My dive buddy and I were on Kona Aggressor during the week in August that Hurricane Lane decided to approach Hawaii. This was my fifth trip on an Aggressor yacht but my first on Kona Aggressor. As you can tell by the title, Hurricane Lane ended up interrupting the trip; we were put ashore in Kailua Kona on Wednesday evening, instead of the normal return to port on Friday afternoon.
From my perspective, the situation could not have been handled any better. Captain Randy and the crew kept us informed as the situation developed. The yacht's owners (Live/Dive Pacific; kudos to Ops Manager Evin Cotter) had been working hard in the background as the situation developed. By the time we went ashore they had arranged hotel accommodations for us. (I had visions of sleeping in some high school gym floor /shelter). The hotel where we sheltered (some people got early flights home; my dive buddy and I decided to wait it out and stick with our original Saturday return flights) was the very comfortable King Kamehameha Marriott Courtyard. They promised reimbursement at a generous daily rate for our meals....and the check for reimbursement arrived. They arranged for one member of the crew to stay ashore with us to coordinate while the rest of the crew sheltered on the boat tied up to a buoy in the harbor. Two buoys, actually, they broke loose at least once, relocated at least twice.
In the 2-3 days prior to going ashore early, the Captain and crew of the yacht adjusted the plan and route, obviously, but we kept diving because the dive conditions were good.
As a side note, Kona was apparently an ancient Hawaiian harbor known to be a great place to shelter from a storm, and the ancients knew what they were doing. The "other" side of the Big Island got torrential rain, flooding, and a lot of wind. In Kona I think the rain total was 1-2" and we never experienced high winds.
So, in summary, knowing the hurricane might be a factor after a couple of days into the week's charter: we were kept well informed, the crew maximized the number and quality of dives while we were still in the water, and they made all the arrangements to take care of us ashore.
As a final gesture of goodwill, we received a very generous "Storm Check" voucher usable on the Kona Aggressor or the other yachts owned by the same organization, for up to 24 months.