Why I still book boat dives

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DiveMaven

Contributor
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Location
Kihei, Maui & Vancouver, WA
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We come to Maui 4x per year, spending approximately 6-7 weeks on island each year. Although we come so often, we continue to book boat diving for each trip to be guaranteed some diving. This trip has been a perfect representation of why.

We arrived on island to rain, which continued on and off for another 2 days. It then took 2 days for inshore waters to be diveable due to extremely poor visabilty. We managed to shore dive one day, then spent a couple of days boat diving. Another front came whipping through, bringing viz down to 1' again, preventing any more shore diving for the rest of our trip. For this trip we weren't able to dive because of the weather, but in November we were skunked out of shore diving because of ocean swells. Heck, even Molokini wasn't diveable for 2 days.

These aren't isolated incidents and why I encourage folks to plan a combo of boat and shore diving.

Oh, the diving was great though.....2 tiny baby Frogfish, a manta ray, long nose hawkish, reticulated butterfly fish (juvenile too), large grey shark, mantis shrimp, lots of large Frogfish, and so much more....all while being serenaded by whale song.
 
Being an old geezer, when I get to Maui later this year or next, I definitely plan on boat diving. Shored ives are also not as friendly to my camera rig!
 
That's what I love about scooter diving. We can get off shore enough for it to clear up when shore divers are fighting the surge.
 
We come to Maui 4x per year, spending approximately 6-7 weeks on island each year. Although we come so often, we continue to book boat diving for each trip to be guaranteed some diving. .

So from your experience, how often have you been blown out from shore diving during the summer time? I have only been over to the Islands during the summer, and the shore diving has been great, and so were the boat dives of course. When I go back to Kona next time unless I'm on the Aggressor, I will be mostly doing shore dives for the main reason of the cost of boat diving over there. If my travel budget were higher, and I'm sure it will eventually be I will choose to be on the boat all the time just for the camaraderie. At one time I thought that the boat dives were the most expensive you can find, I have now learned that couldn't be farther from the truth.
 
I like West Lana'i diving - be pretty hard to do that from shore...
 
So from your experience, how often have you been blown out from shore diving during the summer time? I have only been over to the Islands during the summer, and the shore diving has been great, and so were the boat dives of course. When I go back to Kona next time unless I'm on the Aggressor, I will be mostly doing shore dives for the main reason of the cost of boat diving over there. If my travel budget were higher, and I'm sure it will eventually be I will choose to be on the boat all the time just for the camaraderie. At one time I thought that the boat dives were the most expensive you can find, I have now learned that couldn't be farther from the truth.

Last summer we were able to shore dive whenever we wanted, however, according to on island friends, swells came through pretty regularly afterward, so we were lucky during our 2 weeks.

Greg has the right idea with scooter diving...he can definitely get past the dirty inshore water for some good diving.
 
I have done that a few times and went around Molokini a few times
 
I'm going to Oahu in March (the 8th to the 17th, I think). Is there any predictability to the weather that time of year?
 
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