Molokini Dive Paper

It was six A.M. when the Capitan pulled into the parking lot pulling the 33 foot red and white dive boat behind her matching chevy truck with the Paradise Diving logo on the side. As she clinched her Starbucks coffee the crew went about thier daily ritual of putting the boat in the water. She looked to be in here fifty's, and of hawaiian desent. She barked orders to the crew with authority, which turned out to be her three sons. I could tell she had been doing this for a long time.

My brother in law had gotten my wife and I dive certification lessons for a wedding gift and we were about to embark on on our first real open water dive.

The wind was whipping the water into whitecaps as we started to board the boat. We were going on a drift dive around the back side of Molikini, a cresent shaped crater about three miles off the coast of Maui. The idea is you get into the water and decend into the depths and then the current drifts you along at a pretty good clip. Then a mile or so later you rise to the surface and hopefully the boat is waiting for you.

I couldn't get the thought of being stranded out at sea from my head. Would the boat be there to pick us up or would we be stranded like in the movie Open Warter. It was my idea to watch the movie the night befor the dive now I couldn't shake the thought of it. My wife however seemed to not have a care in the world. She had fallen asleep early into the movie befor they been stranded and the sharks showed up.

This dive was considered an intermediate level dive but that didn't concern me nearly as much as getting seasick on the boatride. I get motion sickness riding on the bus or just watching a boat bob up and down in the water. We all grab our seats and the boat powers away from the dock in Wailea.

Just keep your eye on the horizion , I told myself, and you will be just fine. With this thought firmly cemented in my head we zoomed towards the drop spot. I did fine...