Wanna Dive's dive shop is now open 10am-5pm daily...

OK, the picture's not flattering, but it shows fairly well where our dive shop is. We're just up above the Tesoro station on the highway across from Honokohau Harbor (that's the shop top center of the photo).

Just thought I'd post our hours. We've been bouncing around a bit since opening up late this spring, but with everyone's schedules we can man it 10-5 daily. Come on in and visit! 1-877-DIVE KONA

Aloha,

Steve

Panorama photo of Wanna Dive, one of Kona's newest dive shops...

I'm in the shop today. I thought I'd play with Photoshop CS5 a little bit and try a panorama. It worked. This is 6 photos stitched together in photoshop. I haven't scrutinized it yet, just looked at it in small, but it seems to do a better job than the last time I tried a panorama in a much earlier version of photoshop. On the blog, you may have to click on the image to get it to full size and get a decent view. I'm not sure what'll happen on my Wanna Dive Kona facebook feed, hopefully it'll act like the typical photos and be clickable, video doesn't seem to play well.

Now I gotta try it in RAW and see if photoshop will merge RAW files and keep them in RAW, or If I have to edit them to jpeg and hope I got the white balance the same on each photo file edit... Underwater panoramas might be interesting to try. One of these days that I take a day off it might be fun to take a tank down to the reef and give it a try.

Anyways, you can kind of get an idea of what I'm putting together at the dive shop.

Aloha,

Steve

Cheap, inexpensive underwater film cameras for snorkeling or scuba diving in Kona Hawaii.

A lot of people tend to think of underwater photography as a thing they're going to have to spend hundreds of dollars just to get started and don't realize there are reltively cost effective cameras available for those who just want to take a few snapshots while they are snorkeling or diving.

We carry the Snap Sights Sports Utility Cam at our shop. It's a basic housed film point and shoot camera. You'll find "underwater" single use cameras that are good to 12/15/30 feet around at a lot of places. These cameras are a bit beefier... they're good to 100 foot depths, so they're great for snorkelers, kayakers, and scuba divers. These specific cameras are quite nice in that they come loaded with 27 shots and are refillable/reusable... you can put another roll of film in when you are done and take them back underwater again. They are also quite nice in that they come with a built in flash, you'll have a chance at taking a picture with good color. Water tends to absorb color, and without a flash the pictures can look dull and bluish. With a flash, you add light back so you get your color back. The flash is really only good to about arm's length or so but it really helps bring back the true color of what you're looking at if you're about 2-3 feet away or so.

These cameras are a fun and reltively inexpensive (we're selling them for $19.99 at our shop) way to try underwater photography and bring home some memories without breaking the bank.

Aloha,

Steve

Very busy week/month coming up for us... lots of scuba diving Kona ahead...

Shop update:

I'm hanging out at the shop today, I'll be on the boat for the near forseeable future. Here's the most recent photo of part of our shop. I'm due for another accessory order to fill in some gaps in my offerings. We've got lots of masks, fins, snorkels, a few models of regulators, BCDs, wetsuits and such to go along with the t-shirts, lights, cameras and other goodies. It's coming along nicely.

Things are getting busy enough that I've hired on two additional employees and I'm looking at maybe hiring on another in the next couple of weeks. The boat's getting busy enough In may have to let the shop go unstaffed a day or two this next week. If I can get a new hire in in the next little bit our goal is to keep it open 8-5 seven days a week. We're pretty close to that now, but on days we're short handed the boat takes precedence.

Kona water conditions:

Summer's here. This was an odd winter in that it never really got cold. Typically we'll drop to 73-74 degrees, this year most of our customers dive computers (ours as well) were showing 76/77 degrees. That's warm for us in the winter. With that, I was expecting a bump up in April or May. Hasn't happened yet. We're still seeing 76/77 on pretty much everyone's computers. Viz has been good to excellent lately on most days.

Later,

Steve

There's a new dive shop/scuba center coming to Kona Hawaii.....

Aloha,

Well it looks as though I'm finally going to be able to get the retail side of Wanna Dive open soon. For a bit over a year I've had a space and set it up as an office and gear storage, along with a few shirts masks and a few scuba do-dads to sell on the side. It's looked like a dive shop is coming for quite some time... well, the time is getting to be oh so much nearer now.

During that time I've had lots of people ask why I'm not manning the shop, well unfortunately you need to have lots of product to sell to really justify spending a few thousand a month manning the shop, and I can't be in the shop and on the boat at the same time. It hasn't been in the cards just yet. This last November I went to DEMA, the big industry show, with the intent to find some lines for the shop and order it in.

Over the course of December and January the gear's been coming in. I was crazy busy with charters in December and the first 8-9 days of January, since then (unfortunately with the help of the arrival of scuba unfriendly surf) I've had some spare time to where I could spend time in the "shop" and get it put together. Along with the product, I've been bringing in extra fixtures, shelving, racks and such and have been setting it all up and getting the gear on the walls.

It's not yet where it will be down the line, but it's to where I can show it off and say the store's coming soon. This next week I place my help wanted ad. I'm hoping to be able to open the shop up full time come about 3 weeks from now so we'll be in the swing of things before the spring break rush hits. The February dive charter schedule is starting to shape up nicely, so I'm not sure how often we'll be around 'til the day I officially open (whenever that is) - once that happens it'll be 7 days a week, except major holidays, Ironman day (the highway out front is closed that day)... and maybe Superbowl Sunday.

We're located at 74-5035 Queen Ka'ahumanu Highway ste 1-b. It's super easy to find... it's across the Highway from Honokohau harbor, right next to the Tesoro gas station.

Later,

Steve

Man, the scuba diving conditions are great in Kona Hawaii right now...

On Friday I had a double, running charters all day long. The water's really flat right now and viz was great. On the morning charter we hit the Golden Arches area and had fabulous viz, then followed it up by doing the Suck 'em Up/Skull Cave/Aquarium sites. Water was calm and great at both sites of the day. Cathy's big thrill was finding 6 different leaf scorpionfish during the course of the day.

We went out for the manta dive about an hour later. On the first dive the divers took their tour of Garden Eel Cove. Highlights were 2-3 mantas during the dive, and 10, yes ten, squid hanging out at the night dive site. On the night dive it was all about the mantas. I heard two different numbers for the night, 8 & 9, either way it was a real good showing.

Yesterday I took day off #3 for the year, this time there was no vacation rental to clean or Superbowl to watch so it was an entire day of doing nothing... I think watching bad Steven Seagall movies on some cable channel and eating frozen pizza qualifies as nothing at any rate. The downtime felt good.

Today there's not much going on, hanging out at the shop all day to see if I can get some walk-in bookings. I've got 12 charters scheduled the next 13 days so far (I'm trying to keep it to no more than 9 charters a week 'til the shop's open full time and I hire another crew member) so I'll be busy on the boat for the next couple weeks.

As for our Kona dive shop/office, we're going to open the shop on weekends with regular hours from here on. Starting Saturday the 13th of March we'll have it manned 10am to 6pm on weekends. I've been hanging out there when I don't have charters ('cept the 3 days I've taken off this year) but otherwise there's been no consistancy in the schedule. Count on us being there 10-6 on weekends for now and I'll be adding days as business starts to pick up again... we're starting to get into our busier season, winter's are slow for the most part for dive ops here.

Here's one of my favorite fish, Reticulated Frogfish. I didn't even know about these fish 'til a few years back when someone pointed one out to me. They hang out in larger cauliflower corals and antler corals. Looking at them, their faces match the color of most of the older shells, and their body resembles the pattern of a cone shell, so they're quite often overlooked. At first glance they'll easily pass for a shell, but then you see their eyes or their little webbed "feet" and catch on to it being a frogfish. We've had a couple of them "stashed" away at one particular dive site, for now they've seemed to like that particular spot and we'll be able to show them off 'til they move. Once they've moved off it'll be sheer luck in finding them again, so we're happy to have them in one spot for now.

Aloha,

Steve

Hanging out at the new "dive shop" in Kona....

January and February are typically slow charter months, so I'll be spending every day I'm not on charter down at Wanna Dive's office. I've got nothing on the books for a few days, looks like the surf's gonna be up pretty big anyways, so I'll be hanging out at the "shop" noon to five at least the next several days.

On a personal note, my puffy knee from yesterday has un-puffed and feels fine. Hopefully I can keep excercising a bit harder during the slow season here. I tend to do nothing physical outside of the charters once we get going out every day.

So the "shop" is pretty much ready to show off publicly these days. Here's the latest photos of the interior. I don't have a ton of money to throw at it, but I've got a growing selection of dive related accessories hanging on the walls now. As I slowly fill it up and the boat business season picks up I'll hopefully be able to man it full time. For now I'll be in there whenever we don't have a charter going out. Feel free to drop by between noon and 5, although it's more like 4 and 5pm when I have charters, so you might consider calling ahead. I'll be closed Superbowl Sunday, otherwise it's either the shop or the charter every day 'til Pat and I take a few days off in late May that we're trying to plan.

Edit: A friend pointed out I didn't say where the office is... you can find it across the highway from Honokohau Harbor immediately above the Tesoro gas station. I hesitate to give out the address, I don't take mail there and most of the GPS units/phones won't pinpoint it at all (someone told me their's was quite a bit off, they saw the gas station though as they drove past and came back and found it right away), and street addresses don't make sense to most people as they're not set up the same as on the mainland and few buildings have street numbers on them. Google maps will ballpark it pretty good, the address is 74-5035 Queen Kaahumanu Highway ste 1b.

Later,

Steve