Kauai south shore diving

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twochiros

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Location
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Hello-we have trip planned to Kauai end of June and were planning on diving with Seasport Divers. My wife and I are both advanced divers but we have 12 yr old junior diver who has dove on a couple of trips to Bonaire and Curacao. It looks like Seasport has some afternoon dives to easier sites but I wondered what the south side is typically like? Is it well protected and shallow? Much current or surge this time of year? How long are typical boat rides to sites? Any info would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
 
The south side is the more protected side. They dive there all year unlike the north which gets blown out from about Oct-Mar. Your son could probably do most of Sheraton Caverns - is he limited to 60'? A lot of it is a lot shallower - the turtles often sleep in the walls higher up the sides so a lot of that is around 40' or so. Some of it gets as shallow as 25'. If you don't want him doing the (short) swimthru's you and he can follow the group over the top - you'll see their bubbles the whole way. But much of the dive is thru collapsed lava tubes so completely open to the surface.

It's also the signature Kauai dive unless you want to make the all day trek to Ni'ihau - not for your son though as that's all advanced diving - and a rough crossing all year.

The boat ride to the dive site is about 5? mins. You can actually see divers jump off the boat from a hill near one of the resorts (probably the Sheraton doh!!) but it's not recommended to try to shore dive it - several people have needed rescuing when they couldn't get back in. Seasport has a short video - http://www.seasportdivers.com/drupal/sheraton_caverns.html

You also could do Koloa Landing as a shore dive. It's a very easy entry down an old (slick) boat ramp and the dive is only about 25' deep in a lot of the good places. Seasport also will do it as an escorted shore dive if you want to pay for a guide. It's just a few minutes drive from their shop - we rented tanks from them to dive it. http://www.shorediving.com/Earth/Hawaii/Kauai/Koloa_Landing/index.htm

We only dove Kauai (Sheraton Caverns and an advanced site) by boat in the morning so IDK what the conditions would be like in the afternoon. Maui certainly is affected by the afternoon tradewinds offshore - it churns up the water and makes re-boarding a little more interesting - but I'm not sure if that's as big a factor off south Kauai since you've got the bulk of the island to knock the wind down. We were there mid-June and I don't remember having any problems getting on the boat.
 
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