diverdowndeep:
I will be arraiving in Kona 9/26 for a couple of weeks. I will have 5 other divers with me. Various experiance levels.
1 is a new diver with very limited ow time. Only salt experinace was in Key Largo FLA and it wasn't a good experiance from what I have heard. I suspect shore diving will be a better way to get her a little more experinace.
Since 1 person's easy dive is another difficult, I though I'd ask for advice on where to and not toake her shore diving.
I've been diving for 10+ years and have dove in a number of enviornmnets.
Florida
Maui
Cozmel
Tahiti
lots of carib stuff
but since I have 2 inexperinace divers and 2 thaqt haven't dove in a year, thought I'd ask around.
Jack
It's somewhat of a call that you have to make. Do you shore dive with your friends and possibly accept some responsibility for guiding a fairly sizeable group of mixed experience levels at a dive site neither you nor your friends have ever been to? ... Or do you jump on a boat and follow the guys who are trained to regularly lead complete strangers, the majority of which have less than 20 dives, on dive sites that they know inside and out because they've been diving them regularly for some time?
Point being, there are easy shore dives AND there are easy boat dives, at least in Kona anyway. Depending on the weather and the swell direction, boat diving can be much easier than shore diving. At which point, you need to decide who might be better at showing your "inexperienced" divers a good time, you or the people who do it for a living.
Here's one little fact that few people realize. On most every boat in Kona, on any given day, most of the people (I'd speculate perhaps 60-70% or so at least) haven't dove within a year, haven't got 15 dives, haven't ever dove in salt water, or any combination of the preceeding, prior to diving on this particular vacation. Yet somehow, practically every diver has a great time. It's easy to mix skill levels once you are used to doing it. The only time it doesn't work more or less seamlessly is when one or two individuals have preset notions that they have to go to "X" feet deep to have a good time, or when one or more divers in the group should never have been certified in the first place. This generally doesn't happen, but it can, and then generally it's only those particular individuals that are disappointed.
For your friend who had a bad experience in Key Largo, it'd be curious to see what happened. Did they hit the water and panic? Did the DM leave them in the middle of the dive? Too many variables without knowing what happened to say that diving off a boat was the problem, could have been the individual, could have been the crew, could've been circumstance. If you are concerned about that individual, you could hire an exta DM/Instructor fot the first day to work with them one on one.
I'm not recommending against shore diving at all, there are some very nice shore dives here, the other poster recommended a few, it's just that shore dives are not necessarily the best first dive for inexperienced or low skilled divers and may hamper the group. They may be more fun for the entire group once everyone's comfortable.
By the way, conditions here lately, 82 degrees, viz 100'+, calm water, plus it's the slow season. You have really come at a good time.
Have fun,
