Scuba Diving Vacations

I looked back at my calender a couple days back and realized I'd had charters scheduled most every day the last 60 days. I did have 4 cancellations in that stretch because of the ATA and Aloha airline closures. Now I'm into a 10 day dead period with little (I have a charter tonight) scheduled and then I have another stretch where I'm working at least 10 days straight. A couple days off now and then is fine, but it's always fun to be working. So far though, it's been a busier spring than in years past and May is looking much better than last year.

I have had a couple of inquiries for charters this week, and I guess it's maybe a mistake to say "I'd be happy to dive with you, I'm wide open so let me know when you'd like to go out". I guess some people are afraid to be the only one's on the boat, like they'll get shortchanged or something, which is the just about the opposite of reality as when we have our lightest loads are the times we can really cater to the individual divers (We're lucky that we only take 6 passengers max, as it's been my experience that the more passengers a boat has on the greater the likelihood there will be some limiting factors), we don't scrimp on the diving just because it's a light load.

Locally, the vog situation in Kona has improved for a couple days at least. We've had huge south swells that have just come down. I'll be looking forward to tonight's charter to see if the water temperature came up because of the swell.

A little Kona news... I may have mentioned that Hooter's closed, if I didn't then here it is. They closed a couple months back saying something along the lines of their target audience apparently wasn't visiting Kona in the numbers they'd expected. Not a big loss for me, I went there once with Pat and wasn't impressed by the food - lackadaisical chicken wings and a very average burger in my opinion. A bigger loss will be the Hard Rock Cafe. They've announced they'll be closing early this summer. They've got fairly decent sandwiches, burgers and salads (good salads are hard to come by here, we see a lot more rice and macaroni salad mixes here than greens). With the loss of those two, of course there've been rumors that Bubba Gumps is on the way out and Kona is soon to be a ghost town.... that rumor was quashed in the local paper by Bubba Gumps management this weekend. It will be curious to see how long the spots held by the two that have or are leaving fill back up.

The underwater photo above is of a Hairy Yellow Hermit Crab (Aniculus maximus). This one wasn't a big individual, say smaller than a golf ball, they can get roughly the size of a softball. I was happy to see it as I hadn't seen one in a while. Take a close look and you can see it's eye stalks... cool looking critters.

That's it for now, time to get a few things done before the afternoon charter.

Later,

Steve