Scuba Diving Vacations

Hi there,

Just thought I'd catch up on the current water conditons. We had some swell earlier, but it's quite nice right now. Water temperature is around 75 degrees, having cooled off quite a bit during the last month as the northwest swells came through.



It's slow again right now for a lot of us newer operators, it can take years to build an everyday business in the scuba charter world. Even some of the big companies have days they aren't going out. Christmas season was quite busy for us, hence not a lot of posting on this blog by me right then.

I've been working on the boat lately, we've replaced the carburetors and now all the shift and throttle linkages. I did have to outright cancel one charter, but every other charter that my boat wasn't available I've been able to find someone to take people out. It's a bummer when the boat goes down, but I'm not alone, I know of 3 or 4 other operators who had to take at least one boat out of the water during the last 3-4 weeks... maintenance/repair is constant in this business and one little thing can take you down for several days. Oh, the neverending challenge. I'm running out of things to replace though, almost everything on the boat except the hull has been changed out in the last year to year and a half at this point.

Dining tip of the day.... We went down to the Kona Inn for dinner the other day with some friends. I've been there in the past and have always sat in their main restaurant. Turns out you can just help yourself to a table at their beach bar and they have a differnt menu.... The calimari sandwich is great. I had a burger while my wife and her friend had the calimari - next time I'll go that route instead. Their nachos also looked worthwhile.

While on the food topic, there's a couple of new restaurants in town, both opening in the last week to ten days. Hooters has opened, and the Fish Hopper (based out of Cannery Row in Monterey) has opened a restaurant down across from the seawall at the bay at what had been the Ocean View restaurant for decades. I'm hearing the Fish Hopper is a higher end restaurant, maybe averaging around 50 bucks a plate when it's all said and done. I'll have to try both at some point.

Above is a little video of a Spotted Puffer (Arothron meleagris) I took yesterday while diving for fun. The video is nothing special, but these are interesting looking critters. They're roughly the size of a full sized football, getting up to about 13 inches in length or so. I've got the day off today and Pat is out playing up north with a friend who's visiting, so I think I'll go for a dive (isn't it nice when you live just uphill from a couple of premium dive sites?) when my camera battery gets recharged.

Later,

Steve