Scuba Diving Vacations

Well, the surf came up big in Kona yesterday and today. I'm looking for it to be heavy through maybe Sunday. We ended up canceling the charters both yesterday and today after looking at it. There were probably 3 "diveable but yucky" moorings left yesterday, but it would have involved timing the exit to the harbor and praying the winds predicted for later in the afternoon didn't come early, so it was better to call it. Today's basically the same, but they're expecting 10-25 mph south winds to come up today, which would really make for a poor time on the water.

We've actually got it pretty good on the Big Island. We had some beach closures on the west side yesterday, but aside from the surf and high winds on the north end of the island, it's been great weather. The other islands are shutting schools and parks and setting up emergency shelters today as they expect to get the brunt of the bad weather.

I hate canceling for weather/surf, as I like money coming in, but sometimes you've got to look at it and allow for the fact that if you know a large portion of your typical guests are going to have a miserable time because of it, it might be best not to go out. If it's flat out unsafe I cancel, if it's just plain nasty but doable, I try to give people the option.... there was one time I had two customers and I gave them the option on a night trip, they insisted we had to go and spent the evening throwing up - most of the time people are happy to pursue other activities when it's that nasty.

So I'm trying a new video thingy today, I'm using Blogger's Google video hosting just to see how it looks vs. the Vimeo and Youtube videos I've used in the past. Here's a quick video of Magic Sands Beach, also called Disappearing Sands Beach or La'aloa Beach park, in Kailua. Much of the year it's a nice sandy boogie boarding beach, when the surf gets real high, all the sand is pulled out and it's a big rock pile.

later,

Steve