Hawaii Adventure - Day 7 - 23 August 2012

9 am - We arrived at the Fair Winds office to register for our snorkeling tour.  We had a short night and were a little apprehensive about our adventure.  When we saw the group lined up for the larger boat, we were glad we chose the Hula Kai (the deluxe cruise).  The other one had about 100 passengers with a lot of small children.  The minimum age on the Hula Kai was seven.

We chose seats on the first deck near the stern

9:30 am - We boarded the boat and left for our first snorkeling spot.  There were 20 of us on the cruise.  The ride was very smooth on the double-hulled boat.  Fawn and I had taken advice we’d seen for our dolphin tour and bought some Bonine—a motion sickness drug.  Once we stopped at our first site, the boat began rocking with the waves.  We could tell the drug was working because neither of us felt any seasickness at all.  It continued to work for us without any noticeable side effects.

We're on our way to the first site with the wind in our hair

10 am - There was a small breakfast at the first site, but before we ate, we listened to Captain Kirk (his real first name) give us some snorkeling instruction.  We received our fins, masks and noodles (for floatation) and I went in the water first.  When Fawn came, she had trouble feeling secure, so she traded her noodle for an inner tube.  That worked well for her, so we swam around looking at the fish on the reef.  The captain and crew were very helpful, especially to us first-timers.  (We were glad of that and gave them a good tip before we left the boat at the end of the tour.)  The water was pretty clear because of the calm seas.  After a while, Fawn was getting tired, so we headed back to the boat. We both took off our gear and had a little breakfast.  Fawn’s mask was not on quite right so she had a lot of water in her nose.   She decided that was enough for her today, so I went out again on my own for one more try.

11 am - We traveled to our next site.  It was a longer ride this time.

One of the lava flows we passed on the way to the 2nd site

Our 2nd site included what looked like the ends of lava tubes

11 am - We stopped at the new site where some of the crew started up the grill for lunch and most of the rest of us went snorkeling.  This time I took the underwater camera for some shots of fish.  Fawn stayed on the boat.  It turned out that this site had a couple of mini-reefs that came up near the surface.  A lot of fish were feeding there.  One boy who rented one of the small propeller devices even saw a turtle.  It was too far away for me to swim to.

The reef had a lot of different coral and other sea life

There is at least one little yellow fish in this photo.
Can you find it?

If you look carefully at the next photo, you'll see several small fish just enjoying their lunch.    

The is the one large fish I saw

12:30 pm - I came back on board just in time to have lunch.  The crew had prepared hamburgers, grilled chicken fingers and boca burgers.  We also had chips, juice drinks and a lot of fruit.  It was very refreshing.  Some of the passengers went back in the water again, but I decided I’d had enough too, so Fawn & I just relaxed in the sun.

1:15 pm - We began our trip back to port.  We both sat in our sunny spots.  I put on some more sunscreen, but couldn’t convince Fawn to do that.  (She did put a towel over her legs though.)  Still, I missed a spot on my stomach and had a pink place there the next day.  Fawn was pink on her chest and nose.  Her lips got the worst of it, making them sore even on the following Sunday.  As we were heading back, the captain gave us a little drawing he had made up with our names in the shape of a fish.  Very cool.     

2:30 pm - We landed in the harbor, thanking the captain and crew and headed back to our condo for shower and afternoon rest.

5:30 pm.  We decided to eat in, so I went to Aloha Friday’s for a chicken sandwich for Fawn.  I finished off the last part of the pizza I had saved from the Sunday before.  We were both very tired, so we just watched TV most of the evening.

9:30 pm.  We went to bed because the next day would be another early one.