Last week we had a windy day, well three of them. Normally the winds run east to west in Hawaii and the volcanoes block the winds from much of the Kona area. Last week there was a front parked somewhere that brought in a ton of wind from the north. It was still quite diveable, in fact the viz was well over a hundred feet underwater the day I took this video.

Funny thing is, back in the day I was diving the Oregon coast, we would be totally thrilled to have this kind of day for diving. We're spoiled here.

Manta rays from Kona Hawaii, April 2010 from Steve on Vimeo.

Here's a 2 minute video I took on last night's manta dive. We had 3 customers on the boat and went up for the night dive. It was a very good show. We spent 48 minutes watching the mantas, the last few minutes most of the other divers had left the manta area and the mantas were closer than in the video here... lots of head bumps at that point. At the end we did about a 15 minute reef tour taking the circular way back to the boat to find a couple of mantas under the boat. Fun evening.

Today was gorgeous in Kona the first part of the day, turned a bit gray later on. We had a charter this morning with the 3 from last night and a couple of intro divers. Cathy and a DM/Captain friend who's filling in for Bob (Bob's in the Phillipines diving right now... jealous) switched off with the certified divers, I took the intros. The intro divers did very well, did dives of 60 and 55 minutes. For those of you who don't dive, intro dives are something to consider if you enjoy snorkeling and are comfortable in the water. You essentially get the full diving experience without taking the course. My intros from today had never dove before this trip, today was their second outing with us... they're getting to be pretty good "divers" and should consider getting certified in the future - Intro dives are a good way to get an idea if scuba diving is for you without committing time and money into a full class.

Later,

Steve

Now I've got to figure out how to get it going again. We just upgraded the computer to Windows 7 and apparently something's wrong with my sending function. I've answered a lot of mail the last few days, sorry if you've written and my response hasn't gotten through.

I can't figure it out, I'll have someone less technically challenged (my wife Pat) look at it tonight or tomorrow morning.

Steve

Not that I'm going to even attempt to answer that question... I've always wanted to post a photo of a Gold Tree, it's evidently a Brazillian native that we find sprinkled around Kona. They have a short time where every leaf turns bright gold, they're in that mode right now. They really show spectacularly at times.

It's another very nice day in Kona today. No charter so I'm hanging out at the shop. The entire state was under a high wind warning this last week, in Kona south of the airport the winds were quite mild or non-existant. Up north it was a battle just to get a car door open from what I heard. Our customers staying up north were calling up asking if we were still diving... quite diveable in the Kailua area, while we did have a couple days of choppy water there was nothing that affected the underwater conditions.

Later,

Steve