Tag: Diving

Diving the Naked Lady

A different sort of dive. There are few wrecks to dive on the Big Island, the Naked Lady is one of the few. An Easter Sunday morning spent out on the water, enjoying a beautiful day. As we came back across Kailua Bay from diving at Casa Cave we decided to dive the wreck as our second dive of the day.

Diving the Naked Lady
Andrew Cooper diving on the wreck of the Naked Lady, photo by Pete Tucker
The Naked Lady is a sailboat that burned and sank in Kailua Bay. Apparently the Naked Lady is not the vessel’s real name, simply the name acquired as a result of how it arrived on the bottom of the bay. Hard details are difficult to come by, but the story goes something like this… The sailboat was moored in the bay when the lady aboard needed to eliminate the “little green men” infesting her boat. The result was a burning sailboat and the lady arriving on shore minus her clothing.

It is 110 feet to the sand where the Naked Lady lies on the bottom. This is a short dive, at this depth our bottom time is limited to less than 20 minutes due to nitrogen absorption. Even with the safety stops on ascent the entire dive was about half an hour, I surfaced with over 1200psi of air left in the tank. Considering I often last over an hour with a 80cft tank this was a short dive indeed.

Deb and I did not bother with the mooring line as we dropped to the bottom. The water was clear enough we could see the wreck on the sand 100ft below. With no current we simply dropped, in the clear water this was a surreal, slow motion free-fall. Seeing the sand approaching I did not bother to trim buoyancy, but allowed myself to hit the sand a few feet from the hull. The gauge read 109ft as I knelt on the bottom. I took a couple photos, trimmed for neutral buoyancy and started exploring.

Sky at the Naked Lady
Sky exploring the wreck of the Naked Lady
The hull is more or less intact, with the mast lying to the port side. The entire upperworks are gone, consumed in the fire one would assume. The bowsprit and stern railings lie in the sand in front and aft of the wreck. Inside a few pipes and other fitting are all that remain of the interior.

Aside from a few colonies of cauliflower coral on the wreck itself there is no coral visible, simply a flat plain of sand that stretches in all directions. A swarm of fish surround the wreck, snappers and dasyllus the most numerous. Oddly there are numerous rough spined urchins on and around the hull.

There is little sign of life away from the wreck, the sand seems sterile from a distance. Upon closer examination even this sand desert teems with life. Burrows and tracks betray numerous residents. I take a few photos of a colorful goby I have yet to identify, it does not appear in the usual guidebooks.

The Atlantis Submarine that gives tourists a ride in Kailua Bay often tour the Naked Lady. The submarine was present when we arrived at the mooring, but had moved off by the time we dropped to the wreck. It would have been fun to wave at the tourists.

Naked Lady
Deb on the wreck of the Naked Lady
A lot of photos got taken, mostly of each other as we orbited the wreck. The remains of the sailboat on the sand makes an interesting subject, particularly with the divers poking about. Pete was diving his new 5DMkII rig with a wide angle lens. The wreck was a perfect wide angle target, I found myself wishing I had brought something wide angle like the GoPro. At 110′ there is only blue and more blue, so that the photos turn out rather blue. It becomes interesting to convert the photos to black and white.

The location results in a different dive profile as well. On this island we usually dive deep and then spend the rest of the dive slowly working our way back up the reef, ending in shallow water. A slow ascent eliminates the required safety stops used in recreational diving. Here there is no sloping reef, simply a drop to the bottom. Time to remember those safety stops and monitor the dive computer closely. This ascent required two stops, one at 50′ and another at 15′ to allow the nitrogen to transpire out of our tissues.

With two dives done it had been a great day and we were ready for more. Alas we had a pile of empty tanks and a distinct lack of full. Nothing left but a return to harbor, clean up the boat and an early dinner at the fish market. A great Easter Sunday, far more fun than sitting in church.

Night Diving under a Supermoon

The term supermoon may be a bit of over-the-top hype, it was still nice to dive under the light of a bright full moon. The plan is simple, meet at 4pm for a late afternoon dive, followed by a night dive. Gear and dinner loaded we quickly slip the lines and head out in a smoothly practiced routine. Where is the boat going, I really do not care, wherever we dive it is going to be good.

eb Photographing a Dascyllus
Deb wielding a camera at a defiant Hawaiian Dascyllus (Dascyllus albisella)
The first dive is made at Eel Cove mooring #1, a mere mile south of the harbor. This site features a nice wall above a narrow shelf that drops into the abyss. We drop deep at first, to the bottom of the reef at 100ft. Keeping an eye to to the deep blue we hope to see pelagics, though nothing notable shows up today. Working our way back up the reef Deb and I poke about looking for photographic targets.

I love the late afternoon light on the reef. As the light dims the shades become more blue. The lower intensity allows me to control the light better, the strobe overpowering the ambient light on the target of interest. The background becomes an attractive blue, open water photos loose the odd green cast that is difficult or impossible to fix in Photoshop. The fish are less flighty as well, beginning to shift from daytime routine to finding a place in the coral for the night.

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A Trip Up The Coast

We limped back in on one engine.

An odd sound alerted Dennis to something amiss, a chuffing sound that the engine does not normally make. Opening the hatch showed more trouble, the engine had dumped all its oil into the bilge. It could be something bad, or something really bad, no way to find out without taking things apart, not something we were not prepared to do.

Nudi Photography
Pete photographing a nudi in a cave at The Pentagon
Already moored at the dive site buoy we decided to forget about the engine, at least for a little while, and do the dive.

Conditions were decent, but not great, some surge was stirring up the water. Faint echoes of whale-song could still be heard, probably the last we will hear this season.

Just underneath the mooring at Pentagon is a wonderful complex of caves, this was where we spent much of the dive. This is a great dive site, a shallow coral plain pocked with numerous caves and small sandy areas. It is a good place to look for invertebrates, big and small. The caves shelter nudibranch and other small critters. The sand patches are home to one of the largest invertebrates found on Hawaiian reefs, the horned trumpet snail.

I located a species of nudibranch that was new to me, the snow-goddess nudibranch (Ardeadoris poliahu). A pretty animal about 4cm long among the algae covered rock in a cave. The nudi was nicely positioned on a boulder in a cave, no problem to photograph, except for the surge sweeping me back and forth. I also found a gold-lace nudibranch that was well positioned for photography. I got some good photos, so did Pete when I showed him where to find the critters.

We would head home on a single engine without making a second dive for the day. Never having done this we all wondered how fast we would go on a single engine and how long it would take to return to harbor. We were a long way north, over twenty miles up the coast from Honokohau, the absolute worst time for an engine to fail. Everyone good for docking at midnight? Would we all make it to work tomorrow morning? Our speculation was for naught, we could manage seven knots without straining the remaining engine, we could return to harbor in good time.

The trip back may have been a bit slower, but this was not a problem either. There were humpback whales along the coast. We had good views of several groups as we traveled, including a couple nice breaches right off the bow. Another group, a mother, calf and escort played about in very shallow water at Makalawena. It was just a nice day to be on the water, nobody was in a real hurry to get back to harbor.

The trouble with the engine has turned out to be fairly minor, the oil pressure switch failed, allowing the engine to pump itself empty of oil. A quick and inexpensive fix, but a real mess in the engine compartment.

A little iPhone video of a whale breach, courtesy Deborah

Postcard from the Reef – Not a Nudi

Two dives, almost two hours underwater, much of that time spent combing the reef face and cave walls for small invertebrates to photograph. I was well into my second dive of the day, a nice cave called Henry’s, where I had now spent over forty minutes carefully searching the interior and entrance areas of the lava tube. My real target is nudibranchs, but so far the day’s diving had revealed only two, both species I had found and photographed many times before.

A splash of color at the base of a large antler coral got my attention, it was shaped just right, but I was not in a position to see it clearly. Getting closer it looked better, about the right size with white raised features. It was only after circling to the other side of the coral and getting in close that I saw that this was probably not a nudi. It took a moment to realize that this was probably a dark purple sponge with bright white osculum. Even in the photo you have to look close to realize what it is.

Except in a few obvious cases, I make no real effort to properly identify sponges. This is a task that takes an expert, a collected specimen and a proper lab to do. I did check briefly through the book to see if there was a clear match, but as I expected, this sponge will remain identified simply as… a sponge.

Not a Nudi
A colorful sponge mimics a nudibranch

Super Sunday

Let me be quite clear… My idea of Super Sunday does not involve any sort of professional sporting event. This includes no television or funny commercials, no party, piles of chicken wings or large screen displays, and no halftime show.

Sky Exploring
Sky checking out the reef at Ridges
I joined the guys for some diving instead. My idea of a Super Sunday!

It was a pretty good day to go diving. The surf was a bit high, no problem as we would be diving from the boat. It was Dennis, Sky, Pete and myself, the usual crew. Dennis chose to head south of Kona, a good choice as we found nice conditions… Good vis and little surge. Going south also allowed us to do a little whale watching along the way. We encountered spinner dolphins just outside the marina, and again in front of Kailua Bay on the way back. Two humpbacks caught Dennis by surprise, surfacing right in front of the boat as we cruised south, giving us a great view as we waited for them to move away.

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A Dive That Went Wrong

Five days, a quick island hop to Oahu, our first time exploring the island. A major feature of the plan was a bit of diving. Oahu features a number of unique dives we can not experience on the Big Island, particularly the wrecks. Based on conversations on ScubaBoard I chose to book with Gabe and Kaimana Divers. The reviews and comments of this dive op have been uniformly positive. After some experience I can second that opinion.

Along with a few changes of clothes and the cameras, we packed two full sets of dive gear. There would be five full days, including two days of diving. The basic plan each day was a two tank morning dive trip, a deeper wreck dive, followed by a shallower reef dive. The YO-257, the Corsair, there are several sites to choose from. On the Big Island we do have the SS Kauai at Mahukona, but scattered bits and pieces are not the same as a large intact ship.

Walking across the posh lobby of a luxury hotel with full dive gear over your shoulder is fun. Everyone looks in your direction, you can only guess at what they are thinking. It was 7am, meeting our ride to the marina. We were looking for our ride from Kaimana Divers in a big black pickup truck. Already in the truck were a couple from Texas and another fellow, five divers total, a nice small group.

We met Drew, our divemaster for the day. Like all divers we introduced ourselves, Jeannie and Charles lived near the gulf coast, but traveled regularly to dive under better conditions than local waters offered. Our fifth diver was somewhat less experienced, with a dozen dives behind him. We were all looking forward to this dive.

Surf to Diamond Head
Surf and Surfers along the famous Waikiki breaks with Diamond Head in the background
Heading of of the marina we saw the first sign that perhaps not all was well… The surfers were out.

Dramatic breakers rolled across the famous Waikiki reefs, stretching from the marina to Diamond Head. There is an adage in the local dive community, if the surfers are happy, the divers are not.

Arriving over the wreck for the YO-257 there was a notable swell, while it was going to be a problem, it was diveable. Drew hopped in to secure the mooring line. Upon returning to the boat he reported a moderate current. We geared up and readied for the water.

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