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Captain Ramli and crew recently moved the S/V Mnuw (Sea Hawk) from Sumbawa Besar to Surabaya. We have gone from a gorgeous, sleepy backwater lagoon to one of the world’s most bustling seaports. Surabaya will be our home until we depart for Yap on the 31st of August.

In Surabaya, Mr. Jimmy Blee and his team of skilled boat builders will be installing the mizzen mast, the stainless steel rigging, all doors and windows, building interior furniture and overseeing the installation of the galley.

My good buddy Jimmy did an excellent job of pulling together 40 odd craftsmen, 3 or 4 chiefs, the local government officials and over 100 tons of precious tropical hardwoods in order to complete Phase One on time. The Mnuw departed Sumbawa Besar at 1 AM on the 7th of July. She pulled into Celekan Bawang Harbor in North Bali to pick up Jimmy at 4 PM on the 9th and departed at 5:30 PM the same day. She arrived in Surabaya at 12:15 PM on the 11th. (A bit of a hint for those of you who are going to enter our web site promotion by guessing the time it will take from Surabaya to Yap.)

Mnuw is currently docked outside the shipyard in Gresik Harbour awaiting her turn in the dry dock, which is now scheduled for July 25th. During the dry dock, she will be cleaned, her hull repaired and painted and a team from Australia, led by Mr. Rob Camarda of WA Shipwrighting, will be on hand to completely sheath the underwater portion of the hull in copper plate. Not only will this make her look better but it will protect the valuable timber from marine boring worms for years and years to come.

As Mnuw is waiting on the dry dock, another team of craftsmen are on board installing the stainless steel floors and walls for the galley along with stainless steel pans which will sit under all of the public toilet areas and behind the bar. The mizzen mast has been installed and a 2nd team of workers are now changing all the old steel rigging and installing new stainless rigging.

While Mnuw is being worked on in Indonesia, the Manta Ray Bay is also being readied for the ship’s arrival in Yap. Here is a shot of the dock area and part of the room expansion. The stern of Mnuw will be moored close enough to this new land fill to allow our guests to walk on and off her via a covered walkway. The ship will be easily accessible to wheelchair customers as well as anyone needing a bit of assistance in walking. Hotel guests will have a private door leading directly from the hotel to the ship’s entrance while our other guests will enter directly from the parking lot.

We invite everyone to follow along as we continue the refit of the former M/V Bunga Berkat Usaha and transform her into the S/V Mnuw (Sea Hawk). Regular progress reports will appear on our web site and when we actually depart Surabaya for Yap, a daily live update will be posted to the site by our web master, Mr. Patrik Nilsson of Stockholm, Sweden who will be onboard with us.

In addition to these updates, we will be sponsoring a contest, offering a one week stay at the Manta Ray Bay Hotel & Yap Divers. To win, you need to predict the time it will take us to sail from Surabaya to Yap. Full details will provided on the web site in a few days.

Mnuw is due in Yap between the 15th and 17th of September and we are inviting anyone interested in seeing her to join us after the 22nd of September. It will take us some time to connect her to the island utility grid as well as clean her from the 2,100 mile voyage. If you are interested in visiting Yap, seeing Mnuw and diving our wonderful reefs, please contact your favorite travel agent, dive wholesaler or Bill Acker.

Chef Munn is busy creating an expanded menu, the dive shop guys are getting ready to add a 6th boat to the fleet, that boat is currently in Surabaya and will ride to Yap with us on Mnuw, and the hotel staff are preparing for the 8 new rooms.

All in all, it is an exiting time to be in Yap. Bill Acker, his family and the fine staff at the Manta Ray Bay Hotel & Yap Divers, are here to welcome you and ensure that your well earned holidays go smoothly. Good things are happening here at the hotel and on Yap as a whole. Don’t you wish you were here?

The Buginese Phinisi Bunga Berkat Usaha as she was in March of 2001. Built of Ulin (Ironwood) from Kalimantan, Indonesia and used as a lumber carrier until purchased by the Acker family in February, she will be converted to a restaurant and moved to Yap Island in September of this year.

Mnuw - Sea Hawk, sitting in Sumbawa Besar, Indonesia in June of this year. Still carrying the name BBU, the boat is more than 2/3 complete as far as the physical refit is concerned. From here, she moves to Surabaya, Indonesia to have the electrical, plumbing and mechanical aspects added.

I have just returned from a week long visit to Mr. Jimmy Blee at his boat yard in Sumbawa Besar. Jimmy, one of a long list of rogue Australians living in Indonesia, is working 7 days a week getting our ship ready to move to Surabaya where the "modern" aspects of the project will be installed.

As you may know, Jimmy worked for the famed Aman Resort Company for 9 years and recently hosted the Chairman and founder of the chain onboard the Mnuw. Mr. Adrian Zecha was most impressed with the vessel and especially the concept. While I was in Sumbawa, Mr. Jean-Michel Gathy, the head architect for Aman Resorts was onboard and he too fell in love with the concept. Mr. Zecha plans to be in Yap shortly after the arrival of Mnuw to see firsthand what we do with her.

When the ship arrives in Yap, she will have a first class kitchen/galley area for Chef Bill Munn to properly exercise his culinary skills. Chef Munn’s Pacific Fusion Cuisine has helped establish him as one of the leading chefs in all of Micronesia. In addition, the ship will be home to the Nautical Weaver Bar, the Maagirag Lounge, which will double as Yap’s finest meeting facility and conference room, and the Crow’s Nest Bar. Mnuw will also be home to a Micro Brewery which will produce Bill Acker’s infamous Manta Brew.

The Pacific’s best Happy Hour will also take place on the various decks of Mnuw. Starting with the firing of the canons at 5 PM and continuing through 7 PM, our guests will be treated to daily entertainment and drinks - all in the atmosphere of a South Seas Sailing Schooner.

We invite you to follow the progress of the re-fitting of Mnuw - the Sea Hawk on our web site. We will be giving away a one week, all expenses paid stay at the hotel/dive center for a lucky couple who most accurately predict the time it will take us to sail the ship from Surabaya to Yap. We leave dry dock on the 31st of August and will head for Yap immediately (you can check out the tentative route plan here). Should you have any questions, please contact me at: billacker@mantaray.com.

Should you wish to visit Yap and experience Mnuw for yourself, please contact your local travel agent, dive shop or favorite dive travel wholesaler. Be sure to tell them you want one week in Yap at the Manta Ray Bay Hotel and they will do the rest. If you need assistance with other dive locales in Micronesia, please don’t hesitate to write us and we will be happy to help you.

Until we see you on Mnuw, happy diving.

We are extremely excited to finally release the news of our new restaurant and bar which will be ready for business mid September of this year. This event is the culmination of countless hours of discussions, thousands of miles of travel, weeks in the jungles of the world and last but not least, many cold beers shared between our fearless leader, and head pirate, Bill Acker and his crew. This will be the single biggest event to happen to Micronesian tourism in many years. Certainly old hotels have been renovated and names have changed but nothing this new and exciting has happened.

Imagine yourself sitting at the Crow's Nest Bar on a hundred-year-old wooden sailing schooner, measuring over 170 feet (55 meters) in length, having a cold beer and reminiscing with your dive buddies about the school of manta rays that were hovering inches from your head an hour ago! The Mnuw (Sea Hawk) is coming!

The idea of bringing a South Seas schooner to Yap was hatched between Bill and a good friend of his, Mr. Peter Howard of Maui, Hawaii, over two years ago. Since that time, Bill has scoured the world to find the right ship, find the right person to refit the ship and securing all the clearances needed to purchase and bring the ship to Yap. From South Texas to South Sulawesi, from Northern Madagascar to Northern Borneo and from the Eastern Caribbean to Eastern Sumbawa, Bill searched high and low for the right vessel. Finally, on the 10th of March, the deal was signed in a law office in Ginyar, Bali under a ceiling fan with tropical birds singing in the garden. The traditional Buginese cargo ship Bunga Berkat Usaha was acquired by Manta Ray Bay Hotel.

Renamed Mnuw (in the Yapese language Mnuw is the name of a rare sea hawk that is seldom seen but yet famous in Yapese traditional lore), the ship was moved to Sumbawa Besar and placed in the hands of an Australian rogue by the name of Jimmy Blee. Jimmy is famous throughout Southeast Asia for his work with the world-renowned Aman Resorts hotel chain. Between spending weeks with Rolling Stones star Mick Jagger and shooting a movie with Geena Davis, Jimmy found time to raise a sunken ship, rebuild her into a first class live-aboard dive boat and start a marine business.

Needless to say, Jimmy and Bill hit it off better than two peas in a pod and the result is going to be a magnificent, two-masted sailing ship. She will sit in front of the Manta Ray Bay Hotel and offer our guests two air-conditioned private dining rooms, two bars, a movie room, a game room, meeting rooms and the ambiance of the South Seas. Our famous Nautical Weaver Bar will be moved to the wheel house deck and will command a gorgeous view of Tomil Harbor. Jimmy, Bill, Bill’s oldest son Nathan, brother-in-law Ben Tured and his son Maru, along with Captain Serfin Single, Theo Gumang, Rob Westerfield, Jim Tobin and a host of others will sail the boat from Surabaya, Indonesia on August 31st . She will sail through the cut of Yap's main channel around the 15th of September. If you want to be here to celebrate, or be among the first to sample Chef Munn's new cuisine, please see your favorite travel wholesaler or visit our reservation page to book your trip.

Please visit the web site often in the coming months to follow the progress of this magnificent project.

Manta Ray Bay Hotel and Yap Divers is pleased to add John Boozer to our already excellent international staff. Bill Acker and John met at the annual Boot Show in Dusseldorf, Germany in January 2000 and their paths crossed again in June and November 2000 when John was visiting Manta Ray Bay Hotel and Yap Divers. During the November trip, John made the casual comment to Bill that Manta Ray Bay Hotel and Yap Divers would be an easy and fun place to sell because of the excellent facilities, great staff, wonderful food and incredible diving.

As a result, John has been hired as Manta Ray Bay Hotel and Yap Divers' Director of Marketing. In that capacity, he will be working with our existing network of dive wholesalers, adding new wholesalers, attending consumer shows around the world, making slide presentations to divers and generally keeping the excellent programs and facilities at Manta Ray Bay Hotel and Yap Divers in the public eye. He is available throughout the year to make presentations to wholesalers, travel agents or dive shops.

John is no stranger to the dive industry - he is a retired instructor and he has held several management positions and worked with many of the major dive industry leaders.

John will be working from his Houston, Texas office and may be contacted by e-mail at: johnboozer@mantaray.com, tollfree within North America at: 877-707-3483, Internationally at: 1-281-292-2001 or by fax at:1-281-367-3483.

For the 5th consecutive year Manta Ray Bay Hotel and Yap Divers have won many of the annual Rodale's Scuba Diver Magazine (RSD) Readers' Choice Awards.

Over 6,000 RSD subscribers and web users rated the best dive destinations, operators, live-aboards and resorts in the world and Manta Ray Bay Hotel and Yap Divers continues to be a major leader in the international diving industry in providing our guests what they want in a diving vacation.

We are very proud of all these awards and the staff at Manta Ray Bay Hotel and Yap Divers has proven once again that we are the best of the best!

The diving paradise of Yap Island (Home of the Mantas) in Micronesia has received a new twin-lock, 2 person recompression chamber. Bill Acker, owner of Manta Ray Bay Hotel and Yap Divers, was instrumental in working with the Yap Legislature and the Farmer's Home Administration to fund the project.

The chamber which arrived in November 2000 is located at the Yap Hospital and is maintained by hospital staff. Bob Ramsey, diver Hall of Fame chamber technician was brought to Yap for the chamber installation and operator training. Dr. Pauline White trained the medical staff and the chamber is fully operational.

Volunteers from the diving and medical communities will run the chamber. Geof Loe, Operations Manager of Yap Divers, is a Diver Medic Technician and # 1 Chamber Operator. Geof will be training the staff from other dive operations as well as more from Yap Divers. Yap Divers now has four # 1 Chamber Operators on their staff.

Bill said, "While we in Yap have been lucky over the years with very few cases of DCS (none with Yap Divers), the addition of a chamber here will make all of us in the dive industry sleep easier. Divers can now come to Yap with the added piece of mind that an evacuation to Guam or Palau would not be necessary in the unlikely event of a DCS or other diving malady occurrence."