Back from my attempt to get to the boat harbor....

Well traffic leaving town was crazy nuts, going into town not so bad until I got about h half mile south of the King Kam3 highway, there to Lako was near a dead stop.   It took ages to get past Lako and by then I was well past the time that they'd shut off all coastal bound traffic, so little to do but head uphill and head home..  Keeping my fingers crossed that the tsunami is less, or at least little more than expected.  Supposedly the first surge should be hitting the NE shores of Maui and the Big Island about now.  Sirens are going off frequently.  Gas stations were full on the way into town, lots of police activity on the ocean side of the highway directing traffic, lots of cars parked alongside the uppper highway after I'd turned it around.

So the tsunami sirens started about 5 minutes ago.... surprisingly the neighborhood dogs are silent..

What gives? The state of Hawaii sets off the sirens at 11:45 am on the first weekday of the month every month, and the dogs howl and bay.  It's kind of fun.  Tonight, it's surprisingly quiet.  I'm debating on whether or not I'm heading down to the harbor to move the boat.  It's a 30 minute trip and the reality is the boat park is quite a ways above the water, but when things are coming our direction we usually move the boats.  This one's tough because it's coming from the northeast.  Better safe than sorry, I'm likely to head that way in the next few minutes.

  Aloha,

   Steve

More tsunami news....

OK, more like stories.  I've been watching a rather dissappointing Oregon State versus University of Washington game (Beavs lost) and after the game ended a friend called and said to turn on the news.  I did, it is news here.  They're not expecting much, maybe 3-6 feet on sides of the island facing Canada, however it's really hard to tell what will happen.

Tsunami time in Hawaii again. Hilo has just been recommended to evacuate...

Not expecting much here, but you never know.  Looks like I get to drive down to the harbor to move my boat again.

Pacific Bottlenose Dolphins in Kona...

Howdy.  Just got back from vacation (Oregon, first time I've been back for more than a few days since I moved here in '99) and I'm back to diving. 

Haven't posted in ages... I had a minor camera flood last year and set the camera aside (it's OK), didn't want to deal with camera issues with customers in the water, and have been busy with dive charters for most of the year.  Now that we're in the slower season I need to get back to taking photos.

On to dolphins....

Our commonly seen dolphin species here is the Hawaiian Spinner Dolphin.  They're a smallish dolphin, maybe in the 5 foot range, and hang out in large groups to rest in the bays during the day.  We see these quite often on charters, and with some frequency underwater as well.  It's always neat to see them on the way to a dive site or underwater.

There are numerous other dolphin and whale species that we can see from time to time.  On occasion we see Pacific Bottlenose Dolphins in the wild.  These guys are a larger heavier dolphin.  We usually see these in twosies or threesies, smaller groups anyways.  We don't see them frequently underwater, but I've seen them a few times underwater over the years.  There have been 2 or 3 coming into the night dive the last half a year or so, it's been a thrill for everyone that sees them.  Earlier this spring I did a whale watch with a group and we went offshore and ran into a group of several dozen that were hanging out with a group of whales... quite the thrill... I haven't seen a large group before.

 Well, on yesterday's dive we had a special moment.... more like a special 5-7 minutes.  We'd seen some dolphins on the surface off the Golden Arches area and they submerged, did not approach the boat as spinners will often do, so I thought since I only noticed 3 or 4 that they were likely Bottlenoses.   We went on up to Hoovers (north end of the Kona airport) for our first dive (lots of shrimp, a couple flame angels, two reticulate frogfish and more) and then moved on down to the Kaloko Ponds area for a dive.  While diving I heard one of the diver's shaker going and turned to see a couple of dolphins just behind me, they passed me and laid down in the sand....

Check it out...  Customer Jeff was shooting video at the time...

http://youtu.be/62AerqSdjDM

Nice Captain Cook Kona house and land for sale...

I mentioned earlier I'd run a house 4 sale post, this is my big real estate sales pitch.  Way back in '97 my wife and I took a trip to Kona for a 10 or so day vacation. By day number two, Pat, my wife, said "wouldn't this be a great place to live?"... well, it took us a year and a half, but the rest is history.

On that trip we fell in love with South Kona.  It was rural, yet close in if staying in the area of Captain Cook.  We spent much time down around Kealakekua Bay, checking out Napo'opo'o village, the Place of Refuge, Napo'opo'o road, the stretch from Honolo to Capatain Cook, and the surrounding area.  I remember clearly us taking a ride up Napo'opo'o road after hanging out at Kealakekua Bay and Pat mentioning she wasn't sure if she'd want to live at the top of the road near the highway, nor at the bottom of the road in the village.  I remember pointing out the window and saying "somewhere around here would be ideal".  We didn't intend it, but after we moved to Kona in '99 and house hunted for a couple of months, checking out areas from the  Palisades subdivision up by the Kona airport, on up to the Holualoa area, and all the way down to Capatin Cook, we ended up choosing our future home... our driveway is probably within about 300 feet of where I said would be the ideal place to live. Cool coincidence.

We've been in the house for 13 wonderful years now, but we've decided it's time to downsize and move a bit closer to my work (Pat works from home and can be anywhere).

Location:

 The property is located roughly half way down Napo'opo'o road above Kealakekua Bay, at what we consider an ideal 900' elevation.  Kona is unique in that there are numerous micro-climates.  If you are near sea level, it can get quite warm at times, if you are away from mountains it can be kind of a desert, if you are on a mountain at a high elevation it can be a humid and wet jungle a significant portion of the time.  At our elevation you still get sun in the morning, then cloud cover around mid-day to where it cools off, and live in a green jungle without it being a humid wet mess. It's a great place to visit the coast, then cool off a few degrees after a day in the sun.

One of the great things about the location is that it's 5 minutes to the ocean, 5 minutes to a gas station, 6 minutes to groceries and restaurants, 18-20 minutes to movie theaters and more shopping, and no more than 30-45 minutes from anywhere else in Kailua Kona, often quicker in non-school traffic drive times.

The property:

We're situated on 1.72 acres of land overlooking the ocean above Kealakekua Bay. Unlike many properties in the area, most of our property is gently sloping, as opposed to straight up and down, and affords having an extensive yard out front of the house for lawn, fruit trees (we've got breadfruit, jackfruit, white pineapples, mangos, bananas, limes, navel and valencia oranges, mandarins, honey tangerines, papayas, jaboticaba, mac nuts and a few varieties of avocodos, as well as coffee and quava and lillikoi and such that grows wild around the place) without having to look at the roof tops of your neighbors... we pretty much own our view (excluding the coastline and ocean down below of course) for the most part. 

There is nothing like sitting on your lanai, sipping a maitai in the evening and listening to all the bird songs (we have doves, cardinals, finches, mynahs, pheasants and more wandering through most every day) and enjoying the view, without the trappings of being surrounded by loads of neighbors (to be fair, we just cut down some trees for a view and can see our next door neighbor for now, but that'll grow out).

The house:

The floorplan is large and open, with roughly 1900 feet of living space (not including the lanais which surround the house) on the main living level upstairs. There is an additional living space I'm taking the above photos from I'm not showing that we currently use as an office, the original owner had a pool table in it, it's plumbed for a wet bar as well.

The house features  an extremely nice koa wood kitchen.  Koa has become a very expensive exotic wood in recent years and is highly sought after.  You'd pay a pretty penny for a koa kitchen these days

The master bedroom is large, with twin skylights over the bed, with an adjoining koa wood and marble bath featuring separate shower and partially sunken bath tub.

The second bedroom and bath, on the opposite side of the house from the master, both open to jungle views, with the bedroom also getting a coastline view as well.

The downstairs:

Downstairs is a completely separate one bedroom one bath living area of over 700 square feet.  When we purchased the house we took a look into fixing it up and renting it out as a vacation rental.  That is probably one of the smartest things we've done with the propety.  Fully updated, it has a huge bedroom and a nice sized bath with a nice little living area and a kitchenette/wetbar.  One could live there quite comfortably.

 The Kealakekua bay area is quite in demand for vacation rentals, and it's done us well.  We've run it since about a half year after we bought the house.  It was slow going for a while, but we started picking up and in a few years we were bringing in roughly 2K a month and keeping it booked full time... that really helps with the bills. 



The last few years we've been buffering the length of time between bookings and taking the rental out of service 2-3 months a year, but we've still been bringing in about 2K a month when we want to have it booked.  With the tourism downturn, '09 was a slow year, then in early '10 we were looking at no bookings after our typically full winter season we were getting a bit worried... decided to play with our VRBO.com listing for the first time in ages and changed some things and ended up booking up the rest of the year in 5-6 weeks.  We just took the vacation rental out of service to have it available for showings (although we are open to short notice stays if anyone feels like visiting Kona soon) and have dropped our VRBO lising, but we've kept the information and would be happy to pass that along to the next buyer if they are interested in a jumpstart on renting out the unit as a vacation rental.

The specifics:

Land- 1.72 acres
Extensive rock walls on the property
House- 2646 square feet
Built in 1985
Garage- 987 (I think, haven't checked lately, I've lived in houses and apartments smaller than our garage) square feet
3 bedroom, 3 full baths, laundry facilities upstairs and downstairs,  large living areas, nearly a 1000 square feet of lanais
Hawaii MLS Number- 254553
Our agent- Sue Brown, Livingston Realty
Price- 699K   I think there's a good opportunity for increased valuation the next time the market turns around, it was worth in the million + range the last time the market was up.

The house has been well maintained.  We recently upgraded most of the skylights in the house.   We wanted to get away from metal roofing some years ago and had it reroofed with composit shingles (wow, what a difference in both heat in the sun and noise from rain, much nicer).  We're in the process of repainting the eaves and replacing the rain gutters.  Nearly all electrical and lighting fixtures, as well as the appliances and several plumbing fixtures (aka low flow toilets) have been upgraded over the years.

If you are house hunting in the Kona area, and looking for a rural place in good condition with room to entertain (I haven't even touched on our parking) guests or just enjoy a tropical paradise, check out our listing.  Note: It's July 5th 2012 right now, I know how things tend to hang on forever on the internet, so check that MLS number to see if we're still on the market if some time has passed.

Happy house hunting!!!!

The Manta Ray Night Dive is going nutz....

We've been choke with mantas lately.  I ran the dive both Sunday and Monday nights this week, and there were LOTS.... but Tuesday apparently took the cake... 41 manta rays from what I heard Wednesday, oftentimes those numbers go up slightly after all the videographers go through their tape.

It's hard to imagine that many mantas in one spot dive bombing divers repeatedly.

  Later,

   Steve

Whew, busy spring......

Sorry I haven't posted much, or at all, in a few months. I got very busy with a number of things... charters, closing down the retail shop, working on projects at the house, etc. So here's what's been going on.... with the exception of the last couple weeks it's been pretty busy with charters this spring. That late May early June period is always dead, the phone's starting to ring again and the schedule's filling in fast now though. I do have a night dive tonight.

In Wanna Dive news, we closed down the retail shop this spring. I had opened it hoping it would add extra seats to our charters, while selling product, neither really happened, so it's back to running straight charters for now. The shop was a good experience, and if I could afford the additional expense. I think in a couple of years it would have built up to where it was really contributing, but for now it's not worth it.

The other project that has kept me very busy is we're trying to sell our house in South Kona and get closer to work.  We've got a lovely place, large and quiet, but it adds on to the length of my day and we want to get closer to Honokohau harbor and downsize things a bit while we're at it. Now's an opportune time with interest rates so low and prices down.  I'll post a "house 4 sale" post here in a few days... a little advertising never hurts.

 I've got a night dive to get ready for, I have a cement related project I'll work on for an hour or two and then head out.

   Later,

   Steve