I didn't plan to write this review as we had extenuating circumstances that contributed to a less-than-stellar experience. But, I think you should hear the story. I'm intentionally omitting names.
We took a cruise departing September 30 and thought it would be nice to get in a couple of dives the day before as we had our gear with us and planned to dive at every port the ship visited. I didn't expect much from diving Oahu but searched for operators in the area. The Reef Pirates website seemed pretty well put together, their rates were attractive, and most importantly they offer pick up and drop off service in the Waikiki area.
I phoned them the day before we dove to let them know we made it to the island and where to pick us up. On this and every prior call, the people I spoke with were courteous, helpful, and spent plenty of time talking to me. They never rushed me off the phone or acted like they were too busy to address my questions. It was casually mentioned that my wife and I were the only divers who had booked that day.
We were picked up on time in a total beater Chevy Astro van. If you've been to Hawaii you know that vehicles there tend not to be in primo condition, so other than the fact that it was really hard to hear our driver (who was also our divemaster) over the exhaust and wind noise (the A/C didn't work and the radio was totally f'ed up), we weren't particularly put off.
The operation is out of the Koko Marina Center, a strip mall just around the point from Hanauma Bay. I don't know the affiliation they have with the surf shop at which you pay for your dives. It's not a dive shop, but that didn't matter to or concern me at all.
The dive boat had returned from the morning dives as scheduled. We got on the boat and dropped off our gear. Looking over the boat, it seemed in overall good condition and set up adequately for diving. While we were waiting for everyone to get on the boat, handle the paperwork, etc. the captain was not doing so well. He was really sick and was throwing up. It took him quite some time to decide that he just wasn't going to make it for the afternoon trips (we expected to go out mid-morning but it was almost noon at that point) and finally called in an alternate captain. We ended up hanging around about an hour-and-a-half total because of that.
Complicating things, we had reservations for a luau that evening and had to be back at our hotel in time for a 4:10 PM pickup, which normally would be OK. We had already paid on arrival for our dives, but were contemplating cancelling as it was getting quite late and we heard conditions that day were not at all good. During the wait, we were given a couple of T-Shirts as compensation for the inconvenience (I happen to be wearing mine at the moment). That was OK, but what was lacking was good communication on what was going on and how long the delay would take. Had we not spent a fair amount of time in Hawaii previously, we may not have been familiar with the concept of Island Time and probably would have been screaming at people and demanding a refund. Maybe we should have, but we were at the start of a three week vacation and were trying to be chill.
We finally left the dock at nearly 12:30 PM. Given our time constraints due to the delay, we could not get to any of the preferred sites. I can't fault Reef Pirates for the less than optimal diving conditions. No one can control the weather. Where I will fault the experience is with the dive master we had that day. In order to help fill the boat, there were some "club members" on board. I don't know or care how they got on board, what they paid, whatever, but when we were in familiar to all of them but new to me and my wife waters, they pretty much just took off swimming. Visibility at the start of the first dive was maybe 30-40 feet, and we had to swim at a good clip to keep up with the group and couldn't enjoy the first dive.
Vis on the second dive was better (again, not the responsibility of the operator or crew) but we were still swimming swimming swimming non-stop. Bottom times? 31 minutes the first dive with a max depth of 38 feet, 28 the second, max depth 41 feet . Compare it to our next dive in Tahiti, max depth 68 feet with a 55 minute bottom time. In the end, I feel we didn't get the experience for which we paid.
On the positive side, everyone worked hard to get us back to our hotel on time, and we made it no problem.
Would I dive with Reef Pirates again? That's really the bottom line of the review, isn't it? I would in fact give them one more chance as they didn't totally alienate me, and the boat and rental equipment were in good shape, which makes me think that they are not overall bad. But if I did use them again I would try to make sure that the boat was full of divers I knew and that there were no time constraints. I wouldn't say that everything that could go wrong on this trip did, but in the end our overall opinion was that it mostly sucked. read more