Posted by TDI Diver on September 25, 2001 at 00:24:26:
Left for Maui on Friday Sept 14 after a 12 hour delay at LAX, the good news is they kept the Red Carpet Lounge open until the last flight out around 11pm which was ours.
I was scheduled to dive the PBY-4 off of Maalea on Saturday but I was also supposed to be in Maui Friday afternoon, so we re-scheduled the dive for Sunday.
I have tried to dive this wreck three time before but was unable to for various reasons, big swell, strong current, crew could not find the wreck did a 205 ft sand dive etc.
But at long last all came together and we made the dive on Sunday the 16th at the late hour (for Maui diving) of 7:00am. The wreck is not intact and a lot of it is now covered by sand. But the tail section is intact and the tail guns are still there. This is a deep dive near the midle of the channel and the plane sits on the sand with nothing else around (so you don't want to miss it). There are a few reef fish around, but the plane is covered with large black coral bushes. Visibility in mid channel is great, well over 100' or as far as you can see in the open ocean. The water temp this time of year in Maui is normally in the mid to upper 70's, however the water is a little warmer this year. The temp on the bottom was about 74 degrees. The warm water and the great vis made out deco much easier to do, though we were basically hanging in the blue. This is a much different experience than the Doria dive in July.
The water being so warm and clear at 205 it felt like being in pool at 12 feet. We used trimix for bottom gas and did our deco of 36% and 100%
The video and pictures of the tail guns and black coral make this a dive worth doing, but good luck finding someone that knows where the wreck is or that it even exists. If you do find someone its not likely that they will take you there, it took me about 2 years of "relationship building" plus some equipment deals and free advanced nitrox/deco/trimix certs for the crew to get the person that took me out to do so, and of course I still had to pay for the trip as a private charter though at a "reduced rate".
The next day it was off to Molokini for a "bottom of the back wall" dive.
Don't ask me why but I have wanted to dive to the bottom of the back wall of Molo for a couple of years now, this year I got to do it and I didn't have to pay for the charter. I went along for the ride on a reqular charter trip with a friend and he and I managed to sneak in our own trimix/drift deco dive. My friend, I'll call him "Joe" to protect his job has told me there is not much to see at the bottom of the wall. He was right. Basically the wall drops pretty much vertical down to a sloping sand bottom which we hit at about 260. The sand continues to slope down out of sight. The wall at this depth looks pretty much the same as it does at 130 or 140 except that again there are some large black coral bushes here. We did manage to find a tinkers butterfly on our way down at about 160 but we could not get any pictures due to the very strong current pushing us along at that depth. At about 200 the current let up a little and by the time we hit the "bottom" the current was pretty light.
Our deco proved to be interesting. Due to some weird swells that were running last week, sweels from both north and south at the same time and the trade starting much earlier than normal. The current was running "backwards" in this area from normal. The current normally runs around the back side and somewhat away from the wall near the surface. But this day it ran along the wall around the corner and into the crater and if was very strong. We did our deco hanging on bags and by the time we finished our deco we were almost to mid-reef inside the crater where the boat picked us up. Again the water was very warm and the vis was as good as any pool, but the current and the swell was a challenge.
I also did a day of "recreational" diving at Molokini as well as a night dive. I'll post more later.
Be safe;