Question 1st Time to Bonaire / Theft from vehicles while shore diving / Dive Buddies

[ReadyTo Dive]

Is anyone able to confirm that UDT are still in business? They were a brand new company just before the pandemic.

We were there and rented from them 60 days ago.

 

[rx7diver]

Right on! About 45 mins from the Straits of Mackinac. That's our playground. I dive around Drummond Island mostly. I try to go at least once or twice a week once the ice moves out.

[HIJACK/]
Love the UP! I lived midway between St Ignace and Sault Ste Marie (Kincheloe AFB/Rudyard) for a year when I was 15 (a long time ago). Years later, when I was living in southeast MI, I would visit the area often whenever I headed north to dive the Mackinac Straits, Whitefish Point, or Isle Royale. Fun time living up there!

rx7diver
[/HIJACK]

 

[Dan V]

[HIJACK/]
Love the UP! I lived midway between St Ignace and Sault Ste Marie (Kincheloe AFB/Rudyard) for a year when I was 15 (a long time ago). Years later, when I was living in southeast MI, I would visit the area often whenever I headed north to dive the Mackinac Straits, Whitefish Point, or Isle Royale. Fun time living up there!

rx7diver
[/HIJACK]

Very cool. Unbelievably I have not explored Whitefish point yet. Isle Royale looks very interesting as well. That one takes some planning from what I've researched. I've dived in Lake Superior in Munising. Some interesting wrecks for sure. I know Rudyard well. My grandparents lived there for some time, and my son went to school there for a year. We just bought a horse last in Rudyard. I'll be flying out of Kincheloe to come down to Bonaire. That's our local international airport. Sadly they just tore down a bunch of buildings over by the "Kinross Mall". Old Air Force barracks converted to prison property.

 

[wgw04024]

Just don't leave anything you'll be upset about losing. That being said, 4 trips and never had a problem. Leave towels, tanks, flip flops, and money somewhere in the truck. I don't think it's a wide spread as it seems.

 

[NDL_Diver]

Just amplified here since that is what we do!

 

[NDL_Diver]

Another tip?

Bring XL Heavy duty lawn bag (Lawn Bag works, 55 gal may require 2 per seat). Remove headrest. Place over seat back and around the seat. punch holes for headrest and replace. We add old or dirt tee over seatback to eliminate wind noise.

The seat is easily dried so you don't have a wet rear at dinner if you did a late dive. You can lift the Plastic off the seat part and scrunch it in the seat crease also.

 

[Groovetie]

Hey Dan
last year we used a Otterbox Drybox 3250 Serie for diving in bonaire. It workd perfectly for keys, phone, documents and some cash.

 

[wgw04024]

I’ve been wondering (not that I would test this first on a key fob), if you put stuff in a new Ziploc bag and evacuated as much air as you could and made sure the seal was closed, wouldn’t the contents essentially be vacuum sealed as the water pressure acted on it? Any residual air would just be compressed and there would be no force acting to burst the bag. Maybe you’d need a hard container around a key fob to prevent it from being crushed, but I don’t think it would flood.

I can't even keep a zip lock bag dry in the refrigerator.....let alone under water.

 

[Raphus]

I war in bonaire 2019. They stole my shorts, so i had to drive to the hotel without them

We left cloth , empty tanks and suncream in the cars. Our car got searched twice( stuff was moved, didnt saw anyone) and my shorts were stolen on a nightdive at something special. Nothing really bad

 

[drrich2]

On Feb. 23rd, my little insulated cooler turned up missing from my truck, as I discovered after returning from a dive at Weber's Joy up north. It wasn't expensive, it'd made it through a trip before, and by freezing things and sticking them in it with the sodas to keep things cold, it let me enjoy about 3 cold sodas over the course of the day between dives. My Stream2Sea sunscreen was in a side pouch, so that was gone, too. I don't see where anything else was taken.

This doesn't mean you can't take something; just view it was more 'disposable,' and ask yourself how upset you're going to get if it turns up missing.