Maldives, Indian Ocean

Arranged transfers run from Velana International Airport to the boat at 12:00 and 16:00, so plan your flight to land in time for one of them. If you are arriving the night before, there are plenty of hotels a few minutes from the terminal, and we recommend it.

Settle into your cabin, meet the crew over a safety briefing, set up gear, and get oriented. Serenity stays moored in port the first night, so there is no diving today. Use the evening to sort camera rigs and get your kit laid out before the week starts moving.

Five days of diving, three dives on most days, with the schedule built around the tides and the moon rather than a fixed list of sites.

We open with a check dive near Malé, somewhere forgiving to sort weights and trim, then turn north. There is no night sailing permitted in the Maldives and the crossings up here are long, so the route is shaped by daylight as much as by dive sites. Part of the reason we took the whole boat is so those hours get spent where we want them.

Lhaviyani first. Kuredu Express is the anchor, a channel drift that runs hard on the tide and pulls in grey reefs, eagle rays and trevally. Kuredu Caves for turtles in the overhangs. The Shipyard for two wrecks, one still breaking the surface. Fushivaru Thila is a protected cleaning station and one of the more reliable places in the atoll to sit and wait for mantas to come to you.

Then the crossing to Baa, which can take up to seven hours and needs decent weather. Baa is where we plant ourselves for the moon. The full moon falls on August 17, day three, and the spring tides around it are what drive plankton into Hanifaru Bay. We are in the right atoll, on the right days, with time to spare on either side.

Hanifaru is snorkel only and access is managed by rangers. Liveaboards do not enter the bay directly, so when the call comes we tender in from Dharavandhoo for a session of roughly 45 minutes with a licensed guide. Depending on the day, that may take the place of one of our dives. It is worth it. Around the bay, Baa and Raa hold cleaning stations and thilas where the same mantas come in to be groomed, and those give us scuba time with them on a far more predictable basis.

We work our way back south through the week, picking up North Malé sites on the return leg, including Lankan Manta Point.

One night dive during the week, and a BBQ dinner ashore on a local island, weather allowing.

A few things worth knowing about how we run it:

• Mantas first. Every routing decision this week gets made in service of manta time, in the bay and on the cleaning stations. Everything else is what we do while we wait for the right tide.
• Tides and the moon. We do not have a day-by-day schedule and we don't want one. Sites get chosen during the week based on conditions, exchange, the wind, and what the rangers and other boats are seeing.
• Repeats over checklists. We would rather dive a handful of exceptional sites several times than tick off twenty once. If a dive delivers, we go back in.
• Ready to move. The bay can go off with little warning. A full charter means nobody needs convincing when it does.