Ajames - Who was your DM?
A couple Questions RE: FIBR and Diving Roatan in general..
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OP
ajames54
Guest
As to the Resort itself the rooms were clean, the service was good and everything worked (though hot water was an issue).. better TV reception would have been nice as would a quieter Air conditioner and a more comfy bed. However I’ve had worse at more highly rated places, quite frequently come to think of it.
The beach is nice, quiet and relaxing, the bugs were not an issue until we had some rain.. after the rain they showed up .. a little deep woods off took care of that. There were lots of upside down Jellies basking on the sand in the water off the beach but nobody had a problem while we were there.
Food was the only real complaint, there were not enough options. At every meal there were eight items on steam tables one item on a grill, a salad bar, fruit and desert. Not too bad but they were not replenished fast enough and to be blunt the food was often rather bland. Nothing inedible or even wrong for that matter, just dull. We thought we might go off the resort for an ala carte meal once or twice but the cost the cost for a taxi to take the two of us anywhere worth eating was outrageous.
As for the diving which is the key.. we were rather disappointed. The Op was pretty good, helpful staff and rental gear in decent shape. The boats seem to be in pretty decent shape though one was having engine problems and leaving a slick where ever it went.. they were working on it. The boats seem to hold up to hold up to twenty divers and there was one DM in the water with the group, not the best ratio but when the DM is verging on negligent it really does not work.
The reason this review took so long is in large part because I keep re writing it.. I want to be fair but I can’t stress enough how poor my opinion is of the guy leading our dives, he pretty much soured my opinion of the place [1]. I’ll return to Roatan but it would have to be a real deal to get me to dive with them again, which is too bad because this place could be quite good given a chance. The diving itself is fantastic, the coral is amazing in both variety and in health, small life is abundant and varied. While there is larger life around it is not nearly as abundant as I would have hoped.. people have to eat I guess. Saw one Green Turtle and maybe a dozen mid size Grouper and a few lobster crab and conch, non tasty life fared much better.. lots of scorpion fish, pipe fish, surgeon fish and the like, small shrimp and arrow crabs were everywhere also saw some fire worms (which should not be moving that fast!) and a couple basket stars one of which was just massive. Viz was not as good as some places I've been, being limited to 60 to 80 feet (awwww poor me!) quite a lot of micro life in the water column. We had a couple cloudy days and one rainy one as a norther blew in and this seemed to coincide with an upwelling of comb jellies (why does that always seem to be the case). Along with the comb jellies we found quite a few box jellies and some yet unidentified Hydromedusa.
Please feel free not to read the horror stories.. they really should not be seen as a reflection on the entire FIBR operation.
[1] at least three times in the week serious problems if not injuries were avoided due solely to the skills of other divers in the group. These are only the instances of which I had a part.. these events may be subject to interpretation but they happened. There are other stories as well but these are the three I was part of. I don’t remember his name off hand but if anyone really needs it I can get it from my wife..
Second dive of the day woman and her partner get on our boat from a cruise ship.. we moor to the wall and currents push the boat out over the drop, depth was what 140 - 160 feet? I’m in the water at about 15-20 feet when the woman mentioned above plummets past me totally out of control. I swim down hard and grab the yoke and try to pull her up.. but she is so over-weighted she drags me down.. she is frantically pushing the dump on the BC. I stop the decent and level her out, her partner shows up and grabs her wrist supporting her in the water. I catch the DMs attention point out this floundering woman and suggest that she surface.. he flashes her the OK sign, she WAVES, he turns around and continues the dive. This poor woman could not even swim.. she spent the whole dive hanging vertically from her buddies grip over deep water pumping her legs like she was riding a bike and breathing in short shallow breaths.
First dive of a Different day.. Mary’s Place. My wife and I are typically at the back of the group on anything like an out and back dive so we were at the back here as well.. we get to the entry for Mary’s Place which is at .. what .. 105 feet? Waiting at the entry are three others.. two are guys we’ve been diving with and a woman who joined our boat that day. I’m not too sure what they are doing so I enter the swim through, she is right on my fins, cutting out my wife who follows. It is a pretty tight swim through in spots, may as well be an overhead in some places.. everyone gets through OK and finish the dive .. back on the boat my wife wants to have a word with this woman.. seems the woman was a bit nervous on the dive.. what with her writing her first basic open water exam later that afternoon.. she wasn’t sure what to do after she got separated from the DM.
Different day .. another out and back dive.. DM was supposed to buddy with a young kid on his first post cert dive trip.. this is maybe dive 12 in his history, the kids father (and buddy) had an ear problem so couldn’t dive. As usual my wife and I are last.. we are still swimming out when the DM and most of the group pass us.. because we can count we found ourselves wondering where the last three in the group were/are. So we quickly start swimming along the route we were originally taking.. some time later we see three people off in the distance still heading away from the boat..so we chase them down and turn them around.. one of them is the kid .. the DMs buddy. All three were very short of gas when the got back to the boat.
The beach is nice, quiet and relaxing, the bugs were not an issue until we had some rain.. after the rain they showed up .. a little deep woods off took care of that. There were lots of upside down Jellies basking on the sand in the water off the beach but nobody had a problem while we were there.
Food was the only real complaint, there were not enough options. At every meal there were eight items on steam tables one item on a grill, a salad bar, fruit and desert. Not too bad but they were not replenished fast enough and to be blunt the food was often rather bland. Nothing inedible or even wrong for that matter, just dull. We thought we might go off the resort for an ala carte meal once or twice but the cost the cost for a taxi to take the two of us anywhere worth eating was outrageous.
As for the diving which is the key.. we were rather disappointed. The Op was pretty good, helpful staff and rental gear in decent shape. The boats seem to be in pretty decent shape though one was having engine problems and leaving a slick where ever it went.. they were working on it. The boats seem to hold up to hold up to twenty divers and there was one DM in the water with the group, not the best ratio but when the DM is verging on negligent it really does not work.
The reason this review took so long is in large part because I keep re writing it.. I want to be fair but I can’t stress enough how poor my opinion is of the guy leading our dives, he pretty much soured my opinion of the place [1]. I’ll return to Roatan but it would have to be a real deal to get me to dive with them again, which is too bad because this place could be quite good given a chance. The diving itself is fantastic, the coral is amazing in both variety and in health, small life is abundant and varied. While there is larger life around it is not nearly as abundant as I would have hoped.. people have to eat I guess. Saw one Green Turtle and maybe a dozen mid size Grouper and a few lobster crab and conch, non tasty life fared much better.. lots of scorpion fish, pipe fish, surgeon fish and the like, small shrimp and arrow crabs were everywhere also saw some fire worms (which should not be moving that fast!) and a couple basket stars one of which was just massive. Viz was not as good as some places I've been, being limited to 60 to 80 feet (awwww poor me!) quite a lot of micro life in the water column. We had a couple cloudy days and one rainy one as a norther blew in and this seemed to coincide with an upwelling of comb jellies (why does that always seem to be the case). Along with the comb jellies we found quite a few box jellies and some yet unidentified Hydromedusa.
Please feel free not to read the horror stories.. they really should not be seen as a reflection on the entire FIBR operation.
[1] at least three times in the week serious problems if not injuries were avoided due solely to the skills of other divers in the group. These are only the instances of which I had a part.. these events may be subject to interpretation but they happened. There are other stories as well but these are the three I was part of. I don’t remember his name off hand but if anyone really needs it I can get it from my wife..
Second dive of the day woman and her partner get on our boat from a cruise ship.. we moor to the wall and currents push the boat out over the drop, depth was what 140 - 160 feet? I’m in the water at about 15-20 feet when the woman mentioned above plummets past me totally out of control. I swim down hard and grab the yoke and try to pull her up.. but she is so over-weighted she drags me down.. she is frantically pushing the dump on the BC. I stop the decent and level her out, her partner shows up and grabs her wrist supporting her in the water. I catch the DMs attention point out this floundering woman and suggest that she surface.. he flashes her the OK sign, she WAVES, he turns around and continues the dive. This poor woman could not even swim.. she spent the whole dive hanging vertically from her buddies grip over deep water pumping her legs like she was riding a bike and breathing in short shallow breaths.
First dive of a Different day.. Mary’s Place. My wife and I are typically at the back of the group on anything like an out and back dive so we were at the back here as well.. we get to the entry for Mary’s Place which is at .. what .. 105 feet? Waiting at the entry are three others.. two are guys we’ve been diving with and a woman who joined our boat that day. I’m not too sure what they are doing so I enter the swim through, she is right on my fins, cutting out my wife who follows. It is a pretty tight swim through in spots, may as well be an overhead in some places.. everyone gets through OK and finish the dive .. back on the boat my wife wants to have a word with this woman.. seems the woman was a bit nervous on the dive.. what with her writing her first basic open water exam later that afternoon.. she wasn’t sure what to do after she got separated from the DM.
Different day .. another out and back dive.. DM was supposed to buddy with a young kid on his first post cert dive trip.. this is maybe dive 12 in his history, the kids father (and buddy) had an ear problem so couldn’t dive. As usual my wife and I are last.. we are still swimming out when the DM and most of the group pass us.. because we can count we found ourselves wondering where the last three in the group were/are. So we quickly start swimming along the route we were originally taking.. some time later we see three people off in the distance still heading away from the boat..so we chase them down and turn them around.. one of them is the kid .. the DMs buddy. All three were very short of gas when the got back to the boat.
Ajames - Thanks for the post. It's good to know about potential problems. Sounds like some of the divers were exceeding their experience level on some of these dives. I tend to view the DM as a guide and not a lifesaver or instructor. Unless this person were my student or buddy, I wouldn't have been chasing her down deep. Nevertheless, the DM should have been solving these problems and not you.
Are you saying the lady at Mary's Place was not certified?
Are you saying the lady at Mary's Place was not certified?
OP
ajames54
Guest
She was doing one of her check-out dives..
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Under the agreement signed by all resorts who wish to dive Mary's Place, such a diver would be prohibited. This was proscribed because of the fragility of the surrounding structure.
Further prohibitions would easily be found in any Certifying Agency's standards as Mary's Place begins at 85fsw. To enter it any shallower would likely cause damage to the overhanging soft Corals.
A misguided tour could begin it at 105, it's entirely possible. It is also not to be done as a drop-off dive, ever.
I dearly love FIBR and everything it could have become, or could be. Unfortunately it has suffered from such an absolute lack of consistency for so many years, these stories just keep coming out.
They have positioned themselves as a Euro-style resort. If you have ever been diving in the South Pacific at places that cater 99% to Europeans, you'll see the similarities as soon as you walk onto Fantasy Island. They are a resort that offers diving. They have not positioned themselves as a dive resort.
The dive sign ups, the three boat, single tank schedule that spread the dive times around the continental styled timing of meals. It is not uncommon to see guests dining as late at 9 p.m., much as you would in the Maldives or the Philippines. FIBR's major guest base is South American and Italian or Spanish. North Americans are just gravy.
At the same time, they are still happy to open up the floodgates to the US and most notably Canadian divers. A wholesaler in Canada cut a deal that allows him to access a lot of otherwise unsold spots. It's pretty cheap to fly and dive from Canada. The problem is, these divers think they are going to a dive resort, not simply a resort that offers diving. They prove the point: You can't do both.
It is a study in synchronicity that FIBR shares the Shore Dive (Channel, the Prince Albert Wreck and DC3) with CoCoView... just across the channel. Here you have two operations with almost equal footing geographically, yet so different in every way. CCV has been described as "dive camp", and remember, FIBR is a Resort with Diving.
Look at the "shore dive". I have watched it for months on end from CCV just across the channel. If two or three FIBR divers do it daily, that would be a lot (outside of training cert dives). When they dive the Wreck, they schlepp you out over the wreck in a raggedy work pram. [see the picture below] They charge for a "night dive" on the Wreck via dive boat.
The resort I am watching this from the CCV "dive camp", where the divers just SCUBA out from the sandy shore to the wreck, and you can easily count 30~50 such dives each day. Then every night, another 20 divers go out and do the wreck via shore dive. Why the difference?
To some extent the FIBR dive is a bit less desirable because of the siltation from their dredged up man made (topless permitted
) beach. (Once again, think: Resort with some Diving) But it largely relates to the character of diver they attract. FIBR guests actually get all cleaned up and smelling nice for dinner. At CCV it is common to see people eat in their Lycras. I said common, I did not say pretty
When CCV guests are in the sack by 10pm after the night dive, some are kept awake by the thump-thump bass of the party that has just begun... at FIBR. Different style from what we are commonly used to as North Americans.Here's a story: Many years ago, FIBR placed large Rubbermaid garbage cans- those industrial 80 gallon monsters... right on the aft deck. That there's your camera rinse and holding tank. It went well until the day one slid off (fully laden with shiny red and clear objects) the fantail into 3000fsw. They have since tied the barrels to the boat with ropes. Instead of management learning a lesson and taking the blame, they "fined" everyone in the dive-ops major amounts of cash to pay off the truly dogged and insistent guests. It wasn't the kids faults. No consistent management told them to secure the barrels. (It helps if you understand how Honduras thinks and works, but just trust me on this one)
I tell this story for only one reason. FIBR management (with it's reactive style) since early-on has treated its employees poorly, has ignored mechanical issues, and so much more. There is a huge turnover in staff, compressors break down a lot, the DM's feed fish on most every dive, boats are iffy- more than one gets run up on a reef every year. They're not dangerous, don't misunderstand, but it is just a little seat-of-the-pants in terms of process.
FIBR is the single best bargain on Roatan, it is located within prime diving real estate, the experience is never, ever predictable.
Inconsistency has been the only consistent thing about the place.
For access to the exclusive wonders of the South side reefs, I still recommend it as a bargain. Just understand that it is what it is.
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Peter_C
Contributor
We stayed there last year, and my gal finished her cert while at FIBR. Our DM and boat captain, Pedro and Miguel, were great! They went above and beyond what the other dive boat did. The DM's lead the dive and the profiles were recorded, but they did not check on peoples depths or tell them what to do...or not to do. I saw vacation divers half out of control, but nothing like uncontrolled sinking over the edge of the wall YIKES!
My gals cert dives were done by the airplane in 20 feet of water, then the following day out on the boat. We never went off the top of the reef, so maybe 40 feet max. I was allowed to be her buddy and make sure she did the drills proper with her long hose and BP/W. Not sure I would call there training program great, but what do you expect from a PADI shop (GUE it is not).
There were some issues, but they handled them by offering compensation. I am OK with that as they were fairly minor issues.
The night dives were not charged for, but due to weather our boat was unable to go out safely at night. Something about the waves crashing over the bow. The skiff would drop you off on top of the wreck or at the gazebo anytime during the day/evening. They would leave full tanks for you at the gazebo if you wanted to dive the wreck at night or early in the morning. A simple phone call and they would pick up those that wished a ride back to the dive shop. We usually dumped our tanks and just walked our gear back to the dive shop. After all I did not wear anything but my shorts and X-shorts will diving there.
My opinion about our stay is a positive one
My gals cert dives were done by the airplane in 20 feet of water, then the following day out on the boat. We never went off the top of the reef, so maybe 40 feet max. I was allowed to be her buddy and make sure she did the drills proper with her long hose and BP/W. Not sure I would call there training program great, but what do you expect from a PADI shop (GUE it is not).
There were some issues, but they handled them by offering compensation. I am OK with that as they were fairly minor issues.
The night dives were not charged for, but due to weather our boat was unable to go out safely at night. Something about the waves crashing over the bow. The skiff would drop you off on top of the wreck or at the gazebo anytime during the day/evening. They would leave full tanks for you at the gazebo if you wanted to dive the wreck at night or early in the morning. A simple phone call and they would pick up those that wished a ride back to the dive shop. We usually dumped our tanks and just walked our gear back to the dive shop. After all I did not wear anything but my shorts and X-shorts will diving there.
My opinion about our stay is a positive one
We loved FI for the diving and the dive op was great. We've been twice. All the DMs we went out with were terrific --esp Daren. I like that you can stay with the same DM if you like or you can ask Robert for a change in boat and DM. Never had much current when we were there. Very gentle water. The food was okay but certainly not great. First time we went was considerably better so I'm interested to hear from others if things have evened out over time because our food there last year was disappointing. But we were there to dive and Roatan does not disappoint in that regard. It is a good buy and the beach is nice. I'm not sure if I'd love it there if I wasn't diving though. FI is not a large resort and doesn't have a lot going on other than diving. There are kayaks and a few beach sports events from time to time. The evening entertainment is so bad it's hilarious. And stay away from the all-inclusive wne --- it is horrendously awful!
Overall -- diving is top notch -- resort is a little down at the heel.
Overall -- diving is top notch -- resort is a little down at the heel.
RaginCajun
Contributor
Sorry -- there should have been an "i" in there! The wine they serve you out of the big casks is really bad! Have a beer or order a bottle of wine.
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