Feb. 17, 2015--Ulua and Kapalua;

Another beautiful day with light winds.  Still no trade winds, but the southerly winds are staying calm now, although it is bringing in more vog.  The outer islands are barely visible.  Temperature got up to the low 80's again according to our "stupid" $60,000 car.  So we were off to check out the southern coast for snorkeling.  We went straight to Ulua.  There was a pretty good surf coming in, but not too hard for us.  So we donned our snorkel gear and headed in. (a day or 2 later, an elderly gentleman was found dead floating face down in the water here.  I don't remember a trip to Hawaii where we don't hear of someone drowning while we're here.)  

  It was noticeably murkier then Kapalua was yesterday.  But we gave it a good shot.  Here is a school of blue trevallies or Jacks. 

  a couple of whitesaddle goatfish

  crocodile needlefish---notice the scatter in the water.

  male shortbodied blenny

 Did see an octopus, though.  Here it is when I first saw it----smooth and red.

 then it noticed me and turned to camouflage.

  another butterflyfish I've not seen before---I think it's a Blacklip or Sunburst Butterflyfish

  Paletail unicornfish.  There are a lot of these guys here at Ulua.

One of the really neat things that kept us there longer was being able to hear the whales' songs while we snorkeled.  But even though the pictures don't really show it, the water wasn't very clear.   (This was the only time we ended up hearing the whales' songs this year.)

 Stocky Hawkfish

 So we headed back to the car and back to where we knew it was good---back to Kapalua.

  This time we started out checking out the left side of the bay.  Founds a redlip parrotfish getting a cleaning.

  saw a white mouth moray eel.

  Pink tail triggerfish

  rock mover wrasse

  cigar wrasse

  another sort of cigar wrasse?

  Eventually we went to the point on the right side of the bay (looking out at the bay from the beach)

  blue stripe butterflyfish

  a surgeonfish and a saddle wrasse

  4 spot butterflyfish

  a young hawkfish , I think

  an ambon toby

 another new guy for me---a white tail chromis.

  I would have missed these little guys if Ken hadn't pointed them our to me.  I even dove down to take the pictures because they were so small.----Imperial Nudibranch

  squirrel fish (only saw one of these guys, they are very shy)

just to show how healthy some of the coral is way out there.

  male Bullethead Parrotfish

 a close up of the cute little fan tail file fish that I saw for the first time yesterday.

  Crown-of-thorns starfish----I saw one of them at Makena Landing last time we were on Maui (2 years ago).

  after 4 hours of nonstop snorkeling here at Kapalua, we got out and sat up on the grass again to dry off a bit.  While we were sitting there, we saw 3 wedding parties getting pictures taken.

 For an early dinner we headed to the Maui Brewing Company in Kahana.

  My Kihei Kolsch was very good.  Ken just had soda---designated driver.

  I went with the hummus trio appetizer for my dinner.  It was quite good and filling.  I even have 1/3 of it left for later.

 Ken's chicken sandwich---which he thought was a little undercooked and just ok.  But the fries were good.

 we decided to ride up to Honolua again and watch the surfers until sunset.  Only there were no waves there today!  The far bank was where the surfers were that I took pictures of a couple days ago.  Honolua was really calm, but it still looked a bit murky. 

 we decided to check out the neighboring beach, too---Slaughterhouse beach. (found out a year later that's not Slaughterhouse bay.  It's actually part of Honolua)  I walked down and saw that it's a beautiful beach.  we had already changed clothes and it was nearing 6pm, so this was just a trip to check it out.

  After going down and back up, I noticed a couple spots where you can view it from above.  I could see where it would be an easy swim over to Honolua Bay on a good day.

  Then we looked for an overlook where we could watch the sun set.  While waiting, I liked the way these trees were lighting up.

  Sunset came without much flare again. 

By the time we got home, it was after 8.  So we skipped the pool and Jacuzzi.  Afterall, we had about 5 hours in the water today.  The water here on Maui is noticeably warmer then on Kauai---77 degrees, with areas of warmer water!  I also had a ton of pictures to go through!  I think I'll sleep good tonight!