rottielover
Contributor
We stayed at the Sheraton Maui resort, located in West Maui, and on the grounds is Black Rock, highly regarded as the best shore diving / snorkeling on the whole island. If you stay as a guest of the Sheraton resort, they offer some diving opportunities, from out of their activities building, affectionately referred to the by the staff, as the Scuba Shack. The staff is very friendly (at least the SCUBA instructors that they have on staff), and very helpful. At first, we were going to take the advice of some of you here on scubaboard, and rent tanks from the LDS (Maui Divers), but we wanted at least one supervised dive, since this was our first time in the ocean. When we spoke with our Instructor, he suggested the 3 dive package that the resort offers to certified divers, an orientation dive, a scooter dive, and a night dive. We own all our own equipment, and only needed tanks and weights, so the costs werent THAT bad. In fact, it was actually cheaper to do those three dives as a package, than it was going to do those three dives on their own.
The Sheratons SCUBA shack offers only 63 cubic foot aluminum tanks, and at first glance, most people have the same reaction that I had at first 63 cu. Feet? Thats not enough, I suck down an AL80 too fast as it is. However, MAX depth on this dive is 35 feet (41 feet if you do the scooter dive, more on that coming up), and even my hovering didnt make me the first to turn pressure, as I have feared for so long My best SAC rate, calculated by Suunto Dive manager was 0.7 SCFM, still quite high, as most experienced divers tend to have 0.5 or less, so Im still working on it, but even at this rate on our Night dive I went from 3100 psi to 1300 psi in 30 minutes, and when we surfaced one of our group was at 300 psi!
First Dive, Tuesday
We scheduled our orientation dive with the shack, finally at 3:19 PM local we were on our way into the big blue! Our first dive was around the tip of Black Rock, look around and come back to our entry point. Max Depth on this dive was 31 feet, Viz. ~100 feet, Temp 81 F, TBT was 27 minutes, 63 cu. Foot tank started at 3200 psi and ended right at 500 psi. SAC was 1.21 SCFM (OMG!) or 97 PSI / MIN Ouch! Yea I was really sucking the air on that dive, first dive ever in the ocean, first time we ever had to fight current, waves, surge. It was, well, breathtaking! We also saw two endangered green sea turtles, and one was bigger than I am! We also saw an octopus hiding in his hole. I got a calf cramp midway thru the dive because I had never been used to fining so much before. I used my cramp removal skills, and my dive buddy (my wife) to work it out and we continued the dive in short order. All in all I consider this a great dive for my ninth dive ever. What a blast, awesome dive!
Second and Third Dives, Wednesday
After our first dive we decided to book a boat dive out to Molokini, a crescent moon shaped crater about 2 miles or so from Maui. Its a protected marine park and because of the shape of the crater, its a great beginner dive site, as well as having advanced dives (there is a very advanced drift wall dive around the outside of the crater, but we didnt do that). We booked with the Maui Dive shop, on their boat, the MAKA KOA, very nice boat, with dual ladders and a nice big platform at the back. The crew was simply awesome; our dive leader was Ryan, a certified instructor who took us out in group 2 of 4 groups. The boat holds about 20 or 30 divers / snokelers, by many accounts this *could* be considered a cattle boat. Groups 1-3 were groups of Divers about 6 or 8 each group. Group 4 were snokerlers only, who had tagged along with diving friends/family but where not certified divers themselves.
Our first of the 2 tank boat dives was to a spot in the Molokini crater called Orange Grove We had a free decent down to 40 feet and then started to explore the reef, because of the sheltered nature of this marine park, there wasnt much in the way of current to fight against at all. Our dive leader found a small (maybe 3 or 4 foot ) white tipped reef shark, sleeping in a hole. I managed to get an OK picture of it too. This is an awesome site, words cannot describe it. I was so excited that I managed to hoover once again, after about 28 minutes it was time to head up to our safety stop, and the dive was over after 33 minutes. Surprisingly, I wasnt the first one back on the boat, so I felt pretty good about that, since we all had buddies in our group, the dive leader was comfortable enough to send us up in buddy teams to do our stops and accents. The boat has a really nice trailing float with a small rope and weight that hang down to about the 20 foot level. This makes doing safety stops OH so much easier! Water temp was 81 F, Viz. 100+ feet, and we were in the water by 8:18 AM. Technically, we violated our certified depth limit, we should have stayed to 60 feet or less, but at one point we were at 67 feet looking at a colony of garden eels. We stayed at that depth for 1 min. then moved back up to 56 feet. Since we were with a certified instructor, I dont consider this to be a huge violation; however this is not something I would do on my own, had we not been with an instructor. Anyway, another great dive!
For the next dive we motored over to Turtle Town, a reef formed by two fingers of lava that flowed under the ocean, out from the island. They call this place Turtle town, but we didnt see any sea turtles until we were nearly back in the harbor, when we saw a turtle on the surface. Instead we stumbled into a huge pod of spinner dolphins! They followed our boat around and played in the wake. Thru the whole dive we all heard them (very loudly), but never really saw them. I spun around at one point during the dive to see a big gray figure swim away into the blue, but I dont really consider that seeing a dolphin. On this dive, my reef master camera malfunctioned, and would lock up after taking a picture. I havent yet contacted sealife about this, but I suspect it has something to do with pressure changes, because on my next dive (after I opened the camera housing to download the pictures) it functioned flawlessly. Due to the malfunction, I was unable to snap a picture of the spotted eagle ray that we encountered. Im very upset that I wasnt able to snap that picture, it was awesome!
After a 1 hour 10 minute surface interval, we were back in the water at 10:03 am. Max depth was 47 feet and time was about 43 minutes, Viz. 120+ feet. For this dive I was able to get my SAC down to 0.74, still high, but I was very excited to see the multitudes of fish, octopus, that spotted eagle ray, etc. All in all a very enjoyable trip out. Now is a good time to make some personal observations First let me point out that nearly all the boat dives go out early in the morning (6:00 AM) because the trade winds pickup in the afternoon. Think of the trade winds as a 20-30 mph storm wind that comes every day at about the same time. However, your soon out of the wind if your staying in one of the resorts, because they are all on the leeward side of the island, so you get some gentle breezes, but nothing really bad. Also, this boat crew had a tip jar that they set out. Personally I thought it was a really nice way to handle this aspect of boat diving (granted that this is the first time weve ever been on a dive boat). However, we happened to be the last people off the boat, since we had carried on all our own gear, and I noticed that when I dropped my 20 bucks in the jar ($5 per tank) there was only one other tip in there out of all those divers! Maybe Im naive about these things, and I know that these guys have to be making more money than the DMs down in Mexico, but they were a really good crew, and they had a really good lunch served on board after the dives personally I felt like my $20 might not be enough, but the only tips Ive ever heard of were $5 a tank, so I felt just in giving that. After getting off the boat, I felt pretty stupid; only one other person had left a tip. Oh well, if I ever get the chance to go back, I wont feel bad about booking with the same shop, on the same boat. If you guys are reading this, AWSOME JOB!
END PART 1
The Sheratons SCUBA shack offers only 63 cubic foot aluminum tanks, and at first glance, most people have the same reaction that I had at first 63 cu. Feet? Thats not enough, I suck down an AL80 too fast as it is. However, MAX depth on this dive is 35 feet (41 feet if you do the scooter dive, more on that coming up), and even my hovering didnt make me the first to turn pressure, as I have feared for so long My best SAC rate, calculated by Suunto Dive manager was 0.7 SCFM, still quite high, as most experienced divers tend to have 0.5 or less, so Im still working on it, but even at this rate on our Night dive I went from 3100 psi to 1300 psi in 30 minutes, and when we surfaced one of our group was at 300 psi!
First Dive, Tuesday
We scheduled our orientation dive with the shack, finally at 3:19 PM local we were on our way into the big blue! Our first dive was around the tip of Black Rock, look around and come back to our entry point. Max Depth on this dive was 31 feet, Viz. ~100 feet, Temp 81 F, TBT was 27 minutes, 63 cu. Foot tank started at 3200 psi and ended right at 500 psi. SAC was 1.21 SCFM (OMG!) or 97 PSI / MIN Ouch! Yea I was really sucking the air on that dive, first dive ever in the ocean, first time we ever had to fight current, waves, surge. It was, well, breathtaking! We also saw two endangered green sea turtles, and one was bigger than I am! We also saw an octopus hiding in his hole. I got a calf cramp midway thru the dive because I had never been used to fining so much before. I used my cramp removal skills, and my dive buddy (my wife) to work it out and we continued the dive in short order. All in all I consider this a great dive for my ninth dive ever. What a blast, awesome dive!
Second and Third Dives, Wednesday
After our first dive we decided to book a boat dive out to Molokini, a crescent moon shaped crater about 2 miles or so from Maui. Its a protected marine park and because of the shape of the crater, its a great beginner dive site, as well as having advanced dives (there is a very advanced drift wall dive around the outside of the crater, but we didnt do that). We booked with the Maui Dive shop, on their boat, the MAKA KOA, very nice boat, with dual ladders and a nice big platform at the back. The crew was simply awesome; our dive leader was Ryan, a certified instructor who took us out in group 2 of 4 groups. The boat holds about 20 or 30 divers / snokelers, by many accounts this *could* be considered a cattle boat. Groups 1-3 were groups of Divers about 6 or 8 each group. Group 4 were snokerlers only, who had tagged along with diving friends/family but where not certified divers themselves.
Our first of the 2 tank boat dives was to a spot in the Molokini crater called Orange Grove We had a free decent down to 40 feet and then started to explore the reef, because of the sheltered nature of this marine park, there wasnt much in the way of current to fight against at all. Our dive leader found a small (maybe 3 or 4 foot ) white tipped reef shark, sleeping in a hole. I managed to get an OK picture of it too. This is an awesome site, words cannot describe it. I was so excited that I managed to hoover once again, after about 28 minutes it was time to head up to our safety stop, and the dive was over after 33 minutes. Surprisingly, I wasnt the first one back on the boat, so I felt pretty good about that, since we all had buddies in our group, the dive leader was comfortable enough to send us up in buddy teams to do our stops and accents. The boat has a really nice trailing float with a small rope and weight that hang down to about the 20 foot level. This makes doing safety stops OH so much easier! Water temp was 81 F, Viz. 100+ feet, and we were in the water by 8:18 AM. Technically, we violated our certified depth limit, we should have stayed to 60 feet or less, but at one point we were at 67 feet looking at a colony of garden eels. We stayed at that depth for 1 min. then moved back up to 56 feet. Since we were with a certified instructor, I dont consider this to be a huge violation; however this is not something I would do on my own, had we not been with an instructor. Anyway, another great dive!
For the next dive we motored over to Turtle Town, a reef formed by two fingers of lava that flowed under the ocean, out from the island. They call this place Turtle town, but we didnt see any sea turtles until we were nearly back in the harbor, when we saw a turtle on the surface. Instead we stumbled into a huge pod of spinner dolphins! They followed our boat around and played in the wake. Thru the whole dive we all heard them (very loudly), but never really saw them. I spun around at one point during the dive to see a big gray figure swim away into the blue, but I dont really consider that seeing a dolphin. On this dive, my reef master camera malfunctioned, and would lock up after taking a picture. I havent yet contacted sealife about this, but I suspect it has something to do with pressure changes, because on my next dive (after I opened the camera housing to download the pictures) it functioned flawlessly. Due to the malfunction, I was unable to snap a picture of the spotted eagle ray that we encountered. Im very upset that I wasnt able to snap that picture, it was awesome!
After a 1 hour 10 minute surface interval, we were back in the water at 10:03 am. Max depth was 47 feet and time was about 43 minutes, Viz. 120+ feet. For this dive I was able to get my SAC down to 0.74, still high, but I was very excited to see the multitudes of fish, octopus, that spotted eagle ray, etc. All in all a very enjoyable trip out. Now is a good time to make some personal observations First let me point out that nearly all the boat dives go out early in the morning (6:00 AM) because the trade winds pickup in the afternoon. Think of the trade winds as a 20-30 mph storm wind that comes every day at about the same time. However, your soon out of the wind if your staying in one of the resorts, because they are all on the leeward side of the island, so you get some gentle breezes, but nothing really bad. Also, this boat crew had a tip jar that they set out. Personally I thought it was a really nice way to handle this aspect of boat diving (granted that this is the first time weve ever been on a dive boat). However, we happened to be the last people off the boat, since we had carried on all our own gear, and I noticed that when I dropped my 20 bucks in the jar ($5 per tank) there was only one other tip in there out of all those divers! Maybe Im naive about these things, and I know that these guys have to be making more money than the DMs down in Mexico, but they were a really good crew, and they had a really good lunch served on board after the dives personally I felt like my $20 might not be enough, but the only tips Ive ever heard of were $5 a tank, so I felt just in giving that. After getting off the boat, I felt pretty stupid; only one other person had left a tip. Oh well, if I ever get the chance to go back, I wont feel bad about booking with the same shop, on the same boat. If you guys are reading this, AWSOME JOB!
END PART 1
