Blackbeard - Liveaboard - Questions

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Just a comment about travel insurance, but I have no experience with the Travelex brand. There are more reasons to insure a dive trip besides just trip cancelation due to weather. Blackbeard's is a rather inexpensive trip - although you will have other expenses such as airfare - but the insurance policy may also cover things like sickness and injury, and being transported to the nearest chamber for treatment, or property loss and theft of expensive equipment.

When we were younger my husband and I didn't bother with travel insurance and we experienced some losses but we just absorbed them and figured that they were offset by the accumulated savings of not buying travel insurance. We started getting insurance as our trips got more expensive and as our parents got older and their health deteriorated. We both have siblings that were always attentive and caring toward our parents, but it can still be hard to leave the country, and travel to remote places when loved ones are very ill. You never know what will happen and you may have to return home suddenly. Thankfully it never happened to us, but it did happen to some of our friends.

Our parents are gone now but we've continued to buy travel insurance for major trips, especially trips outside the US where our own health insurance may not be accepted. We get the annual, mid-level DAN insurance and also Travel Guard insurance for big vacations. You can negotiate what you want to cover. For instance we do not need to include "adventure travel" coverage because TG doesn't consider scuba to be adventure travel; but we do add on coverage for "transportation to the hospital of your choice" because that is important to us.

This topic has been discussed many times here on SB and there is no "right answer" so you have to make your own best decision. Everybody hates insurance because it is expensive and you don't want to use it, but it may come in handy when you need it. Perhaps @Wookie could share his perspectives because he owned and operated a liveaboard for many years.

I have posted this information in the past, but it is about an event (not connected to me) that helped me to finally make up my mind about the wisdom of taking travel insurance.

A dive shop owner named Gary McNabb retired and closed his shop and moved to Florida. While all these changes were taking place he let his DAN insurance lapse and forgot to renew it before making a dive trip with his wife to Ambergris Caye, Belize. On one of the dives he surfaced too close to the boat and suffered a serious head injury. He was transferred to a hospital in Belize City for surgery and critical care and later transported by air to Texas where he died in a hospital.

His expenses outside the US were very great and so his friends set up the GoFundMe page at the link below to try and help his family. I didn't know Gary McNabb but I am guessing that he wouldn't have wanted to leave behind a terrible financial burden for his family. He paid for insurance for years and probably didn't use it much, but the one time he really needed it, he didn't have it. So now I try to make sure that we will have it - but I hope that we will never need it!

But it is up to each individual - you will have to make your own decision - unless the LOB or dive trip requires you to take insurance.

Click here to support Gary McNabb Family Support Fund organized by Barbara Brower
 
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Thanks for all the info. One more question (for now). I know you have a night off the boat on the last day but do you get off the boat in the evening during the week at all? Thanks
 
Thanks for all the info. One more question (for now). I know you have a night off the boat on the last day but do you get off the boat in the evening during the week at all? Thanks

In the trips have done with them they do give you some beach time on a remote island. Not very long but it is a nice break.
 
Thanks for all the info. One more question (for now). I know you have a night off the boat on the last day but do you get off the boat in the evening during the week at all? Thanks
Usually the beach time is during the day, such as at the National Park or just a island with a nice beach. On all three trips, they've stopped at a beach, once the one with the National Park, another with the Stromatolites, and another with the lizards that will mob you to eat grapes. It was all pretty fun. You likely won't be stopping anywhere with a nightlife however.

The night off the boat is just the boat will be parked at Nassau. They return Thursday evening, and bring you your bags so you can pack. That evening, the crew usually goes to a bar, and you're welcome to join them or do your own thing. You can still spend that night on the boat, no need to get a hotel room. You must be off the boat by 0900 the next morning. They will offer a continental breakfast, but they will be busy shopping and cleaning and preping the boat; they get 30 hours to turn the boat around and be ready for the next dive trip.
 
We're even using a similar device in the military now- and I can't send Privates to Supply for Chemlight batteries anymore.

Yea but you can still send them for 10 feet of shore-line. My favorite was sending them to the armory to retrieve the "Prick E5"

Listen to @diversteve on the Glotubes. They are perfect as tank markers.
 
Usually the beach time is during the day, such as at the National Park or just a island with a nice beach. On all three trips, they've stopped at a beach, once the one with the National Park, another with the Stromatolites, and another with the lizards that will mob you to eat grapes. It was all pretty fun. You likely won't be stopping anywhere with a nightlife however.

The night off the boat is just the boat will be parked at Nassau. They return Thursday evening, and bring you your bags so you can pack. That evening, the crew usually goes to a bar, and you're welcome to join them or do your own thing. You can still spend that night on the boat, no need to get a hotel room. You must be off the boat by 0900 the next morning. They will offer a continental breakfast, but they will be busy shopping and cleaning and preping the boat; they get 30 hours to turn the boat around and be ready for the next dive trip.

Perfect. That's what I was thinking. Just wanted to confirm.
 
When we went on Blackbeard's many years ago there were a couple of nightlife opportunities built into the itinerary - and we really enjoyed them! That was back when the boats sailed from south Florida. I think that the current itinerary from Nassau is better, you won't have to do that nauseous deep-water crossing to the Bahamas, and the Exumas diving is better IMO, but we still had a good trip.

They sailed into Bimini one afternoon and we had the wonderful opportunity to take a long, hot, freshwater shower at the yacht club. Bimini was small and quaint and only accessible by boat or seaplane back then. The End of the World Bar - really was at the end of the world - or so it seemed! And the Compleat Angler hotel/restaurant had a great bar and a wonderful collection of Hemingway memorabilia. I remember that one passenger on our Blackbeard's ship got thrown out of the Compleat Angler bar for "excessively rowdy behavior" but he later described it as "a friendly throw out!"

Another night, all 3 Blackbeard's boats (there were 3 of them back then) moored off of a small island that was owned by a glass making factory and the crew and passengers from each boat were joined by the workers living on the island and we had a wild barbecue on the beach! There was a huge bonfire at the bottom of a cliff and they would bring wooden scraps and pallets by truck and dump them over the cliff onto the fire to keep it blazing. There was music and dancing (a boombox, probably) and it was a memorable experience.

It was a lot fun and it's nice to have the chance to get off the boat!
 
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I don't know if Blackbeard's goes far enough south to go to "Pig Island" and the "Thunderball Grotto" (we did those on the Aquacat one trip). If Blackbeard's does go there, then is it possible that they (you) might spent a night berthed at Staniel Cay.

I would assume that you will not do this and to treat it as a pleasant surprise if you do.
 
I don't know if Blackbeard's goes far enough south to go to "Pig Island" and the "Thunderball Grotto" (we did those on the Aquacat one trip). If Blackbeard's does go there, then is it possible that they (you) might spent a night berthed at Staniel Cay.

I would assume that you will not do this and to treat it as a pleasant surprise if you do.
That's a reasonable assumption, but I have heard that they will go that far south if the weather in their preferred area, the Foot of Eleuthera, is poor. The usual itinerary is a day in the Exumas, a run to the Foot, a few days there, run back, a day in the Exumas, and then the Thursday dive of the Lost Blue hole and another shallow site.
Yea but you can still send them for 10 feet of shore-line. My favorite was sending them to the armory to retrieve the "Prick E5"
We send them to collect Exhaust Samples. Ever see a kid try to catch turbine exhaust in a trash bag?
 
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