John Kelly in Hawaii
by John Kelly

My sister, Anne, is an American Airlines flight attendant. Anne has been asking me to go with her to Hawaii for two months. Finally, I was able to break away for a few days from my hectic retirement schedule. Arrived in Honolulu, checked into the Outrigger Hotel on Waikiki Beach. Partied with my sister and some of her AA crew members. Rested up on Monday and scheduled a dive for Tuesday. Went with Breeze Hawaii. The first dive was in an area called the Pink House, because there was a big Pink mansion up on the cliff. The visibility was about 70'-80'. I was the only diver on the boat that was not Japanese. They were mostly students from Japan, studying in Honolulu. There was one old guy, 48 yrs. old, who was visiting his son. He was from a town south of Osaka, Japan. He and his son practiced their English with me. There were sixteen divers on the boat. As I gracefully entered the water, my swimsuit ripped. It was a boxer type with pockets and thankfully with a mesh liner. I thought something was amiss when I felt unusually cool on my right buttocks. Needless to say my tan line was visible to the 3 young female students who were diving with us. We dove close to shore as the cliffs were shear lava rocks sliding into the ocean down to a hundred feet or more. We stayed at around 70' working our way up looking into crevices and small caves. We saw 3 frog fish, all different colors, that blended in to their location, from brownish yellow to greenish. A five foot shark was coaxed out of a cave by the dive guide and scared the students. Water temp was $78^\circ$F at the surface and $73^\circ$F at 70'. It was a 40 minute dive and I came back with 1,000 psi. Surface interval caused two students to feed the fish, so we took them back to the dock. The second dive was pretty much a repeat of the first one only at a shallower depth. Rested up Wednesday on Waikiki Beach and enjoyed looking out at the ocean, with warm breezes gently blowing the coconut palm trees, I knew that everything was right with the world. Set up my second dive on Thursday with Reef Trekkers. As before, they picked me up at my hotel. On this dive there were five English speakers, one of which was from Canada. We made up a group and dove together down to a wreck 90'-110'. It was a cargo ship 140' long which was confiscated by INS when caught smuggling Chinese, and sunk. Made for an interesting dive. There was one big green turtle in the hold. It was his ``home'' the dive guide told us. Our second dive was along a discontinued sewage pipe line extending out to sea. It was lying 50' along the bottom. Dive guide found an octopus and played with it for about 5 minutes. It was about 3' long. When the guide let go of the octopus it swam to the bottom and completely covered himself with small rocks in about 4 seconds. How would I rate the diving in Oahu? On a scale of 1-10, give it a 5. My last dive was with Nancy Stryble and Jean-Michel Cousteau at Fiji, September 1999. So this gave me a good opportunity to check out my gear. It all works great and I bought two new swimsuits. Looking forward to Cozumel, which you all know is a 10.

Boat Party Report
By Susan Carter

Several Alacostans braved Giants game traffic to come to San Francisco to John Purnell and Susan Carter's SF house on Sunday, April 22, in order to work on our newest club boat, temporarily called Pépé (pending the results of a naming contest scheduled for the June club meeting). John and Susan and John Drake and Kevin Dalley managed to patch the only significant leak on the boat despite its tricky location on the seam, and were reasonably pleased with the results. Susan was particularly proud of herself for managing on the first try to guess the combination of the padlock holding the engine onto the boat, when club members simultaneously realized that 1: they never got the combination from the seller, who is now traveling around the world for a year and that 2: there were ten thousand possible combinations! Yes, Susan considers herself psychic, but there was a trick to her genius: ask her at the next meeting...

However, Jack Cash and Rockie Rockafellow were not as pleased with the progress they made on the new engine (Another Merc 25). Many blisters and a broken starter line later, they were still not able to get the engine running, and it appears it may need some serious carburetor work. After they left, it was discovered that new member John Drake may have some skill rebuilding carburetors: this is the type of new member we especially love to recruit!

In any event, a second party to hopefully finish the engine work, check the patch job on the boat, and wire the trailer will be scheduled at an upcoming club meeting. Our hope is to have the boat party in May or June, with the goal of taking this nice little boat on a shakedown cruise to Bluefish Cove, Point Lobos in July...Dates for the boat party will be discussed at the May E-Board meeting; June 3rd works for the potential hosts...

In any case...Mark your Calendars for a Lobos Dive on Saturday July 7th.