travel JOURNALS

REVIEW: Jack's Diving Locker, Kailua-Kona, on the Big Island of Hawaii

My first thought about Jack's, upon walking into their store, was "Wow, what a nice, big shop." Unfortunately, that's one of the only positive things I can say about my experiences with them.

After checking in for our reservations they sent us around back to organize our gear and load it onto the truck (for some dives the shop shuttles you from the store to the pier, where there is no parking). Frederick and I own all our own gear and needed only tanks and weights. On every one of the dozen or so dive trips I've been on, I've carried my gear bags onto the boat, but Jack's wouldn't let us take our own bags aboard; they made us unpack everything into their own, numbered bags. We later discovered that other people were allowed to bring their own bags aboard, so this was disconcerting.

It was soon clear that Jack's is a cattle boat operation, that they are used to inexperienced divers and they treat everyone as such. It took a half-hour for the gear and passengers to be loaded up in the trucks and ready to drive to the pier to meet the boat. Once at the pier, all the gear was moved onto the boats and another half-hour was wasted as the crew set up the divers' gear. Only after that was done did the boat captain give the required Coast Guard briefing and let the passengers board. I've never been on any boat before where a) the gear was set up before the boat ever left the dock, or b) divers were discouraged from setting up their gear.

Frederick and I told the crew from the start that we wanted to set up all of our own gear, period. Even after saying this we had to contantly be vigilant or the crew would start grabbing our gear and moving things around. I was unable to touch my own gear without one or more members of the crew watching, and one crew member verbally criticized me.

Our guide for the first two dives was a girl who was not yet old enough to drink, yet made condescending comments towards us. On the dives she would swim out in front of the group; I saw her stop and look back for stragglers two or three times total. At one point she was trying to convince the six divers following her to enter a dark cavern without lights, despite the shallow depth, the cavern ceiling, and the surge that was moving us all about.

Our guide for the second two dives was a middle-aged man who several times picked up coral-covered rocks and moved them around, looking for critters. He had no objection to grabbing creatures and bringing them to other divers, ostensibly to impress them.

When our dives were over, the crew made a production of "washing" the gear by briefly dipping things in a freshwater rinse bucket, then creating one large pile of gear on the boat deck. Much confusion ensued as people attempted to find their own gear, then find their numbered gear bags, all of which look alike. All of this was done before the boat ever pulled anchor to leave the dive site, wasting yet another half-hour.

When hiring a company for boat dives, I expect to be taken to good sites that cannot be reached from shore. (After all, why pay $125 per diver for a boat when you can pay 1/10th that price for tanks and do a shore dive?) However, all our dives were made just yards from shore, two of the three trips we made were just minutes from the harbor, and half of those dives were literally around the corner from the dock.

In addition, the standard tanks given to divers were only 72 cu ft. When paying so much for dives I want the most bottom time possible, and we did not get that with Jack's.