Maui Trip Report, Oct 24-29 2005

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

rottielover

Contributor
Messages
383
Reaction score
0
Location
St. Louis MO
# of dives
25 - 49
We stayed at the Sheraton Maui resort, located in West Maui, and on the grounds is “Black Rock”, highly regarded as the best shore diving / snorkeling on the whole island. If you stay as a guest of the Sheraton resort, they offer some diving opportunities, from out of their activities building, affectionately referred to the by the staff, as the “Scuba Shack”. The staff is very friendly (at least the SCUBA instructors that they have on staff), and very helpful. At first, we were going to take the advice of some of you here on scubaboard, and rent tanks from the LDS (Maui Divers), but we wanted at least one “supervised” dive, since this was our first time in the ocean. When we spoke with our Instructor, he suggested the 3 dive package that the resort offers to certified divers, an orientation dive, a scooter dive, and a night dive. We own all our own equipment, and only needed tanks and weights, so the costs weren’t “THAT” bad. In fact, it was actually cheaper to do those three dives as a package, than it was going to do those three dives on their own.

The Sheraton’s “SCUBA shack” offers only 63 cubic foot aluminum tanks, and at first glance, most people have the same reaction that I had at first… “63 cu. Feet? That’s not enough, I suck down an AL80 too fast as it is”. However, MAX depth on this dive is 35 feet (41 feet if you do the scooter dive, more on that coming up), and even my hovering didn’t make me the first to turn pressure, as I have feared for so long… My best SAC rate, calculated by Suunto Dive manager was 0.7 SCFM, still quite high, as most experienced divers tend to have 0.5 or less, so I’m still working on it, but even at this rate on our Night dive I went from 3100 psi to 1300 psi in 30 minutes, and when we surfaced one of our group was at 300 psi!

First Dive, Tuesday

We scheduled our orientation dive with the “shack”, finally at 3:19 PM local we were on our way into the big blue! Our first dive was around the tip of Black Rock, look around and come back to our entry point. Max Depth on this dive was 31 feet, Viz. ~100 feet, Temp 81 F, TBT was 27 minutes, 63 cu. Foot tank started at 3200 psi and ended right at 500 psi. SAC was 1.21 SCFM (OMG!) or 97 PSI / MIN Ouch! Yea I was really sucking the air on that dive, first dive ever in the ocean, first time we ever had to fight current, waves, surge. It was, well, breathtaking! We also saw two endangered green sea turtles, and one was bigger than I am! We also saw an octopus hiding in his hole. I got a calf cramp midway thru the dive because I had never been used to fining so much before. I used my “cramp removal” skills, and my dive buddy (my wife) to work it out and we continued the dive in short order. All in all I consider this a great dive for my ninth dive ever. What a blast, awesome dive!

Second and Third Dives, Wednesday

After our first dive we decided to book a boat dive out to Molokini, a crescent moon shaped crater about 2 miles or so from Maui. It’s a protected marine park and because of the shape of the crater, it’s a great beginner dive site, as well as having advanced dives (there is a very advanced drift wall dive around the outside of the crater, but we didn’t do that). We booked with the Maui Dive shop, on their boat, the “MAKA KOA”, very nice boat, with dual ladders and a nice big platform at the back. The crew was simply awesome; our dive leader was Ryan, a certified instructor who took us out in group 2 of 4 groups. The boat holds about 20 or 30 divers / snokelers, by many accounts this *could* be considered a “cattle boat”. Groups 1-3 were groups of Divers about 6 or 8 each group. Group 4 were snokerlers only, who had tagged along with diving friends/family but where not certified divers themselves.

Our first of the 2 tank boat dives was to a spot in the Molokini crater called “Orange Grove” We had a free decent down to 40 feet and then started to explore the reef, because of the sheltered nature of this marine park, there wasn’t much in the way of current to fight against at all. Our dive leader found a small (maybe 3 or 4 foot ) white tipped reef shark, sleeping in a hole. I managed to get an OK picture of it too. This is an awesome site, words cannot describe it. I was so excited that I managed to hoover once again, after about 28 minutes it was time to head up to our safety stop, and the dive was over after 33 minutes. Surprisingly, I wasn’t the first one back on the boat, so I felt pretty good about that, since we all had buddies in our group, the dive leader was comfortable enough to send us up in buddy teams to do our stops and accents. The boat has a really nice trailing float with a small rope and weight that hang down to about the 20 foot level. This makes doing safety stops OH so much easier! Water temp was 81 F, Viz. 100+ feet, and we were in the water by 8:18 AM. Technically, we violated our certified depth limit, we should have stayed to 60 feet or less, but at one point we were at 67 feet looking at a colony of garden eels. We stayed at that depth for 1 min. then moved back up to 56 feet. Since we were with a certified instructor, I don’t consider this to be a huge violation; however this is not something I would do on my own, had we not been with an instructor. Anyway, another great dive!

For the next dive we motored over to “Turtle Town”, a reef formed by two “fingers” of lava that flowed under the ocean, out from the island. They call this place Turtle town, but we didn’t see any sea turtles until we were nearly back in the harbor, when we saw a turtle on the surface. Instead we stumbled into a huge pod of spinner dolphins! They followed our boat around and played in the wake. Thru the whole dive we all heard them (very loudly), but never really saw them. I spun around at one point during the dive to see a big gray figure swim away into the blue, but I don’t really consider that “seeing” a dolphin. On this dive, my reef master camera malfunctioned, and would “lock up” after taking a picture. I haven’t yet contacted sealife about this, but I suspect it has something to do with pressure changes, because on my next dive (after I opened the camera housing to download the pictures) it functioned flawlessly. Due to the malfunction, I was unable to snap a picture of the spotted eagle ray that we encountered. I’m very upset that I wasn’t able to snap that picture, it was awesome!

After a 1 hour 10 minute surface interval, we were back in the water at 10:03 am. Max depth was 47 feet and time was about 43 minutes, Viz. 120+ feet. For this dive I was able to get my SAC down to 0.74, still high, but I was very excited to see the multitudes of fish, octopus, that spotted eagle ray, etc. All in all a very enjoyable trip out. Now is a good time to make some personal observations… First let me point out that nearly all the boat dives go out early in the morning (6:00 AM) because the trade winds pickup in the afternoon. Think of the trade winds as a 20-30 mph “storm” wind that comes every day at about the same time. However, your soon out of the wind if your staying in one of the resorts, because they are all on the leeward side of the island, so you get some gentle breezes, but nothing really bad. Also, this boat crew had a tip jar that they set out. Personally I thought it was a really nice way to handle this aspect of boat diving (granted that this is the first time we’ve ever been on a dive boat). However, we happened to be the last people off the boat, since we had carried on all our own gear, and I noticed that when I dropped my 20 bucks in the jar ($5 per tank) there was only one other tip in there… out of all those divers! Maybe I’m naive about these things, and I know that these guys have to be making more money than the DM’s down in Mexico, but they were a really good crew, and they had a really good lunch served on board after the dives… personally I felt like my $20 might not be enough, but the only tips I’ve ever heard of were $5 a tank, so I felt just in giving that. After getting off the boat, I felt pretty stupid; only one other person had left a tip. Oh well, if I ever get the chance to go back, I won’t feel bad about booking with the same shop, on the same boat. If you guys are reading this, AWSOME JOB!

END PART 1
 
Part 2


Fourth and Fifth Dives, Thursday

Our next two dives were the next in our three dive package from the resort. This day we had our first dive at noon, a scooter dive out around Black Rock, then out to two “micro reef’s” a little ways out from the point. Basically these are two big boulders out in the middle of the big blue, surrounded buy nothing but water and sand. On this dive we saw a small lion fish, more green turtles, two coral banded shrimp, and all kinds of tangs and butterfly fish. The scooters or DPV’s if you prefer (Diver Propulsion Vehicle) were very cool! We covered a LOT of distance in a short time, and our air consumption was very good, since the scooters were doing all the work for us! We went out in a group of 4, our instructor, my wife and I, and another guy from Romania I believe. He hit the turn pressure first and after 29 minutes and 42 feet the dive was over, but what a dive!

Our next dive was our first ever night dive. There were two other couples on this dive plus one more for a total of 8 of us including our instructor. It’s interesting to note that the oldest couple this time out, were the only one’s talking about how many dives they had, and how they’ve dived all over the world, yadda yadda, more on them to come…

So, night dive around the point of Black Rock, could have been a very nice dive… Our max depth was 29 feet and the dive lasted right at 30 minutes. I said *could* have been a nice dive, remember the couple I was talking about earlier, well they had the “same ocean” buddy team philosophy… The guy was either dragging across the reef/sand, or bobbing to the surface like a cork, and his wife was all over the place, mostly kicking myself and my wife in the head! You know, it’s bad enough when someone get’s you the first time, WACK!! Out of the blue, usually they stop kicking, turn around and give you that “I’m sorry” look. However, this gal not only kicked you once, WACK, but continued to kick, WACK WACK WACK WACK, until she finally swam far enough away to stop kicking you. Once I cleared my mask and got it back on my face right I could see her heading over away from the group, and then she abruptly turned and headed back toward the reef above our heads. This time my wife was right there next to me, holding my arm as I was finishing my mask clear (this is something we worked out during our certification, if one of us were having any problems the other would hold to an arm, not only to steady the other, but it also keeps us from sucking in a huge breath of air, thus floating to the surface). Anyway, while she was holding me steady and flashing me the OK sign trying to find out if I was OK, then she got the WACK WACK WACK , straight in the head. See, the thing that make me the most mad about this, not only that they were bragging about how many dives they had, but that she shined her light right on us, BEFORE kicking us, and never looked back to see what it was she was running into. At least with the other divers, we all stayed pretty close to our buddies, but these two just stayed “loosely” around the group, and the group suffered for it. After that, I signaled to my wife that we were going to stay back a little ways from the group. After that the dive went very well. Afterwards, when everyone else had gone, and my wife and I were almost done getting our gear in order, our instructor mentioned it, said that we did pretty well, that he’s seen other new divers freak out when their mask got kicked off. So I’m pretty happy that my wife and I were able to keep a level head, and not bolt for the surface.

To sum up, all I can say about the diving around Maui is “WOW”! I can’t wait to go back, I just hope I get the chance!

PHOTO NOTE: The hand is our Instuctor's hand not mine :wink:
 
Glad you enjoyed your visit. I didn't read all of your post but did you get to the Maui Ocean Center? If not, must do for next trip. Also do the back wall dive, rated as one of the top ten dives in the world. Don't forget, we have other islands too. Big Isle diving is better than even Maui. Aloha
 
Sounds like you guys had an excellent time!! Black Rock is such a fun dive to do, whether you're a newbie or a more experienced diver since there is so much to see. Next time you go, definitely take a charter out to Lanai. You will LOVE the cathedrals and find them to be amazing in their beauty.

Sounds like you and your wife are a great buddy team. One thing we learned really quickly was that the people who talk the most about their experience and/or training are the ones to stay as far away from as possible while underwater. On our last Maui trip there was a guy on our boat bragging about finishing his UW photography specialty. The guy was constantly dragging his fins all over the reef and kicking anyone who got near him. We stayed far away from him, bringing up the rear the entire time.

So, when are you going back to Maui?
 
Black Rock has some good sealife to explore. I hope you were able to get to some other top sites in the area like Honolua.
 
Great trip report! Sounds like Maui worked it's charms on you and you'll be back too :) The night dive at black rock is one of my favorite night dive spots - frequently you get to see squid there which is fun... and they have great bouyancy skills :wink:

My last night dive at Blackrock we turned the corner and there was a 1kt current - I was frog kicking pretty fast, and going nowhere. My buddy (who was doing the smart thing and just holding onto a rock watching me and laughing) turned the dive, and we rode the "escalator" back to the point again. Fun dives out there though.

The garden eels at Molokini are incredible to watch aren't they? Talk about graceful... And while some give MDS a bad review, I was very impressed when I went out with them a few weeks ago - Our DM was probably the best diver I've witnessed of all the DM's I've seen. And I agree they are a friendly crew. Good Sandwiches too - for some reason food seems to taste better after a dive...

Hope you get back to Maui soon!

Aloha, Tim
 
Thanks so much for such a detailed report of your dives. I can almost "hear" the excitement in your voice and it's making me even more excited (if that's possible... lol) about my upcoming Maui trip 2 weeks from today... and counting the days! :)
 
Appreciate the great write up. We're going to be back on Maui in January for 2 weeks. Planning the night dive a Black Rock. We've done several during the day but time to see the night life.
 
Wildcard - Yes, we visited the Maui Ocean Center on Tuesday before our first dive, it was awsome! A bit pricy as everything was, but if/when I make it back, I think I'd def. pay for the week and try to go at least a couple of days, instead of trying to run thru the whole place in 1/2 a day! I also plan on my wife and I getting our AOW cert. and then if/when we make it back to Maui, I'm going to book us on the wall dive.

Diveme- Going back - ASAP! LOL Seriously, I'm not sure, this trip wiped us out cause now we're waiting on our refund from our canceled Coz. trip. We also learned the hard way about your lesson, "braggers are draggers" I think could sum that up. Lanai sounds like a great spot too, next time we go it's going to be a true "dive trip" rather than what we did this trip, which was more of a We went to Maui, and happened to dive a little.

Al - Didn't really do a lot on this trip, we pretty much stayed to the resort, did the van tour over to Hanna, drove the North road on West Maui back to the airport... Too much to do in just 5 days lol

Kidspot - Thanks, I'm glad you liked my write up! I wish we could have stayed just a bit longer watching the garden eels, I've never seen anything like that before! Actually I wish I was rich, you know like bill gates rich, I'd buy me the Sheraton, take over a suit as my home, and dive.... after all, as I saw on a bumper sticker - Life's a beach and then you dive!

Diver Debbie and Maui Bound - Thank you, I'm glad you like the write up! Have good trips, and feel free to PM me with any questions (even silly questions) as I wish I would have known a couple things before I got there. Most important, I wish I would have known that at the boat harbor, next to the Aqua Center (where Maui Dive Shop's boat is) that you can drive your car around the U to almost where the boat is, and then lug your gear to the boat.... My Wife and I ended up lugging our gear from the main parking area over by the Aqua Center, all the way around the U to the boat... It's quite the hike when your lugging about 40 lbs. of gear!
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/peregrine/

Back
Top Bottom