Lahaina Divers - review
September 1st, 2006 Filed Under Uncategorized
I dove with Lahaina Divers in the first week in August 2006 for my Advanced Open Water class. My search for a diver operator in Maui consisted of searching the internet, and then seraching on each dive operator’s name to find reviews and/or comments. Here is the list that I ended up with:
- Lahaina Divers
- Maui Dive Shop
- Turtle Reef Divers
- Ed Robinson’s Diving
- Mike Severns Diving
From reading other reviews, customer opinions seemed to split these shops up in to two groups - Lahaina Divers and Maui Dive Shop being the big boat operators, and more boutique smaller vendors. I read reviews of people either reporting of or being concerned that the larger shops operate “cattle boats” wherein bigger boats mean more divers in the water at a site and therefore a more crowded dive experience.
My requirements were to satisfy my desire to do the Advanced Open Water (AOW) course while in Maui, as well as the ability to accommodate two teens who would be doing resort dives for a day. I would be staying north of Lahaina, so figuring convenience to the dive shop was a factor as well.
From visiting web sites and making some calls, I gathered that the Ed Robinson and Mike Severns diving operating smaller boats that would take one tour group of people (one dive master to lead the dive and 6 or so divers). Maui Dive Shop and Lahaina Divers operate bigger boats that can take two or so tour groups of people. I tend to favor bigger boats since you’re more likely to have a real restroom, a little room to move around and less rocking and rolling to and from the dive site. I don’t consider a 46 foot dive boat with two groups of divers to be a cattle boat. I do consider a cattle boat to be the large catamarans that carry 50 to well over a hundred people on snorkeling tours. You get that many people bobbing around in the water near the boat and it does feel crowded to swim around. The small single group dive boats probably have a toilet, but there is no enclosed restroom to use it, so my past experience has been you go through some saloon style doors and take a couple of steps down where you find the toilet/head. Of course the little doors don’t come up very high, so you can tell when a guy is going #1 because everyone on the boat gets to see his back from about mid-back up. I like having a little more privacy as I am not the kind to go #1 in my wetsuit.
I was most impressed with Lahaina Divers when I called around asking about how they do the AOW and how resort dives are handled. With Lahaina I was put in touch with Steve Dimas, the instructor who would be teaching the class. He and I chatted on the phone and traded some emails following that. Overall this was a much more personal experience than the other operators, with Maui Dive Shop being the least personal (I was talking to a scheduler type of person). Maui Dive Shop didn’t have any opensing for the AOW class for the week that I would be there. I think I was calling a week or so before our arrival date. As far as the resort dives, I was looking for a place that would do boat dives for the kids; not all operators do that.
Convenience to where we would be staying and proximity to the dive sites were another factor. Apparently most of the dive site, including Molokini, are south of Lahaina. The advantage of dive shops in southern Maui is they have less distance to travel before getting to the dive site, so they could beat the other dive boats there. One disadvantage of a southern Maui location is longer drive time from where we were staying. Being somewhere at 6:30am on vacation is a lot harder when there is an extra 30 minutes or so involved.
I ended up choosing Lahaina Divers based on the great experience of getting questions answered, their availability, how they handle resort dives, and the size of their boats.
Our experience with Lahaina Divers:
Our first day of diving was the resort dives for the kids and the first set of dives for my AOW class. We were able to go on the same boat and dive the same location, some place along the west coast a bit north of Lahaina. As far as feeling crowded under water, it wasn’t an issue. After my instructor and I finished some exercises on one dive, we looked for the group under water with the kids; we didn’t see them until we surfaced. If it were crowded, we should have been able to find them with ease.
The kids loved their SCUBA experience so much that our kid (he was there with his friend) decided to go for his Open Water certification while we were there.
My second dive trip was to Molokini. Molokini had significantly better visibility than the Maui coast dives. I saw the boats from some of the smaller dive operators, and having a real bathroom and having a bit of a rough ride on the way back made me appreciate having a bigger boat.
Our kid had a great experience with his Open Water class. Back at the dive shop, the people working the shop were great too.
Overall I would recommend Lahaina Divers to others looking for diving in Maui. I would use them again if and when we go back to Maui.
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