The following is a report from my trip on Nai'a in Fiji on 3-10 December, 2011.
To spare you the suspense, this was the best dive trip that I’ve done to far. As a point of reference I’ve done six previous liveaboard trips in: Turks and Caicos, Belize, and Grand Cayman. I’ve also been to Bonaire and Cozumel on land based trips.
I flew the overnight flight from Los Angeles getting into Nadi at 6am. I booked a day-room at Raffles Gateway. The room I stayed in was really nice. I took a short nap until the Nai’a bus came to pick me up. It was about a 40 minute ride from Nadi to the harbor in Lautoka where Nai’a lives. The Nai’a is in excellent condition. The salon and cabin areas are particularly nice. My cabin had two beds side by side, which was a nice change from previous liveaboards where I usually end up in the top bunk of a bunk bed. We only had one minor mechanical issue with the boat during the trip. A water cooling system went down that is used for the air conditioning and the Nitrox generator. We had one night of sleeping with no air conditioning and one dive without Nitrox. I thought they did a good job of getting things back in working order quickly.
Nai’a had a big crew to take care of us. There were two dive leaders (Ed and Hayley) and eleven crew for a total of thirteen. Very impressive. The food on board was excellent. They put out a menu sign-up sheet in the morning and you got to choose between several items for each meal (like meat, fish or vegi).
We were lucky with the weather during our trip and had sunshine all week. The group before ours got rain every day. This time year is the start of the rainy season, but we had rain on only one dive. The water temperature was about 81 degrees which is what I’m used to from my trips to the Caribbean. I wore a full 3mm wetsuit all week and was very comfortable. Note that the water temperature varies a lot between seasons, so check out the Nai'a web site for the water temperature chart and come prepared.
All the dives were done from two rigid inflatable skiffs that hold about twelve. They split the guests in half onto the two boats. A typical dive saw seven divers, one dive master and the skiff captain. The crew loads your gear into the skiff, so all you do is climb in with your mask and fins. The ride to the dive site usually took only about five minutes. The crew helps you into your rig and everyone back-rolls over the side together on the count of three. The dive leaders asked us to limit our dive time to 70 minutes; but it was ok to do a longer dive as long as you told them before the dive started. At the end of the dive you surface wherever you are and the skiff comes to get you. You remove your rig while in the water and the crew takes it. Then you belly flop up onto the side of the skiff and they help drag you back aboard. After a while you get the hang of it and I could sometimes get myself aboard without any extra help. There is also a ladder on each skiff but it wasn’t recommended, wasn’t deployed and no one needed it.
We started the trip with a check-out dive on Saturday afternoon. The Nai’a departed the harbor and after only a short ride we were at the location of the first dive on Samu Reef. This was not an exciting dive but it was a nice and easy one for checking out your weighting and gear.
Overnight while we slept the Nai’a steamed about 8 hours East to Vatu-I-Ra Passage. Here we began our dive ritual for the week with our first dive at 7:30 am, breakfast, dive at 10:30, lunch, dive at 2 pm, snack, dive at 5 pm, dinner and finally a night dive at 8 pm. Each skiff usually goes to a different dive site so as not to crowd a site with the whole group. My skiff did “Howard’s Diner” in the morning. Then we switched to "Mellow Yellow” for the second morning dive. There was some current on the dives here and some beautiful bommies. Gray Reef and Whitetip Reef sharks here. We would see quite a few of these during the week.
During the early morning of Monday Nai’a moved another 4 hours further East and South to Wakaya. Here we dove “Vatu Vai” and “White Wall” in the morning and “The Channel” in the afternoon. We only did three dives today to make room for an island village visit to Makogai (pronounced mak-on-gai). This was a nice diversion and an opportunity to meet some of the local people. We spent about two hours on Makogai taking a tour of the village and participating in a kava ceremony. The people of Makogai raise clams in tanks on shore and “plant” them offshore when they are big enough to fend for themselves. We were asked to offer a small gift or monetary donation during the visit. It felt good to offer a small token to these people who are taking stewardship of these wonderful reefs. Nai’a visits different villages during the year to “spread the wealth around”, so you might visit a different village when you make this trip.
The Nai’a moved again in the early morning of Tuesday and headed South several hours to Gau. Here we dove the Nigali Passage. This I think is a highly regarded dive for the large number of Gray Reef sharks here. For whatever reason, the two dives we did in the passage weren’t that great. It could be that the DM built up the dive too much in his briefing. Unfortunately the reality didn’t match the build-up. The dive is supposed to go like this: enter the water at the end of the channel, float with the current down the channel to the “bleachers”, take a seat and watch tons of sharks pass by, then exit down the channel. On the first dive the DM misread the current and we had to swim against a mild current to reach the bleachers. This exhausted quite a bit of air and there wasn’t much to see during the swim down the channel. There was also a lot of plankton in the water so the visibility was lower than might be ideal for spotting sharks. We did see a number of sharks, maybe twenty or so. The current was running correctly on the second dive and we got to the bleachers using very little air. I stayed at the bleachers for a long time and saw lots of adult sharks, along with lots of young sharks which is something I’ve never seen before. The sharks were pretty shy and wouldn’t come close to the bleachers and tended to leave when divers left the bleachers and entered the channel. I’m sure this dive is probably great most of the time, we just hit it on a down day.
The Nai’a moved overnight about eight hours North to Namena Marine Reserve. We would spend all day Wednesday and Thursday in the Reserve. Our morning dive was an eye-opener for sure with very strong current at “Fantasea”. This dive didn’t go well for the guests as a whole. We had one flooded camera housing; one lost camera rig; a couple of divers who couldn’t descend quickly enough and had to abort the dive in the first five minutes; and several slightly spooked divers at the end. We dropped in on a large sea-mount with a shear wall. Swam along the wall to an opening on the sea-mount where the current was ripping across. You had to go with the flow and let the current take you where it wanted. You could tuck in behind coral structures where there was no current to catch a “breather”. It was a pretty wild dive. In retrospect I felt the dive was decent and pretty exciting. I would have liked to do it again with the benefit of experience. One bit of good news. The lost camera rig was found by the crew. The skiff driver took a GPS reading when the diver reported the dropped camera. The crew went back out and found the camera at a depth of about 60 ft.
We dove “South Save-A-Tack; Two Thumbs Up” later in the morning after recovering from our Fantasea debacle. Then “North Save-A-Tack; Arch” in the early afternoon. The Arch dive has to be the absolute best dive I have ever done in my career of roughly 330 dives to date. The visibility was excellent. There were several Gray Reef sharks and a Whitetip Reef shark along with masses of schooling Bigeye Barracuda, Bigeye Trevalli, and surgeonfish. There were fish everywhere. I thought I was in a National Geographic special. We dove this site a couple more times and the visibility dropped a lot, due to plankton, and the magic didn’t repeat itself; but that one dive was just awesome.
Wednesday afternoon found us at “Kansas”. This is a nice site with a bommie topped (at a depth of 14 ft) by soft coral that waves back and forth in the current giving the site its name. Since it looks like a field of wheat in Kansas waving in the wind. The top is a super nice place to do a safety stop. In fact, most of the dives on this trip gave me the opportunity to make a safety stop while looking at interesting things in the shallows.
The boat stayed put overnight and on Thursday morning we dove “South Save-A-Tack; 2 Thumbs Up” and “South Save-A-Tack; Teton I”. And we went back for repeats on “Kansas” and “Arch”. It was at Arch that I got bumped by a Clown Triggerfish because I swam too close to its nest. It made couple of runs at me and when I didn’t leave quickly enough it hit me in the elbow. There are Triton Triggerfish at this location too with nesting sites, but they didn’t seem to be aggressive. To get from Arch to Kansas you had to pass through a sandy area with Triton Triggerfish nests.
I did four night dives on this trip and none of them were very good. For some reason I’m on a roll of un-exciting night dives. But I’ll keep doing them because it is more fun than staying on the boat and I’ve had some good ones in the past.
The Nai’a steamed overnight several hours to the South and West to take us back to the area of Vatu-I-Ra passage. We came back to dive “Mount Mutiny”, “E6” and “GoMo”. These are all sea-mounts with sheer walls and lots of very interesting shallows. I really liked these sites; and would have liked to do more dives here. Mount Mutiny got its name because the divers didn’t want to leave the site after seeing how great the diving was. I really appreciated the shallows on top of the sea-mounts where you could spend lots of quality time. Note that the temperature sensor that records water temperature data for the Nai'a web site is located here at Mount Mutiny.
Make a sad face now because that was the last dive of the trip. It is time to rinse the salt off the gear and chill out while Nai’a heads back to Lautoka. We anchored outside Lautoka for the night and headed into the dock on Saturday morning. I settled up my bill in the morning and the bus was there to take us away at 8 am. I stayed in a day-room at Raffles Gateway and then just hung out at the hotel for the day. It rained hard most of the afternoon while I read a book. I took the 11 pm flight from Nadi to Los Angeles and returned safely back to the “real world”. It was an excellent trip that I’d like to do again very soon.
To spare you the suspense, this was the best dive trip that I’ve done to far. As a point of reference I’ve done six previous liveaboard trips in: Turks and Caicos, Belize, and Grand Cayman. I’ve also been to Bonaire and Cozumel on land based trips.
I flew the overnight flight from Los Angeles getting into Nadi at 6am. I booked a day-room at Raffles Gateway. The room I stayed in was really nice. I took a short nap until the Nai’a bus came to pick me up. It was about a 40 minute ride from Nadi to the harbor in Lautoka where Nai’a lives. The Nai’a is in excellent condition. The salon and cabin areas are particularly nice. My cabin had two beds side by side, which was a nice change from previous liveaboards where I usually end up in the top bunk of a bunk bed. We only had one minor mechanical issue with the boat during the trip. A water cooling system went down that is used for the air conditioning and the Nitrox generator. We had one night of sleeping with no air conditioning and one dive without Nitrox. I thought they did a good job of getting things back in working order quickly.
Nai’a had a big crew to take care of us. There were two dive leaders (Ed and Hayley) and eleven crew for a total of thirteen. Very impressive. The food on board was excellent. They put out a menu sign-up sheet in the morning and you got to choose between several items for each meal (like meat, fish or vegi).
We were lucky with the weather during our trip and had sunshine all week. The group before ours got rain every day. This time year is the start of the rainy season, but we had rain on only one dive. The water temperature was about 81 degrees which is what I’m used to from my trips to the Caribbean. I wore a full 3mm wetsuit all week and was very comfortable. Note that the water temperature varies a lot between seasons, so check out the Nai'a web site for the water temperature chart and come prepared.
All the dives were done from two rigid inflatable skiffs that hold about twelve. They split the guests in half onto the two boats. A typical dive saw seven divers, one dive master and the skiff captain. The crew loads your gear into the skiff, so all you do is climb in with your mask and fins. The ride to the dive site usually took only about five minutes. The crew helps you into your rig and everyone back-rolls over the side together on the count of three. The dive leaders asked us to limit our dive time to 70 minutes; but it was ok to do a longer dive as long as you told them before the dive started. At the end of the dive you surface wherever you are and the skiff comes to get you. You remove your rig while in the water and the crew takes it. Then you belly flop up onto the side of the skiff and they help drag you back aboard. After a while you get the hang of it and I could sometimes get myself aboard without any extra help. There is also a ladder on each skiff but it wasn’t recommended, wasn’t deployed and no one needed it.
We started the trip with a check-out dive on Saturday afternoon. The Nai’a departed the harbor and after only a short ride we were at the location of the first dive on Samu Reef. This was not an exciting dive but it was a nice and easy one for checking out your weighting and gear.
Overnight while we slept the Nai’a steamed about 8 hours East to Vatu-I-Ra Passage. Here we began our dive ritual for the week with our first dive at 7:30 am, breakfast, dive at 10:30, lunch, dive at 2 pm, snack, dive at 5 pm, dinner and finally a night dive at 8 pm. Each skiff usually goes to a different dive site so as not to crowd a site with the whole group. My skiff did “Howard’s Diner” in the morning. Then we switched to "Mellow Yellow” for the second morning dive. There was some current on the dives here and some beautiful bommies. Gray Reef and Whitetip Reef sharks here. We would see quite a few of these during the week.
During the early morning of Monday Nai’a moved another 4 hours further East and South to Wakaya. Here we dove “Vatu Vai” and “White Wall” in the morning and “The Channel” in the afternoon. We only did three dives today to make room for an island village visit to Makogai (pronounced mak-on-gai). This was a nice diversion and an opportunity to meet some of the local people. We spent about two hours on Makogai taking a tour of the village and participating in a kava ceremony. The people of Makogai raise clams in tanks on shore and “plant” them offshore when they are big enough to fend for themselves. We were asked to offer a small gift or monetary donation during the visit. It felt good to offer a small token to these people who are taking stewardship of these wonderful reefs. Nai’a visits different villages during the year to “spread the wealth around”, so you might visit a different village when you make this trip.
The Nai’a moved again in the early morning of Tuesday and headed South several hours to Gau. Here we dove the Nigali Passage. This I think is a highly regarded dive for the large number of Gray Reef sharks here. For whatever reason, the two dives we did in the passage weren’t that great. It could be that the DM built up the dive too much in his briefing. Unfortunately the reality didn’t match the build-up. The dive is supposed to go like this: enter the water at the end of the channel, float with the current down the channel to the “bleachers”, take a seat and watch tons of sharks pass by, then exit down the channel. On the first dive the DM misread the current and we had to swim against a mild current to reach the bleachers. This exhausted quite a bit of air and there wasn’t much to see during the swim down the channel. There was also a lot of plankton in the water so the visibility was lower than might be ideal for spotting sharks. We did see a number of sharks, maybe twenty or so. The current was running correctly on the second dive and we got to the bleachers using very little air. I stayed at the bleachers for a long time and saw lots of adult sharks, along with lots of young sharks which is something I’ve never seen before. The sharks were pretty shy and wouldn’t come close to the bleachers and tended to leave when divers left the bleachers and entered the channel. I’m sure this dive is probably great most of the time, we just hit it on a down day.
The Nai’a moved overnight about eight hours North to Namena Marine Reserve. We would spend all day Wednesday and Thursday in the Reserve. Our morning dive was an eye-opener for sure with very strong current at “Fantasea”. This dive didn’t go well for the guests as a whole. We had one flooded camera housing; one lost camera rig; a couple of divers who couldn’t descend quickly enough and had to abort the dive in the first five minutes; and several slightly spooked divers at the end. We dropped in on a large sea-mount with a shear wall. Swam along the wall to an opening on the sea-mount where the current was ripping across. You had to go with the flow and let the current take you where it wanted. You could tuck in behind coral structures where there was no current to catch a “breather”. It was a pretty wild dive. In retrospect I felt the dive was decent and pretty exciting. I would have liked to do it again with the benefit of experience. One bit of good news. The lost camera rig was found by the crew. The skiff driver took a GPS reading when the diver reported the dropped camera. The crew went back out and found the camera at a depth of about 60 ft.
We dove “South Save-A-Tack; Two Thumbs Up” later in the morning after recovering from our Fantasea debacle. Then “North Save-A-Tack; Arch” in the early afternoon. The Arch dive has to be the absolute best dive I have ever done in my career of roughly 330 dives to date. The visibility was excellent. There were several Gray Reef sharks and a Whitetip Reef shark along with masses of schooling Bigeye Barracuda, Bigeye Trevalli, and surgeonfish. There were fish everywhere. I thought I was in a National Geographic special. We dove this site a couple more times and the visibility dropped a lot, due to plankton, and the magic didn’t repeat itself; but that one dive was just awesome.
Wednesday afternoon found us at “Kansas”. This is a nice site with a bommie topped (at a depth of 14 ft) by soft coral that waves back and forth in the current giving the site its name. Since it looks like a field of wheat in Kansas waving in the wind. The top is a super nice place to do a safety stop. In fact, most of the dives on this trip gave me the opportunity to make a safety stop while looking at interesting things in the shallows.
The boat stayed put overnight and on Thursday morning we dove “South Save-A-Tack; 2 Thumbs Up” and “South Save-A-Tack; Teton I”. And we went back for repeats on “Kansas” and “Arch”. It was at Arch that I got bumped by a Clown Triggerfish because I swam too close to its nest. It made couple of runs at me and when I didn’t leave quickly enough it hit me in the elbow. There are Triton Triggerfish at this location too with nesting sites, but they didn’t seem to be aggressive. To get from Arch to Kansas you had to pass through a sandy area with Triton Triggerfish nests.
I did four night dives on this trip and none of them were very good. For some reason I’m on a roll of un-exciting night dives. But I’ll keep doing them because it is more fun than staying on the boat and I’ve had some good ones in the past.
The Nai’a steamed overnight several hours to the South and West to take us back to the area of Vatu-I-Ra passage. We came back to dive “Mount Mutiny”, “E6” and “GoMo”. These are all sea-mounts with sheer walls and lots of very interesting shallows. I really liked these sites; and would have liked to do more dives here. Mount Mutiny got its name because the divers didn’t want to leave the site after seeing how great the diving was. I really appreciated the shallows on top of the sea-mounts where you could spend lots of quality time. Note that the temperature sensor that records water temperature data for the Nai'a web site is located here at Mount Mutiny.
Make a sad face now because that was the last dive of the trip. It is time to rinse the salt off the gear and chill out while Nai’a heads back to Lautoka. We anchored outside Lautoka for the night and headed into the dock on Saturday morning. I settled up my bill in the morning and the bus was there to take us away at 8 am. I stayed in a day-room at Raffles Gateway and then just hung out at the hotel for the day. It rained hard most of the afternoon while I read a book. I took the 11 pm flight from Nadi to Los Angeles and returned safely back to the “real world”. It was an excellent trip that I’d like to do again very soon.
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Glad to hear Nai'a is still great.
