The Sweetest Day

Today is the day to practice random acts of kindness and senseless beauty.

It was a sweet day! We had the NoriZ almost entirely to ourselves, Amy was on board and she brought her housemate, Pammy, Mike is putting his AOW cert to good use, Dianne and Denny were here to get just one more dive in before their flight to Harrisburg, PA -- NOT your major dive destination -- and Paul PCS'd just two days ago and he's already getting into the diving groove. Conditions were outstanding. Light Makapu'u current, 100+ visibility on the Corsair and no one else around. [Time IN: 9:05, Max depth: 107 fsw, Bottom time: 15 minutes*, 79F]. I found the big yellow margin eel underneath the starboard wing, getting a cleaning from a banded shrimp. The garden eels were out in force of course. The usual critters were making lazy turns through the water. You could see the bottom of the 'Z -- you felt like you could almost touch it!

On the second dive, we wanted to do Spitting Caves [SI: 0:38, Time IN: 10:15, Max depth: 46, Bottom time: 36, 81F], but it was unclear whether the current and visibility was going our way. We took a bit of a surface interval at the #1 marker to switch tanks and wait for the tide to turn. Then we crossed our fingers and headed for the wall. It was looking good! Everybody dropped in and lo and behold: the current was Diamond Head just like we wanted! Yea! So we drifted along, we found a couple turtles -- some swimming, some wedged into the rocks. We also discovered a four foot white tip reef shark in one of the little caves. It's a fairly recent discovery, but some sharks don't need to keep moving to breath through their gills and white tips are one of those species. The little guy was well protected in his cave, I just barely caught a glimpse of his dorsal fin or I would have missed it completely.

After we got the boat unloaded and the van packed, we headed over to The Shack for a post dive beer and meal. The sun was warm, the beer was cold and the sea just about put me into full siesta snooze mode. We drove back to the shop, unloaded, rinsed, hung and put away our dive gear. Amy, Pammy and Paul (sounds like a 60s folk rock group, doesn't it) hung out on the pool deck for some sun and story while yours truly cranked out this dive report and paid the bills. It's all good!

NOTE: Bottom times are approximate due to variable entry times and some divers using enriched air gases