Packhorse
Contributor
Just had a day of diving up at the Poor Knights Islands Marine reserve which is situated off the east coast of Northland New Zealand.
Wow what a fantastic day. 4 of us (myself, Teresa from Adventure watersports Manukau, Azza from SB and his wife Katie) went out with the crew of Shadowfax, Martin who owns the charter with his wife Jill, Jamie the DM and Llwy the skipper.
Their boat is a brand new custom built 11 meter cat with twin 250hp Yamahas and we were told one of the fastest charter boats out of Tutukaka. Well Martin did say the fastest but dont they all say that
This is one very nice dive boat! It has a 4.3 meter beam which makes it very spacious.
Currently it is only surveyed for 10 divers and 3 crew which means even when its full there is still plenty of room to move. There is also 2 foward double cabins if you need a bit of a liedown after a hard dive.
Our first dive was on a reef that was about 5-6 meters below the surface and dropped down to below 50 meters.I cant remember the name of the site but hopefully Azza will. The vis was about 10-15 meters which isnt great for the Knights but twice what I am used to. We saw a few small morays, snapper, demmisols, red and blue moki etc.
The second dive was as blue maomao arch. This site was just full of life (and charter boats). Its a long swim tru tunnel that is between 5- 10 meters deep. The same speices were here as the previous site but we also saw butterfish, leatherjackets, Black angel fish, scorpion fish, green morays, 3 rays, Nudibranchs, wrass, pink mao mao and of course heaps of blue mao mao.
Unfortunatly my camera fogged up on the first dive but I managed to defogg it for the second and managed to shoot a hole batterys worth of photos. I was very disapointed at the end of the dive when I spotted a green and blue nudi and found my battery completely flat. Hopefully Teresa got some good photos of it.
After the dive we were offered a great selection of food and beverages as well.
We all had a fantastic day out and are planning a return trip with www.pkdive.co.nz .
They are offering FREE trips untill 8.1.2007 so if you can get in touch with Jill and book your spot now. After that they are taking the boat out of the water to make a few final touches to the boat. Hopefully it will only be in dry dock for a week because I for one want to get back out on it ASAP.
They are also offering trips to the Tui and Waikato wrecks and also along the Tutukaka coast for some hunting/ gathering. They also have some great accomdation avaliable for those who dont want to make the 2.5 hour drive from central Auckland(I was up at 4am!).
When I get a chance I will post some of the better pics on my web site. But for now I need to go get my tanks fulled for another weekend of diving.
Wow what a fantastic day. 4 of us (myself, Teresa from Adventure watersports Manukau, Azza from SB and his wife Katie) went out with the crew of Shadowfax, Martin who owns the charter with his wife Jill, Jamie the DM and Llwy the skipper.
Their boat is a brand new custom built 11 meter cat with twin 250hp Yamahas and we were told one of the fastest charter boats out of Tutukaka. Well Martin did say the fastest but dont they all say that
This is one very nice dive boat! It has a 4.3 meter beam which makes it very spacious.
Currently it is only surveyed for 10 divers and 3 crew which means even when its full there is still plenty of room to move. There is also 2 foward double cabins if you need a bit of a liedown after a hard dive.
Our first dive was on a reef that was about 5-6 meters below the surface and dropped down to below 50 meters.I cant remember the name of the site but hopefully Azza will. The vis was about 10-15 meters which isnt great for the Knights but twice what I am used to. We saw a few small morays, snapper, demmisols, red and blue moki etc.
The second dive was as blue maomao arch. This site was just full of life (and charter boats). Its a long swim tru tunnel that is between 5- 10 meters deep. The same speices were here as the previous site but we also saw butterfish, leatherjackets, Black angel fish, scorpion fish, green morays, 3 rays, Nudibranchs, wrass, pink mao mao and of course heaps of blue mao mao.
Unfortunatly my camera fogged up on the first dive but I managed to defogg it for the second and managed to shoot a hole batterys worth of photos. I was very disapointed at the end of the dive when I spotted a green and blue nudi and found my battery completely flat. Hopefully Teresa got some good photos of it.
After the dive we were offered a great selection of food and beverages as well.
We all had a fantastic day out and are planning a return trip with www.pkdive.co.nz .
They are offering FREE trips untill 8.1.2007 so if you can get in touch with Jill and book your spot now. After that they are taking the boat out of the water to make a few final touches to the boat. Hopefully it will only be in dry dock for a week because I for one want to get back out on it ASAP.
They are also offering trips to the Tui and Waikato wrecks and also along the Tutukaka coast for some hunting/ gathering. They also have some great accomdation avaliable for those who dont want to make the 2.5 hour drive from central Auckland(I was up at 4am!).
When I get a chance I will post some of the better pics on my web site. But for now I need to go get my tanks fulled for another weekend of diving.
