The Polynesian adventure

FEELING BLUE

Jack’s Diving Locker

Jack’s Diving Locker has been a Kona institution since 1981, and its owners, Jeff and Teri Leicher, have deep roots in the local dive community. In a world where dive staff are mostly transients, Jack’s staff members tend to become part of the family and stay. And with the amount of repeat business that Jack’s has, their dive family seems to be spanning the globe in growing numbers of acolytes. You’ll probably have a member of the Leicher family on the boat with you; even after 25 years, they still have an obvious love for the eclectic diving off Kona. Which, really, demonstrates why Kona has remained a dive mecca.

Over the years I’ve been on dozens of dives with Jack’s and been endlessly fascinated with Kona’s best sites — Turtle Pinnacle, Suck ’Em Up, Kalokos and Golden Arches, Pyramid Pinnacle, the famed manta night dive and Kaiwi Point. But some of my most indelible memories of Jack’s happen between sites, in the deep, electric-blue waters about a mile offshore. This is treasure-hunt diving. Every time we head off into the blue, everyone on the boat is primed in anticipation of the unexpected. Jeff, his son Kawika and one of the luckiest captains in Hawaii, Greg McLaughlin, seem to have a knack for taking guests to just the right patch of ocean. And this part of the Pacific, for all its vastness, seems particularly crowded with pelagic passers-by.

Nothing can prepare you for the sensation of peering off into the bottomless blue, streaks of sunlight piercing deeply into the 200 feet of viz, and seeing a pod of pilot whales materialize around you. They look you in the eye with a sentience you can feel, then continue on in their relentless search for something only they know. I’ve seen beaked whales and a tiny frogfish known as a sargassumfish that was clinging to a micro-world of shredded nylon rope tangled under some flotsam, and I’ve felt a tingle of apprehension when oceanic whitetips pop in for a look at who’s in their stomping grounds. When the waters fill with a hundred spinner dolphins, clicking and squeaking in a huge cacophony, you can sense the sonar pings as they echo back an image of the awkward visitor in their water.

There’s one particular moment that will resound in your memory: just being in the water and experiencing the ephemeral caress of whalesong as it fills an immense ocean with its lingering lyrics. You’ll never want to return to the boat. But as they say, that’s another Kona day.

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