Whale of a Weekend on Maui !

What a weekend! Friday afternoon, I changed into shorts and Crocs at the office and headed for the airport for a quick flight to Maui.

After a night on my friends, Don & Rachel's couch, we boarded their boat, the Maui Diamond II and headed out for Molokini Crater. It was a slow ride, watching out for and seeing whale spouts at a distance.

Arriving and mooring at the extinct volcano, we did a couple of dives with divemaster Kat and a Canadian man and his two teenage sons. Kat knows her stuff and was the first to spot things like octopus, white tip reef sharks, eels and many indigenous species of fish. Just two weeks before, Darlene had been with me out here and am sorry she was not able to witness this with me.

On the way back, we stopped a few times hoping to spot a whale up close. On the third stop, we found a mother whale, her escort and a two ton bouncing bundle of joy calf. We were all just blown away as the trio came closer and closer to the 40 foot boat. I'm sure they could have flipped us if they had wanted to but swam under us then circled the boat several times driving us all wild with our cameras. After entertaining us for probably 20 minutes, they moved on. We had been out quite a while so Captain Don brought us back in to Maalaea Harbor.

That afternoon, a few of us went on for the third dive of the day out near mile marker 14 west bound toward Lahaina. We dropped anchor into 40 foot water and soon found Manta rays all over us. At one point someone said they counted 10 in sight swimming around and over us, banking like stealth fighter planes. The largest had to have had a wing span of 10 to 12 feet across. The were almost as amazing as the whales.

I believe this had to be the most memorable dive day I've ever been on. I spent Sunday relaxing and watching people in the middle of enjoying their 3 day weekend.