wreck

Log This Dive

YUBAE MARU

The Yubae Maru is exactly why we come to Chuuk. It’s a steamship, 93 metres long, sitting upright at 30 metres, and she feels like a ghost ship frozen in time. What we love about the Yubae is the sheer scale of the cargo holds; dropping into number one, it’s cavernous and dark, with light filtering down from above, revealing stacks of sake bottles and beer crates still lined up on the port side. Our favourite part is the engine room, a tight squeeze to get in, but once inside, the machinery is astonishingly intact, gauges and levers still in place. It’s a proper penetration dive, so you’ll want to be comfortable in enclosed spaces, but it's well worth the effort. Outside, the superstructure is draped in soft corals, and you’ll often find white-tip reef sharks cruising the deck or snoozing under ledges. We’ve seen enormous groupers here, too, the size of small cars, lurking in the shadows. We’d suggest hitting this one earlier in the day if you can, before the other boats arrive, it just makes the experience that much more solitary and evocative.