Ken Kurtis
Contributor
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Want to travel??? Upcoming 2015-2016 vacation trips:
• October 21-26 - Great White Sharks at Guadalupe Island trip #2 aboard the Nautilus Explorer [WE'RE BACK AND ALL OF OUR LIMBS ARE INTACT!!!!]
• December 1-13 - Red Sea Aggressor (southern route - includes snorkeling with dolphins) plus 2 days in Cairo [SOLD OUT]
• March 11-19 - Yap (can be combined with Palau)
• March 20-27 - Palau on the Palau Aggressor II (can be combined with Yap - WE ONLY HAVE 7 SPOTS ON THE BOAT SO DON'T DAWDLE)
• Late May or early June - Bonaire or Cayman
• July 2-14 - Indonesia
• August 1-6 - Isla Guadalupe & Great White Sharks
• August 20-27 - Isla Mujeres & Whale Sharks, cenotes, and statues
• November 3-16 - Maldives on the Manthiri
GET MORE INFO ON ALL OF OUR VACATION TRIPS HERE: www.reefseekers.com/foreign_trips.html
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This is my least-favorite "time" of the year . . .
WELCOME TO STANDARD TIME - When I started writing this around 6PM, it was already pitch black outside. Grrrrr. I'm not a fan of "standard" time, which makes November 1 - December 21 my least-favorite time of the year since the days are getting shorter and shorter to boot. Oh yeah - hopefully you remember to reset your clocks earlier today.
GUADALUPE TRIP #2 - We are back and we had a blast. Numerous sharks and more close encounters of the Great White kind than we had on the first trip in August. Not sure of the exact reasons but it was pretty cool nonetheless. The trip report was 90% of the newsletter that you should have gotten yesterday but since some of you would rather read this on the website, I'm including that link down below, along with a link to all the pictures on SmugMug (you can view them as a collage, individually, or as a slide show, and there's a link to a short video I put together that illustrates just how happy people get with sharks in their faces. Here are the links:
TRIP REPORT - Guadalupe trip report - October, 2015
SMUGMUG PIX - https://kenkurtis.smugmug.com/DIVE-TRIP-PHOTOS-ALL/2015-DIVE-TRIPS/Guadalupe-2-October-23-25-2015/
YOUTUBE VIDEO - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56o3yriRX5w
YAP & PALAU BECKON - We're now officially schedule to return to Yap & Palau in 2016. Yap is easy because it's land-based and we can have pretty much as many people as the resort can hold. Palau's a bit trickier because we could only get 7 spots on the Palau Aggressor II. On top of that, it seems that 5 of the 7 spots may already be spoken for. So if this is something you're interested in, contact me very soon. There's certainly no requirement for you to do back-to-back weeks (this year, a few people did Yap only, and a few people did Palau only) but given that the airfare is around $2100 (coach - same as we paid this year), it makes sense to do both if you can. But even if we run out of Palau space, we could look to book you with some other Palau operation, or we could arrange for you to do Palau first on the Tropic Dancer (sister ship to the PA2 - trip would be March 6-13) and then meet up with us in Yap. I will be holding our 2015 prices for the 2016 trips. This means $2,495 for Yap (ocean view room, three dives/day, breakfast daily, Mandarinfish dive, shark feed, airport xfers, crew tip). And it means $3,495 for Palau. Even though Aggressor raised the prices by $200/person for next year, I've cut a deal with them so that I'm still able to offer 2015 pricing. We've got one male-share (top bunk) available at that price. But to sweeten the deal, I can knock another $200/person off because our remaining room is #9 which opens on to the dive deck instead of an inside hallway, so it's cheaper. I'll either go in there and will be your roomie (no further discount for that), or we can put two people in there and I'll go into the male-share. But the bottom line on this is that if you're interested, get hold of me soon so we can work out all of the logistics.
MALDIVES IS ALSO CONFIRMED - We've confirmed the entire Manthiri for our Maldives trip. Dive dates are November 5-14. Note that this is a 9-day trip rather than the usual 7, so you get a bit more bang for your buck. The boat limits itself to 12 divers rather than the 20 or more than most other Maldivian liveaboards seem to take. So it'll be an intimate gathering. I don't have pricing yet because I still have some logistics to work out like hotel overnight(s) but figure somewhere around $5,000 (boat, meals, crew tip, Maldivian tax, hotel) plus airfare. Routing optiopns look to be through Dubai, Singapore, or Istanbul. I'll keep you posted and hope to have more info soon.
BURN YOUR MASK - I put this in the newsletter because it's the best scuba diving life hack I've ever heard of. In case you didn't see it there, here it is again: I decided to replace my old well-used Atomic Frameless mask with a new Atomic Frameless mask. As you all know, new masks have a coating inside from the mfg process and you need to scrub them with toothpaste or Soft Scrub or something like that to get rid of the internal coating. If you don't they will fog, even when coated with defog. I didn't do a good job with my new mask because it fogged up fairly good on my test dive. But when I came out of the water and relayed my issue, Nautilus DM Dave Valencia said, "Why don't we burn it?" What he does is takes a lighter and lets the flame lick the inside of the mask glass. He goes over every inch, being careful not to get too close to or linger too long near the skirt, lest you melt that. But when he was done (took maybe three minutes), the inside of my mask was brown from the soot of everything that had been burned off. I rinsed the mask off thoroughly to get rid of all of the soot, dried it out, reapplied McNett Sea Drops defog (white bottle with an orange cap - my personal fav) and . . . voila!!! . . . the mask no longer fogged. It was truly amazing. So if you've got as mask with fogging issues, give this a very careful and cautious try. It's a really great diving hack.
CRYSTAL RIVER MANATEE UPDATE - You may recall that we previously told you about proposed changes at Three Sisters Springs where we normally go see manatees. This was all in response to human over-crowding of the area and the preferred alternative would, IMHO, effectively have made it impossible to schedule any group travel to the area. The proposed restrictions included limiting snorkelers in the springs to no more than 30 at a time (currently there's no limit and it's not uncommon to have 100-200 in there), you had to be with a Crystal River guide at all times, no fins allowed, they'd shut down access through the short slough that runs from the main channel, and some other things. They were supposed to vote on this last month and just as the hammer was about to fall, they did an about-face and decided to stick with existing protocols. However, the reason for this is that some of the corporate interests in the area (some of whom either own land around the springs or have donated money to purchase the springs) spoke up and essentially have asked for even more restrictions, which could include barring human access to the springs. I'm all for manatee protection and there's no question they're getting over-run by tourists but if you effectively put the manatees off-limits, in terms of educating the public, out-of-sight, out-of-mind. We'll be keeping a close eye on this (we're part of their advisory stakeholders group) and will keep you posted.
SPA FOR GEESE - I played golf Sunday out at Woodley Lakes in Encino and one reason I really like playing there is that it's also part of a larger wildlife refuge in the area. We routinely see Heron and Cranes and there are thousands of Canadian Geese all over the place. They're pretty used to humans so it was interesting today while we were waiting to tee off on #15, that we heard one of the geese sound what appeared to be an alarm call, some geese took off for a nearby pond, others repeated the alarm sound and just then, a large fox came strolling out of the brush. Once he went on his way, things returned to normal. But best of all was watching the geese gather around water. And they turned a large puddle on the 14th tee into what seemed like a "Spa for Geese". Take a look:
And that'll do it for now. Have a great week and let's go diving (or golfing) soon!!!
- Ken
Want to travel??? Upcoming 2015-2016 vacation trips:
• October 21-26 - Great White Sharks at Guadalupe Island trip #2 aboard the Nautilus Explorer [WE'RE BACK AND ALL OF OUR LIMBS ARE INTACT!!!!]
• December 1-13 - Red Sea Aggressor (southern route - includes snorkeling with dolphins) plus 2 days in Cairo [SOLD OUT]
• March 11-19 - Yap (can be combined with Palau)
• March 20-27 - Palau on the Palau Aggressor II (can be combined with Yap - WE ONLY HAVE 7 SPOTS ON THE BOAT SO DON'T DAWDLE)
• Late May or early June - Bonaire or Cayman
• July 2-14 - Indonesia
• August 1-6 - Isla Guadalupe & Great White Sharks
• August 20-27 - Isla Mujeres & Whale Sharks, cenotes, and statues
• November 3-16 - Maldives on the Manthiri
GET MORE INFO ON ALL OF OUR VACATION TRIPS HERE: www.reefseekers.com/foreign_trips.html
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This is my least-favorite "time" of the year . . .
WELCOME TO STANDARD TIME - When I started writing this around 6PM, it was already pitch black outside. Grrrrr. I'm not a fan of "standard" time, which makes November 1 - December 21 my least-favorite time of the year since the days are getting shorter and shorter to boot. Oh yeah - hopefully you remember to reset your clocks earlier today.
GUADALUPE TRIP #2 - We are back and we had a blast. Numerous sharks and more close encounters of the Great White kind than we had on the first trip in August. Not sure of the exact reasons but it was pretty cool nonetheless. The trip report was 90% of the newsletter that you should have gotten yesterday but since some of you would rather read this on the website, I'm including that link down below, along with a link to all the pictures on SmugMug (you can view them as a collage, individually, or as a slide show, and there's a link to a short video I put together that illustrates just how happy people get with sharks in their faces. Here are the links:
TRIP REPORT - Guadalupe trip report - October, 2015
SMUGMUG PIX - https://kenkurtis.smugmug.com/DIVE-TRIP-PHOTOS-ALL/2015-DIVE-TRIPS/Guadalupe-2-October-23-25-2015/
YOUTUBE VIDEO - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56o3yriRX5w
YAP & PALAU BECKON - We're now officially schedule to return to Yap & Palau in 2016. Yap is easy because it's land-based and we can have pretty much as many people as the resort can hold. Palau's a bit trickier because we could only get 7 spots on the Palau Aggressor II. On top of that, it seems that 5 of the 7 spots may already be spoken for. So if this is something you're interested in, contact me very soon. There's certainly no requirement for you to do back-to-back weeks (this year, a few people did Yap only, and a few people did Palau only) but given that the airfare is around $2100 (coach - same as we paid this year), it makes sense to do both if you can. But even if we run out of Palau space, we could look to book you with some other Palau operation, or we could arrange for you to do Palau first on the Tropic Dancer (sister ship to the PA2 - trip would be March 6-13) and then meet up with us in Yap. I will be holding our 2015 prices for the 2016 trips. This means $2,495 for Yap (ocean view room, three dives/day, breakfast daily, Mandarinfish dive, shark feed, airport xfers, crew tip). And it means $3,495 for Palau. Even though Aggressor raised the prices by $200/person for next year, I've cut a deal with them so that I'm still able to offer 2015 pricing. We've got one male-share (top bunk) available at that price. But to sweeten the deal, I can knock another $200/person off because our remaining room is #9 which opens on to the dive deck instead of an inside hallway, so it's cheaper. I'll either go in there and will be your roomie (no further discount for that), or we can put two people in there and I'll go into the male-share. But the bottom line on this is that if you're interested, get hold of me soon so we can work out all of the logistics.
MALDIVES IS ALSO CONFIRMED - We've confirmed the entire Manthiri for our Maldives trip. Dive dates are November 5-14. Note that this is a 9-day trip rather than the usual 7, so you get a bit more bang for your buck. The boat limits itself to 12 divers rather than the 20 or more than most other Maldivian liveaboards seem to take. So it'll be an intimate gathering. I don't have pricing yet because I still have some logistics to work out like hotel overnight(s) but figure somewhere around $5,000 (boat, meals, crew tip, Maldivian tax, hotel) plus airfare. Routing optiopns look to be through Dubai, Singapore, or Istanbul. I'll keep you posted and hope to have more info soon.
BURN YOUR MASK - I put this in the newsletter because it's the best scuba diving life hack I've ever heard of. In case you didn't see it there, here it is again: I decided to replace my old well-used Atomic Frameless mask with a new Atomic Frameless mask. As you all know, new masks have a coating inside from the mfg process and you need to scrub them with toothpaste or Soft Scrub or something like that to get rid of the internal coating. If you don't they will fog, even when coated with defog. I didn't do a good job with my new mask because it fogged up fairly good on my test dive. But when I came out of the water and relayed my issue, Nautilus DM Dave Valencia said, "Why don't we burn it?" What he does is takes a lighter and lets the flame lick the inside of the mask glass. He goes over every inch, being careful not to get too close to or linger too long near the skirt, lest you melt that. But when he was done (took maybe three minutes), the inside of my mask was brown from the soot of everything that had been burned off. I rinsed the mask off thoroughly to get rid of all of the soot, dried it out, reapplied McNett Sea Drops defog (white bottle with an orange cap - my personal fav) and . . . voila!!! . . . the mask no longer fogged. It was truly amazing. So if you've got as mask with fogging issues, give this a very careful and cautious try. It's a really great diving hack.
CRYSTAL RIVER MANATEE UPDATE - You may recall that we previously told you about proposed changes at Three Sisters Springs where we normally go see manatees. This was all in response to human over-crowding of the area and the preferred alternative would, IMHO, effectively have made it impossible to schedule any group travel to the area. The proposed restrictions included limiting snorkelers in the springs to no more than 30 at a time (currently there's no limit and it's not uncommon to have 100-200 in there), you had to be with a Crystal River guide at all times, no fins allowed, they'd shut down access through the short slough that runs from the main channel, and some other things. They were supposed to vote on this last month and just as the hammer was about to fall, they did an about-face and decided to stick with existing protocols. However, the reason for this is that some of the corporate interests in the area (some of whom either own land around the springs or have donated money to purchase the springs) spoke up and essentially have asked for even more restrictions, which could include barring human access to the springs. I'm all for manatee protection and there's no question they're getting over-run by tourists but if you effectively put the manatees off-limits, in terms of educating the public, out-of-sight, out-of-mind. We'll be keeping a close eye on this (we're part of their advisory stakeholders group) and will keep you posted.
SPA FOR GEESE - I played golf Sunday out at Woodley Lakes in Encino and one reason I really like playing there is that it's also part of a larger wildlife refuge in the area. We routinely see Heron and Cranes and there are thousands of Canadian Geese all over the place. They're pretty used to humans so it was interesting today while we were waiting to tee off on #15, that we heard one of the geese sound what appeared to be an alarm call, some geese took off for a nearby pond, others repeated the alarm sound and just then, a large fox came strolling out of the brush. Once he went on his way, things returned to normal. But best of all was watching the geese gather around water. And they turned a large puddle on the 14th tee into what seemed like a "Spa for Geese". Take a look:
And that'll do it for now. Have a great week and let's go diving (or golfing) soon!!!
- Ken
