Capturing the Moment

  Best of Maui: Scuba Dives While trying to put together a review of my time here in Maui it quickly became clear that it could not be contained in one post. All the great memories, hikes, dives, animal encounters, and other adventures all deserved their own post so what I am going to do instead is a series of "best of" posts.  I will start off with the best of Maui scuba diving. In my opinion these are the can't miss dive sites for the advanced scuba divers when you come to Maui. Some made the list for big wildlife encounters, others for tiny nudibranch encounters, and others still for incredible underwater topography. Read on to find 'the Big Three' scuba sites as well as a couple of my other favorites. First and Second Cathedrals, Lanai First Cathedrals Second Cathedrals  These two sites both boast enormous underwater caverns. Most dive companies depart from Lahaina harbor but Maui Dive Shop does leave from Ma'alaea harbor on select days. T...

The ghostly visage of the tallship Carthaginian Heidi, Mary and I planned an adventure almost too big for one car, to kayak out from the shore with all of our scuba and camera gear and dive the wreck of the Carthaginian. The Carthaginian is an old tall ship that I've written about a couple of times on this blog. Feel free to search for the other post/dives done here using the search feature on the website. Located about 90ft down on a sandy bottom this ship is mostly visited by tourists remaining dry aboard the local submarine which zooms around the wreck and nearby waters. I expected to see the sub at some point on this dive and it showed up out of the blue right when we descended to deck level on the wreck.     While the submarine is quite loud with its electronic propellers it still took Heidi a while to figure out it was right behind her. She was much too determined to find the elusive frogfish rumored to be hiding out on the wreck to look for a huge underwater s...

 Sometimes all it takes is a little 'can-do' attitude and pointing in the right direction to make really incredible adventures happen. I had wanted to take Hunter on one of the best kayak dives you can do here on Maui, out to the shipwreck of the Carthaginian, but was greeted at the shoreline with sizable waves and with 6 or so surfers riding each one. Not to be dismayed we unloaded our kayak, put together all of our gear, and with some intrigued bystanders watching loaded up the kayak at the shoreline.   I imagine people had their cameras out to take pictures of the two supposed tourist about to get smashed into the rocks by waves but we would show them. The first wave peeled right around out bow sending a spray of water that Hunter, sitting in the front, blocked for me. Always the gentleman. Then a second bigger wave came so we paddled hard and hit it nose first just as it broke. This time I could see the wave form a perfect V as it broke all around Hunter and filled our ...