Oh, we have SO much great diving here, it's hard to know where to start. The first question is, where is your son going to be living and working? That will determine whether you focus on South Sound dive sites, or mid-Sound, or north. Fischnaller's book, Northwest Shore Dives, is a fantastic reference, describing the location of the site as well as which tide and current conditions are good to dive it. There are tons of sites -- I have six decent shore diving sites within 30 minutes of my house, and I think I counted something over 20 within an hour and a half.
As far as charters go, we don't have as many as we had a few years back, but we still have some good ones. The Bandito boats in the South Sound are excellent, sound and well run boats. The Aluminator in the mid-Sound is a small boat, run by an enthusiastic diver captain, and it's an extremely easy boat to get on and off. In the San Juans, there are several boats, including LuJac's Quest, which goes out of Anacortes, the NakNek (a wonderful boat and crew) which unfortunately goes out of Friday Harbor (a bit of a trek), and the Deep Sea boat.
When you are headed up here, put a post here in the Orca Bait forum, or log onto nwdiveclub.com, and let us know you are coming. I don't think you'll have any problems hooking up with local divers who would enjoy showing you their favorite sites. We're a gregarious, dive-happy group here in the PNW!
