{"id":822,"date":"2014-03-27T21:48:02","date_gmt":"2014-03-27T21:48:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.divestore.co.nz\/blog\/?p=822"},"modified":"2014-03-27T21:48:02","modified_gmt":"2014-03-27T21:48:02","slug":"poor-knights-march-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.diveski.co.nz\/blog\/2014\/03\/27\/poor-knights-march-2014\/","title":{"rendered":"Poor Knights – March 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cyclone Lusi move over we are coming North!<\/p>\n

Not even the weather could dampen our spirits as we prepared for our live aboard trip to the Poor Knights with Oceanblue Adventures.<\/p>\n

While some chose to fly north the rest of us piled into the car and headed to Taupo for our first dives on the trip. We collected some tanks from The Dive Shack and while he lamented on cancelling several trips due to the cyclone he described the lake as being \u2018as flat as a turd\u2019<\/p>\n

Unsure quite what that mean we headed to the point at Acacia Bay for a deep freshwater dive. After a nice deep water entry we descended down the wall and headed out to 30m in the bay. The lake bottom is very silty and there is not a lot to see but the many koura are always entertaining.<\/p>\n

\"Tennis<\/a> \"Koura\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Swimming back along the weed line and over some dead trees we saw 100\u2019s of our small native fish and a couple of trout. The exit back on to the rocks was a little challenging thanks to the surface chop \u2013 so if you were wondering \u2018turds\u2019 are not particularly flat!<\/p>\n

\"Native\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

After a relaxing break the others were ready for a drift down the Waikato River. With only 1 vehicle I didn\u2019t get to join them so we went and checked out the exit point (well upstream from Huka Falls) then I dropped the at the start of the dive by Cherry Island. With a good briefing and the help of Google Maps they jumped in and disappeared around the bend. With luck I would find them again in an hour!<\/p>\n

\"Superwoman<\/a><\/p>\n

On cue they surfaced at the exit and after a swim through some eddies they were back on shore having had a terrific new dive experience, lots of trout, tyres and a shopping trolley but also swimming through rapids and surfing the flat rocks. They stopped off at the hot pools but felt a bit conspicuous in full scuba in front of dozens of tourists in togs so headed back downstream.<\/p>\n

The next day was spent driving up to Tutukaka with some particularly poor service at one cafe along the way to keep us entertained \u2013 after arriving with the wrong drinks the waitress just plonked them on the table saying \u201cWhatever!\u201d Needless to say we didn\u2019t stop there on the way back.<\/p>\n

In Tuts we finally caught up with the rest of our divers and managed to load ourselves and our gear onto the boat. We were ready to go diving!<\/p>\n

\"Giant<\/a> \"Me!\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The trip out was great and we had blue skies for the week \u2013 thanks Lusi.
\nEveryone was buzzing after the first dive, the vis may have only been 15m (but that\u2019s better than here) but the water was warm at 20 degrees and there were a lot of new fish to see \u2013 including schools of koheru, pink and blue maomao, the inquisitive Sandager\u2019s wrasse, pigfish and morays.<\/p>\n

\"Pink<\/a> \"Kingis\"<\/a> \"Yellow<\/a> \"Sponges\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Over the 4 days we managed to complete 14 dives, explored walls, caverns, archways, gardens and the Waikato Wreck. We had a night dive at Blue Maomao Arch to celebrate Ruth\u2019s 100th<\/sup> dive – a great achievement. Grace & Quinton completed their Advanced Open Water Course along the way – enjoying some deeper dives than usual, fine tuning their buoyancy and navigation skills and identifying the many new species they saw and photographed on their dives.<\/p>\n

\"Diver<\/a> \"Night<\/a><\/p>\n

All too soon we were back at Tuts and it was time to unload and say goodbye to Kevin and the other divers as we made our way home again. We had hoped to sneak in one last dive but Lusi had the last laugh with a pile of seaweed dumped on the shore, lots of surge and no vis. The \u2018smurfs\u2019 (aka 2 bus loads of students in blue wetsuits) were also slightly off putting so it was back on to the road for the final leg home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cyclone Lusi move over we are coming North! Not even the weather could dampen our spirits as we prepared for our live aboard trip to the Poor Knights with Oceanblue Adventures. While some chose to fly north the rest of us piled into the car and headed to Taupo for our first dives on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dive-trips","category-marine-life","category-wreck-diving-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diveski.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diveski.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diveski.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diveski.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diveski.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=822"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.diveski.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":842,"href":"https:\/\/www.diveski.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822\/revisions\/842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diveski.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diveski.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diveski.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}