Five Quick Tips for Maui Dive Travel
Living on Maui and working in the tourism industry gives us unique insights into some of the issues that can cause hiccups in your diving experience here. Here are five…
Maui Itinerary for Certified Divers
Maybe you're newly certified, it has been a while since you dove, or you are a once-a-year scuba diver when you go somewhere tropical (read WARM). Here is Shad’s list…
New Year’s Diving Resolutions
At the beginning of a new year, many of us challenge ourselves with improvements of some kind, and for many of us, those are underwater. There was a recent post…
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Good Divers are Always Learning
This has been the motto of Dive Training Magazine (an excellent reference for all divers) for as long as we can remember, and that saying doesn’t just apply to entry…
Diving vs. Snorkeling
I've been given many strange looks by snorkelers when they find out I'm a scuba diver. "What is the advantage of diving over snorkeling?" they ask, or "I can see…
"hmmmmmmm..."
“check out” this dive
I’ve been working at Maui Dreams for about a year and a half now and I’ve got to tell you, I love my job!!! How many people do you know…
I Taught My Dad to Dive!
All of our lives we are educated by our parents, teachers, and role models of many types. Then sometimes we get the opportunity to teach one of our teachers something…
A Day in the Dive Life of Jay
A day in the life of a Scuba Instructor at Maui Dreams typically starts the previous afternoon with a check of the schedule! This can be done via phone or with a stop at the store. Will I be doing an Open Water, Advanced or Rescue class? Maybe a guided dive with certified divers, or an Introductory Dive? There could always be a Scooter Dive, or maybe an EFR (Emergency First Response) class. For classes, I could be taking out anywhere from one to four people; for guided dives, it could be as many as six. Based on that, I formulate an idea of which beach to go to. What could conditions be like? Should I pick up my tanks tonight (we cannot begin loading tanks until 7am, so sometimes if it’s going to be a busy morning in the store we can load them the night before) or wait until the morning? All of this happens before our customers walk in the door.
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The Road to Divemaster
The viz has just improved from a little over zero to perhaps five feet, just enough that I can see that my Divemaster instructor Zac Lenox has lost a fin. This is the last dive of my training and I am guiding Zac and another Divemaster student Matt back to shore at Olowalu after completing a Scuba Review skills section. Only another one hundred yards to go, but in the wind and break the bottom is stirred up and I am doing my best to keep an eye on my charges while navigating with my compass to our dive flag set just off shore.
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Surprise Lessons in the Rescue Course
Whew!!! I just finished my Rescue class and boy am I tired. Saving people requires a lot more energy than I thought. I consider myself to be in pretty good physical condition but after today I know I need to workout even more.
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She was afraid to go out in the water
I have said many times “I saw Jaws at a very influential age”. Growing up, I had a fascination with critters in the water but I had no interest in joining them. It started with tadpoles. We had a ditch that ran along the front of our house, and it was there that I first discovered them wiggling around. I would go out looking for them every season, patiently watching through the algae for them to emerge. My mom took me salmon fishing, I caught my first big catch at the age of 9. I was fine as long as I was on the boat. As a teen, I would go to the river during the summer. I was usually afraid to go in to the water once I saw that the “rocks” at the bottom were moving. We would also go to the Oregon Coast and I was told “watch out for the jelly fish, they can sting you”. I played in the ocean only once or twice always fearing what might be touching me.
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Unexpected Lessons at the IDC
About the IDC, what can I say? You learn so much about yourself and where you are in the dive world when you go through it – it’s truly amazing. During these two weeks of daily, intensive training, I had the one of the most fun, stressful, crazy, and growing periods of my life. I met a lot of really cool people and got “knowed up” by some very excellent instructors. We endured a lot of struggles, misinterpretations of training standards, and huge learning curves, but in the end you know what they call me? INSTRUCTOR!!
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