jeff - you fit perfectly in dive tuts target demographic, the visiting diver looking to have a few good dives. you'll have an awesome time with them - all of their skippers are great fun and will pick good spots to take you, just watch out for luke's "jokes" - particularly his one about trevally being the "poor knights pirhana". my only "complaint" with dive tuts is that they are quite autocratic in terms of choosing dive sites - love them all to bits, but because i dive there regularly i prefer to mix charters and sometimes go with other boats so you get the choice of where to dive. if you've got a real burning desire to dive a particular site then either noel from yukon charters or alex from bluzone are a good bet.
as well as the skippers, the dive tuts boat crew are awesome and will really look after you - lots of hot drinks ready and waiting when you finish the first dive, plenty of help in terms of lugging gear around and they offer guiding at no extra cost. well worth doing at least one (the first?) dive with a guide so you can get a good idea of what the cool stuff is and where you'll find it. the real joy of the poor knights is the encrusting life and you've got to rummage around in the kelp to find the best.
2.5 hours from auckland to tutukaka is flying it a bit, so leave a little extra time in case there is any traffic. it's well worth travelling up the night before as the boats leave at 8.30am and at that time of year it's starting to get busy, so if you can sort out your liability realease forms and gear hire the night before you can miss the scrum and have a leisurely breakfast. the two options for accomodation are the tutukaka motor lodge at ngunguru or the tutukaka holiday camp in tuts itself. both offer accomodation at around $25-40 per night.
water is warming up nicely at the moment - it's around 18/19 degC and in another month will be getting close to the magic 20 degC. Dive Tuts hire suits are 7mm two piece and you'll be plenty warm enough. Vis should be better too - at the moment it's down to around 8m thanks to a seasonal algae bloom, but that normally clears by the end of November.
the great think with the poor knights is that you can literally drop anchor anywhere and have an awesome dive. if you're only going to get one day there, you'll probably want to do one of the signature dives - northern arch, blue maomao arch etc.
how are you thinking of travelling up? you can get to whangeri easily enough by public transport. i think dive tuts offer a shuttle bus each day from whangeri in the morning and then back in the afternoon. it's a bit easier with a car. if you can't get hold of one, then give me a shout - i can probably take the 30th off work and give you a lift up and go for a dive. it doesn't take much to convince me to go for a dive at the knights.......
