Trip Report Diving Truk Lagoon in December 2023, comparison of Odyssey Liveaboard vs land based accommodations

[LI-er]

While planning this trip I determined that the best way to dive Truk Lagoon was via Odyssey liveaboard, my wife and I spent 7 days and nights aboard and did 5.5 days of diving with Odyssey.

When we signed up for the trip, Odyssey advised us to book any necessary lodging before and after the liveaboard trip (depending on rather limited available flight schedules) at one of the 3 hotels on Weno which is the main island in the lagoon. It has the airport, a rather primitive town, and is where Odyssey is based. We were not provided more in the way of details regarding the 3 hotels other than they were similar in price and "most guests choose to stay at Blue Lagoon".

We chose L5 (short for "Level 5"). L5 is right across from the airport, you could walk it in less than 10 minutes. It's got the best restaurant of the 3 hotels, in fact guests from other hotels and locals go there to eat. L5 is a bit run down, the elevator is marked "out of service" and from what I'm told, it hasn't worked in years. Thankfully we got a ground floor room although they probably would have helped with bags and dive gear. There is no view of the water, it's a free standing building with nothing around it.

We spent one night at L5, we rented a car for 24 hours for $75 and drove down the main road. While we were sightseeing we checked out the "cave with the big gun". We had trouble finding it, although we were in the right place at the end of a road, there were no signs. Two helpful young kids offered to walk us up there. It's a nice view, overlooking the Lagoon through the cave, and the big gun is a cool piece of history. The friendly kids said "Now you have to pay this guy $5 for coming up here". Not sure why we had to pay "this guy $5" but things seemed to get a bit serious all of a sudden so we paid up.

Truk Stop is hotel number 2, it's about 10 minutes south, in the center of town, and another 10-15 minutes you get to the tip of the island and the road ends at the Blue Lagoon hotel (to be abbreviated BL going forward). Truk Stop has a nice view of the lagoon, and has or had a small dive shop with one or 2 boats. I'm told the original owner has stepped back from managing the place and it's been in somewhat of a decline. Recent reviews state the dive shop isn't even open anymore, service is poor and the place has severe maintenance issues. Several people on the liveaboard with us stayed there the first night, and as we did, they chose to change their "after Odyssey trip" bookings to BL.

BL has several advantages over the other two. The Odyssey is sometimes docked there and if so, you can skip the shuttle trip to the boat from one of the other hotels, although the hotel to boat transfer shuttle service is provided by Odyssey as part of the package. Each hotel provides free shuttle service to and from the airport. BL is at the tip of the island, it's more of a resort, with shoreline overlooking the lagoon, palm trees, an outdoor bar, separate buildings for hotel rooms rather than one central building, those buildings are scattered around the grounds which are quite pretty with planting areas and lots of trees, however the place needs to be cleaned up a bit. It's got a museum that is opened on request, and a restaurant with "ok" food. My major gripe is that to enter the restaurant you need to walk past the bathrooms which stink of sewage which is the last thing you want to be smelling before and after a meal.

Not that Blue Lagoon tries to represent itself as a 5 star resort. There's no pool, and not much in the way of water sports although you can snorkel off shore and see some wreckage, and there are kayaks which nobody was using, as well as a bar overlooking the water that was never all that busy. There's not a single lounge chair to be found, and many of the existing regular chairs are in questionable condition.

Most importantly, BL has a basic but well run and equipped dive shop with at least a half dozen skiffs in the 25-30 foot range ready to take divers to the sites of their choice, with a very flexible schedule. You can pretty much show up whenever you want and say "lets go diving" although you're probably better off giving them a days notice as to what you have in mind. Or let them pick the sites, but the point is you have the ability to choose your dives if you're so inclined.

We did 4 dives with BL before we left that evening on Odyssey. I specifically requested wrecks that we would not be visiting on the Odyssey, I was assured by the dive shop manager that they know the Odyssey schedule and they would not take us to the same wrecks. Despite the promises of the dive shop manager, 3 of the 4 dive sites were repeated on Odyssey which apparently goes there as part of their regular weekly schedule.

There's one disgusting bathroom adjacent to the dive shop off the equipment/tank filling room. I don't understand why no attempt was made to clean it up given that tourists may need to use it.

A potential hazard at the BL dive shop is the puddles that form near the dive gear rinsing tanks and shower. It gets really slippery, and my feet went out from under several times, if I hadn't regained my balance it would have been "back of head versus concrete". Some rubber mats or those plastic flooring thingies with holes would be well advised.

The crew will load all your gear into the skiffs, change over your tanks between dives, and unload your gear when finished. The briefings are either non existent or a few sentences in broken english, vs Odyssey where they show a video, then using a detailed and labeled diagram an english speaking DM goes through all the highlights to see, and how to best dive each wreck.

If the weather is rough, the ride to the sites in the BL skiffs can be 30 minutes or more and one of the days was complete misery with rather moderate waves causing bouncing and hitting hard on the wooden benches in the wave troughs with shocks reverberating through my spine, and constant blasts of salty water in my face. At times I wore my mask and briefly considered logging the trip out to the site as an additional dive. On Odyssey you barely even know the boat is moving although the seas were relatively calm during our week on it.

The dive guides on the BL skiffs locate the submerged buoys marking the wreck locations simply by taking bearings off of the nearby islands and landmarks. They're pretty good at it, they need to be since there's no GPS equipment on board. On one of the dives it took the guide about 15 minutes to find the buoy which can be rather annoying when you want to get in the water. On another they accidently targeted Odyssey's buoy which apparently they aren't supposed to tie into, so after jumping in the DM had to get back on the boat and we found the correct buoy about 10 minutes later. On the other dives they found the buoys almost immediately. On one dive, the skiff broke free of the mooring and the boat ran in circles over our heads with the propellors churning, with the DM releasing large quantities of gas from his stage tank to signal the skipper where we were located. Why he did not carry and deploy an SMB would have been my question if I thought he'd understand what I was asking. Odyssey has no such issues, and they do all the repositioning while you're listening to a briefing or eating a meal.

It's a bit tricky to get back on the BL skiffs small hanging ladder that could have used an extra rung or two, an out of shape or overweight diver could really struggle here, versus Odyssey which has a fins on or off, long wide ladder, and even has an optional lift to raise divers up to the spacious dive platform, as well as a hang bar at 15 feet with extra regulators, which makes the safety and deco stops much easier and safer although the water is usually calm under the surface and skilled divers will have no issues maintaining depth without a line or a hang bar.

The cost differences- My quoted prices are for a couple. Odyssey is basically all you can eat at meals, with snacks between dives and unlimited beverages all the time, including wine and beer but there's only so much booze you can consume at night after the diving is done for the day, unless you sit out some additional dives. Food quality on Odyssey was better than at BL. My estimated cost to stay at BL for 1 week includes 3 basic meals per day, no alcohol, and no snacks. The portions aren't all that generous. So that could be a few hundred bucks difference right there depending on how much you eat and drink.

Odyssey offers AL80 and Steel 120 tanks, Nitrox included. Blue Lagoons dive prices are for AL80, add 12-15 bucks for Steel 100 Nitrox. That's about a $500 difference if two divers use large tanks and nitrox and pay "ala carte" for about 22 dives which is about what you can do on 5.5 dive days on Odyssey.

Our cost for 2 people on Odyssey was $7500 and that includes room, food, and of course the diving. To stay at Blue Lagoon for 7 nights at $150 per night = $1050 plus about $70 per day for 3 meals, $490 plus 11 2 tank dives (to match Odyssey) @ $150 each is $3300, total for Blue Lagoon is $4840. Add the $530 for larger Nitrox tanks to get $5370. So the cost difference for us is about $2000 more per couple or $1000 per diver for a week on Odyssey versus BL.

 

[LI-er]

Your savings may vary, say if you don't need larger tanks or Nitrox, or if you drink a lot of booze- those would either offset the cost difference to some degree or result in a larger savings by staying on land. Solo travelers won't save as much on the BL room rate or may have to pay extra premium on Odyssey for example. If there are non divers going along, or those who don't max out their diving, the "ala carte" dive prices at Blue Lagoon could be a huge cost savings and when not diving there is at least theoretically more to do at BL than on the liveaboard. The dive shop manager indicated we could get a "package deal" savings if we booked a week at BL. I think that most of Odyssey's guests are large groups that enjoy a group discount as well.

BL charges extra for stage/pony tanks and probably doubles, Odyssey includes them. That can be a considerable cost savings for Tech divers who choose Odyssey. In fact I had a conversation with a few members of their group about the cost differences and they said they calculated the difference to be $400 per diver if they chose BL instead of Odyssey but they would never consider it as Odyssey is so much more convenient for them.

One advantage of Blue Lagoon is you can choose your own schedule and pick your dive sites if you're so inclined. After the Odyssey trip there was a handful of wrecks I researched and wanted to check out, and Blue Lagoon accommodated me on all of them, even though I was the only paying customer on the boat with 1 DM and 1 skipper.

Perhaps the biggest advantage of BL is small groups, our first dives there was just me, my wife and the DM, and my last set of dives there was just me and the DM who surfaced way before me on all the dives leaving me to enjoy the wrecks in solitude. As compared to Odyssey, there were usually 19 divers in the water including 4 DMs, as we were split into 4 groups. They scattered the entry times on the smaller wrecks to avoid crowds but invariably there were large numbers of divers on the wrecks at the same time, and several areas were silted out by the group who got there first. Odyssey will allow you to solo dive, but it's still difficult to avoid other dive groups due to a somewhat tight schedule, but either way you're better off using a DM for at least the first dive on a new wreck so you can see the good stuff, after that perhaps you'd want to go on your own, as I did several times.

Miscellaneous notes, BL vs Odyssey. The rooms in BL, being land based are much larger, with a spacious bathroom and several closets, 2 twin beds, balcony overlooking the lagoon. Wireless internet at BL varies from mostly nonexistent to poor to (rarely) fair. I definitely wouldn't try to stream a movie. Our Odyssey stateroom had 1 king bed, most or all of the bedrooms are on the lower level, the hallway had a bit of a dank, mild to moderate sewage smell. Typical of most liveaboards the rooms are smallish and there are only 2 small windows that you can't really see much through. No wireless internet in the rooms so if you want to relax and do internet stuff it's going to be in the salon area which uses Starlink and the internet is much better than at BL. As I write this report, I'm relaxing on one of the two full beds in BL, occasionally looking out over the view of the lagoon, my wife is relaxing on the balcony, whereas in Odyssey we only stayed in the bedroom to sleep, shower and do unmentionables.

Odyssey has the convenience of your gear being always set up at your dedicated station, with your own bin under the bench to hold fins, booties, etc, and it's a quick walk to the large dive platform. There's a big table for cameras and small items, and shelves below it with individual baskets for smaller gear. Versus getting your gear from the storage room next to the BL dive shop, avoiding the slippery puddles and bringing it over to the tables where the dive team will load it on the boat for you. If you need a spare battery or a forgotten piece of gear you'll never have more than a 45 second walk to retrieve it on Odyssey, whereas at BL you might need to walk a few minutes back to your room.

Odyssey has lots of reading material, and videos on their server that feeds the TV in the entertainment room/boutique and all the state rooms. There are books, magazines, charts, clipboards with tons of materials about WW2 and especially Operation Hailstone which created all these great wrecks to dive on. Each dive briefing is preceded by an informative video about the wreck to be dived, it's history, it's service and how it ended up on the wrong side of the water. It makes for a more..um.. immersive experience. You won't get anything like that at BL although they have a nice map on the wall outside the dive shop showing the islands and the locations of the wrecks with brief descriptions of each one.

Diving notes. Odyssey has a rather unusual and flexible policy regarding diving. Solo diving is permitted, and recreational divers without tech certification going into DECO is not discouraged. These wrecks are deep, and interesting, with always something more to see on each dive which may be once in a lifetime. Divers will build up quite the nitrogen load which tend to turn most recreational dives into DECO dives especially with those 120cf steel cylinders. Prior to this trip I had at most, a handful of 2 minute DECO obligations over 650 dives. On this one, almost every dive was 3-5 minutes into DECO, one dive was a 13 minute obligation requiring two stops. And I am not tech certified. With those large tanks and Nitrox I was able to squeeze out some awesome 45 to 55 minute dives in depths of 80-130 feet. If I had avoided DECO I would have missed out on a lot of diving and again, this seems to be typical. Odyssey even offers recreational divers an opportunity to dive to a wreck at 165 feet with careful supervision by their guides, requiring multiple decompression stops over a 30 minute period.

Although you could theoretically dive 5 times per day, one would be a night dive and even if you did that, you're really pushing your Nitrogen limits. We did 5 dives on only one day, the rest were 4 dives per day.

I used a wetsuit for only the first diving day, it stayed dry the rest of the week, and I was never the least bit chilly. The only advantage is that if you like to squeeze into tight spaces in wrecks, you're undoubtedly going to skin a knee or an ankle if you're not wearing some form of exposure protection. Use gloves!

Marine life. There were lots of schools of small and tiny fish but I can count on 2 hands the number of fish in the 1 foot or larger range I saw the entire week, plus a lone Eagle ray and a pair of Eagle rays on 2 separate dives. A couple of large puffer or porcupine type fish that aren't afraid of divers in the large holds on the wrecks, and they will just hang there while you look at them. One large turtle. One or two moray eels. No sharks. An octopus on the sideways oriented, coral covered hull of a shallow wreck on a dusk to twilight dive.

BL does a nice surface interval at a small island that used to be an airstrip during WW2. So you can get off the boat, walk around a bit, drink the contents of a coconut, hike a bit into the jungle of palm trees and see some ruins and a primitive village. Obviously with Odyssey once you're on the boat, you're off dry land for a week.

As far as I know, BL and Odyssey cover the same dive sites, possibly with a few exceptions for wrecks that are too far away from BL.

The wrecks: At the end of the week on Odyssey, knowing I had 2 dive days remaining at BL, I asked the crew on Odyssey and subsequently at BL for not yet seen dive site recommendations, and I did my own research and I came to the conclusion that we had already covered pretty much every decent wreck in Truk Lagoon within recreational limits that has something unique to see, has artifacts, or is in an interesting orientation. If you dismiss the deeper wrecks, those that are deteriorated, crushed, or upside down with little to see, then you're down to about 2 dozen wrecks. I dived 20 unique wrecks including 3 airplanes and a submarine over 33 dives during the 5.5 days on Odyssey and 3 days diving at BL.

I came up with 6 potential wrecks for my last 2 dive days. One was too far from BL. I specifically requested the I-169 submarine as that is not on Odyssey's schedule, and having now dived it I know why. It's deep, about 140' to the sand, and having been depth charged by the Japanese to keep it out of the hands of the Allies in WW2, it's a crushed collapsed mass of twisted wreckage that is not discernable as a sub (at least to me). And it's a quick dive due to the depth with no penetration opportunities. So I suggest skipping this one. In fact although I can now say I dived a WW2 submarine wreck, I would go so far as to say I wouldn't dive it again if you paid me.

The Gosei Maru was not on Odysseys schedule, and looked good from my research although it was not mentioned by either Dive Operator. I recommend you dive this wreck with its stern at a shallow 10' depth, you'll almost put your fins on it when you jump in. Because it lays on it's side on a diagonal along a steep sloping reef, as you swim to the bow you get to about 120' which makes for an interesting dive, plus you see artifacts and torpedos.

 

[LI-er]

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[LI-er]

The others I requested were the Suzuki- smaller, somewhat crushed and shallow, not much on it to see although it's got an interesting location atop a steep reef, you can swim down the hill to depths of about 75' to the sand, from about 45' at the lowest point of the wreck at the stern, and find wreckage that's made it's way down the embankment over time. One of only a few Japanese Zeros made a nice surface interval between dives. And it's free! They recommended snorkeling it. No WAY. Use what's left in your tank from dive 1, I had 500 psi, breathed it down to 150 psi and had a nice 20 minute dive on it in depths of about 25', it sits upside down and is mostly covered with corals on a beautiful hard coral reef but again hardly any fish. The Momokawa Maru- similar to many of the wrecks we did on Odyssey. A cargo ship laying on its side, with deep holds with some ammo and artifacts retrieved and placed on the deck by other divers including lanterns and bottles.

My favorites of the trip were:

Kensho Maru- Between BL and Odyssey I dived this wreck 3x. But if I had to dive a wreck 3x this would be one of them. Massive open engine room with catwalks and lots of gauges and artifacts to see.

Shinoku Maru. This was my favorite dive as it has everything. Lots of artifacts, and a long penetration through the stern where a torpedo blew a hole creating awesome damage that is easy for a diver to visualize and get a feeling for what it was like on the day of the Allied bombing of Truk Lagoon in February 1944. This penetration must be done with a dive guide, we were deep inside the wreck on multiple levels, left and right turns, U-turns, etc far beyond the reach of ambient light. In addition, the bow is covered with beautiful hard corals, sea anemones and more fish than any other wreck although again marine life is mostly large schools of tiny fish. Makes for a good night dive- in fact it's the only wreck of the week that was worth doing a night dive on.

You cannot penetrate these wrecks at night, because if you do, you can easily get disoriented and trapped. Once inside a hold or a compartment it's literally impossible to know which way is out, there is no ambient light to guide you and the exit looks no different than a corridor to a more interior space. I asked one of the guides about using a wreck reel, the answer was "they don't do that here" but no good reason was provided. I suppose there's nothing from stopping you. Anyway, since no penetration, if there's no marine life or pretty corals, it's not worth doing a night dive on most wrecks. Again my opinion, but it's largely shared by the Odyssey crew and most divers opted to do a "dusk to night" dive before dinner, if they did one at all.

Heian Maru- the largest weck in the Lagoon. I found my one and only skull! I went on this trip hoping to see all sorts of bones, skeletons, skulls, etc. The whole idea of looking at remains is now frowned upon by the guides, despite countless books, magazines and websites showing numerous photos, it's suddenly considered disrespectful so they won't point them out even if they're right there in front of you. Plus the Japanese have removed most of them, and the ones that are left are either in hard to find places or they're buried in silt, or they've deteriorated beyond recognition. So you put all this together, and you can lower your expectations about seeing a bunch of skeletons. On this wreck as I said there was a skull in the engine room, and it was literally fused to the metal it was sitting on (please don't ask me how I know this), thats probably why it's still there.

Hoki Maru- Despite being a deep and relatively short dive in rather tight easily silted compartments, the old trucks parked against the bulkheads as well as a bulldozer and other machinery are really cool to see. You want to be the first group on this particular wreck even if it means bribing the crew.

Don't forget there's a "cash only" $30 per person Truk Airport departure tax so bring a few bucks, Truk is US territory and uses US dollars. I didn't know that and had to ask the Odyssey Captain to help us with a Credit Card/Cash exchange so we wouldn't be held hostage on Truk.

To summarize my experience, I'd say that Odyssey is good for first timers who have no clue about which wrecks to dive, who want the convenience and all inclusive aspects of a liveaboard, and who seek a more educational, historical experience, who are in large groups traveling together, those who like or require the ease and convenience of easy in and out of the water, and especially tech divers who will require extra tanks and special gas mixes that would drive up the dive prices at BL, if they can even get everything they need there.

Blue Lagoon may be better suited for returning divers who might prefer to pick their own sites the next time around, who might not want to do 20+ dives in less than 6 full days, who travel with non divers or those who won't dive much, and who travel in smaller groups, who prefer to dive on uncrowded wrecks and who may want or need to save a few bucks.

 

[clownfishsydney]

Thanks for the write up. I have been there six times, but not for more than 10 years. I stayed at Truk Stop twice, once at a place opposite it, and four times at what is now called Blue Lagoon. The quality of the accommodation and food changed over the years. At times they were good, other times poor (we ate at the other places on each trip).

The diving operation was by far better at Blue Lagoon, with many more wrecks offered with excellent guides and operations on the later trips. We stayed three weeks twice and dived two dives a day (all decompression) and did all the deep wrecks (but not the submarine as we could not hook in nor the deep warship). We dived even the wrecks a long way from the resort, never a problem.

The cost for the three weeks was cheaper than a week on the liveaboards and you did more dives. You especially did more of the deeper (40 metres or more) wrecks.

From the time of my first visit in 1991 to the last, the conditions of the country fell dramatically. The roads fell apart, the buildings worse, the cars worse etc.

By the way, Chuuk is NOT a US territory, it is part of the Federated States of Micronesia, a sovereign country. It, like many other countries, use the US dollar as their currency.

 

[GreggScott]

Tried to DM this but won't be able to do that until I make 5 posts.
Just wanted to say thanks for your great review on BL resort vs. Odyssey. We are planning a late 24' to early 25' trip and trying to decide between shore vs. liveaboard. I have done many liveaboards and would prefer that but my son has not and does get seasick. He's had success with the Scopolamine patch. We just got back from Cozumel and he was fine except for the one day that his patch fell off.
So my question would be... How rough were the seas on the worst day? I know it's a crap shoot as to weather but wondering what your experience was.
We just escaped Northern NJ about 5 years ago so I guess were kind of neighbors once.
Thanks again,
Scotty

 

[LI-er]

So my question would be... How rough were the seas on the worst day? I know it's a crap shoot as to weather but

I didn't feel a thing the entire week we were on Odyssey but the seas were relatively calm. The one day running to the wrecks on the Blue Lagoon skiffs in the rough weather was absolute misery, did you read that part in this report?

 

[GreggScott]

I didn't feel a thing the entire week we were on Odyssey but the seas were relatively calm. The one day running to the wrecks on the Blue Lagoon skiffs in the rough weather was absolute misery, did you read that part in this report?

I did, but thanks for mentioning it. I sent my son the link for this thread so he can make an informed decision. That's an important data point. No matter what we decide, you have to get on a boat sooner or later. Thanks again.

 

[Eanxbr]

Thank you for the great review and tips! Looking forward to explore the area soon. If you don't mind me asking, how much were you tipping both on BL and Odyssey?

 

[bashaw77]

I dove Truk Lagoon in 2017 I dove 2 tanks a day for 14 days 3 tanks a day for 3 days all with Blue Lagoon.
My wife doesn't dive so it doesn't make economic sense to pay for a non diver on liveaboard. She brought a floaty from home enjoyed the lagoon and beach, had it mostly to herself because most people are Diving. I really don't remember having to ride out or back to resort in too rough of water. I will try to make it back and probably do Blue Lagoon again.