Cayman Islands-Any Suggestions???

[djmathey]

We are looking for a dive shop/dive master suggestion for the Cayman Islands. Any suggestions with regards to hotels, resorts also appreciated. Thanks.

 

[diversteve]

Which of the three Cayman Islands are you planning to visit?

We also have a forum specifically devoted to the Cayman Islands. You may find answers to your questions there. It can be found here:
ScubaBoard - Cayman Islands

Welcome to Scubaboard...

 

[Eau_Girl]

Hi. I was set to go to Grand Cayman for about a week in November 2004. Unfortunately, Hurricane Ivan hit and forced me to change my plans. I still had a nice holiday elsewhere, but the residents of GC were forced to rebuild and clean-up. Haven't made it to the Caymans yet.

However, I was set to dive with the dive shop Wall to Wall Diving. The owners are friends of a good friend of mine. My friend has been diving with them on several occaisions and had a great time. I have no connection to them other than my friend's recommendation. I know they try to keep the groups on their boats to a reasonable size.

http://www.walltowalldiving.com/

 

[UncleJoes]

My Shop is planning a trip to Dive Tech on Grand Cayman in March. I've also heard great things about Sunset House.

 

[laurendell]

I took a trip to Sunset House with my LDS last May and had a few issues with the dive operation. Our group had one whole boat to ourselves, and generally the op runs fine, but one of our divemasters was a real jerk. On our first dive one of the days, our dive was supposed to be 50 minutes or something but I saw a tiny baby turtle in the shallows at the end so was playing with it for a little while. When I came up to the ladder, the first thing the divemaster yelled before I even had my fins off
"YOU'RE 9 MINUTES OVER PROFILE".
Oh... ok.... sorry...
My dive buddy came to the ladder a few minutes after that because he was still watching the turtle from the surface and he got yelled at even worse.
"THE WHOLE BOAT IS WAITING FOR YOU".
Ok, the whole boat was our group and nobody cared, plus we had to do our surface interval anyway.
"You two are going in LAST next time because you blew your profiles". As if we were children being punished.
So the next time we were the last to come up again since we were the last ones in and we "blew" our profiles again by like 5 minutes and the WHOLE BOAT HAD TO WAIT. I thought it was totally ridiculous and have never had someone watching my time like that before. We both use computers, so there was no chance we were going into deco or anything like that either so I didn't get what the issue was. To come up after a good dive to have someone screaming at you over 5 minutes is not the way I want to spend a vacation.
He also did other things that were pretty irritating me like telling me it was stupid to have a backup SPG in case my air transmitter stops functioning (which it has done a few times, or sometimes I forget to turn the receiver on or whatever) because it was another point of failure, and also told another girl who said she liked to wait a full 24 hours before flying just to be safe that "if she was so afraid of risk she should take up another sport". Meanwhile the girl had gotten bent the year before on another dive trip so was understandably cautious and was quite offended at his comments.
Anyway , if it was just him I would blame the divemaster alone and not the dive op, but my computer flooded on the 1st day (LDS hadn't sealed the back properly when changing the battery) and our Other divemaster (not the jerk) said to take it to the dive shop and I could rent another for free. I thought that was really nice, but when I went to the dive shop and mentioned it, they got really annoyed and said they didn't know anything about that. Now, I don't expect anything for free, and I thought it was really nice of them if they had let me use one of theirs, but it was really awkward since the other divemaster had told me no problem and then the diveshop was looking at me like I was trying to rip them off - it made me feel really stupid and kind of soured me to them.

 

[stevephilanyc]

We've been to Sunset House and thought the dive ops was great--staff included. The rooms at the resort were okay--clean and a great view but probably could use updating.

Steve

 

[UnderwaterBumbleBee]

We really liked Divetech at Cobalt Coast on Grand Cayman. They don't really take the boat from Cobalt's dock so you have a short ride to the boat but it wasn't bad. We like to location Cobalt is in, short drive to town and 7 mile beach. Close to turtle farm and grocery store. Cobalt had the best breakfast (delicious pancakes!) and pretty good food in general and you can add a meal plan if you want. Good shore diving. We've been to Grand Cayman twice and really like it!

 

[tvictory]

Divetech will definitely lend you a dive computer for free. They like to do 60-minute profiles and don't want divers to be timed-out because they're using table profile.

 

[padiscubapro]

I took a trip to Sunset House with my LDS last May and had a few issues with the dive operation. Our group had one whole boat to ourselves, and generally the op runs fine, but one of our divemasters was a real jerk. On our first dive one of the days, our dive was supposed to be 50 minutes or something but I saw a tiny baby turtle in the shallows at the end so was playing with it for a little while. When I came up to the ladder, the first thing the divemaster yelled before I even had my fins off
"YOU'RE 9 MINUTES OVER PROFILE".
Oh... ok.... sorry...
My dive buddy came to the ladder a few minutes after that because he was still watching the turtle from the surface and he got yelled at even worse.
"THE WHOLE BOAT IS WAITING FOR YOU".
Ok, the whole boat was our group and nobody cared, plus we had to do our surface interval anyway.
"You two are going in LAST next time because you blew your profiles". As if we were children being punished.
So the next time we were the last to come up again since we were the last ones in and we "blew" our profiles again by like 5 minutes and the WHOLE BOAT HAD TO WAIT. I thought it was totally ridiculous and have never had someone watching my time like that before. We both use computers, so there was no chance we were going into deco or anything like that either so I didn't get what the issue was. To come up after a good dive to have someone screaming at you over 5 minutes is not the way I want to spend a vacation.
He also did other things that were pretty irritating me like telling me it was stupid to have a backup SPG in case my air transmitter stops functioning (which it has done a few times, or sometimes I forget to turn the receiver on or whatever) because it was another point of failure, and also told another girl who said she liked to wait a full 24 hours before flying just to be safe that "if she was so afraid of risk she should take up another sport". Meanwhile the girl had gotten bent the year before on another dive trip so was understandably cautious and was quite offended at his comments.
Anyway , if it was just him I would blame the divemaster alone and not the dive op, but my computer flooded on the 1st day (LDS hadn't sealed the back properly when changing the battery) and our Other divemaster (not the jerk) said to take it to the dive shop and I could rent another for free. I thought that was really nice, but when I went to the dive shop and mentioned it, they got really annoyed and said they didn't know anything about that. Now, I don't expect anything for free, and I thought it was really nice of them if they had let me use one of theirs, but it was really awkward since the other divemaster had told me no problem and then the diveshop was looking at me like I was trying to rip them off - it made me feel really stupid and kind of soured me to them.

I never had a problem with Sunset house nor their staff (even though there has been a big changeover the last few years).

I do at least 1 trip a year, many times 2, (my next trip is jan 26 2008).. This will be my 9th year using Sunset House (I've been going to cayman for almost 20 years now)... alot of times how much freedom you have depends on YOUR attitude.. People with the right attitude and don't break the rules that were laid out are given lots of lattitude.. I know I have worked things out with the shop ahead of time and have had first dives of well over an hour (in that case my team is the first in the water (in some case before the briefing) and ready to exit as soon as the last other diver is exiting).. I'm usually diving with other rb divers (or solo) so if I took the attitude RT didn't mean anything I could tay as long as I wanted.. I never made anyone on the boat wait for me or my group.. The put run time limits for both safety and to keep the boat on schedule... Sunset House has a great safety record..

 

[MichaelBaranows]

We spent a week Cayman Brac last July and it was great. Stayed at Brac Reef Resort and dove with Reef Divers. Very laid back.

End of April we will be staying at Sunset House.