. The amazing part is that I sang a few songs and it was actually requested that I sing an enchore. Not only that, but they had to pay extra money for that. I don’t sound as bad when I have a microphone and can hear myself. That is an amazing but true fact. This is somehow related to the rest of my story but mostly I am bragging that someone, for the first time in my life, wanted me to sing.
Monday morning (yesterday) I woke early to go diving. With threatening skies, we headed out the pass to the ocean where we like to dive the most. We wanted to go to speedball, a favorite spot because of the large quantity of sharks, but it looked like the skies would open any minute so we wanted to get in the water before we got soaked. … Read more »
Filed at 12:58 pm under Diving by glennstu
SHARK ATTACK
This afternoon I went diving with my friend Shannon. We had just rolled off the boat into the water when I spied a gray reef shark circling beneath me. Usually I consider it a good omen when I spot a shark first thing, a sign that there will be more to view. … Read more »
Filed at 12:41 pm under Diving and Cultural by glennstu
This article was originally written in February of 2002.
The Circus, Headcount and Holidays
Last weekend was the final days of the Circus of the Pacific’s stay on Ebeye, another island on the atoll located close to Kwajalein. That is where most of the Marshall Islanders live. Just as Portland is known as the City of Roses and St. Louis is known as the Gateway to the West, Ebeye is known as the Ghetto of the Pacific. There are about 10,000 people living on an island smaller than Roi-Namur. The circus was quite enjoyable. What I remember most is the Amazing Miss Ann from the Republic of
Vietnam.
… Read more »
