Any comments on MY Red Sea Explorer?
- Thread starter Parlem
- Start date
Please register or login
Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.
Benefits of registering include
- Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
- A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
- You can make this box go away
specorelli
Registered
Did you find anything or tried it? TY
Yes, we were on it over new year. What would you like to know?
specorelli
Registered
MacLir
Registered
I would also greatly appreciate any information that could be provided. I am seriously considering this boat, too, since it appears to be one of the (very) few that has a ladder on its RIBs.Is everything too much to ask??
How happy were you with the boat, cabin, staff and safety?
What did you like the most? And the least?
And finally, not boat or operator related, which route?
TIA
Hello to you both.
I'll try to improvise a quick trip report for you, but please ask any questions and I'll do my best to answer them.
My two diving children aged 16 and 20 and I were on the Red Sea Explorer over the New Year of 2021-22, so just eight months ago. We did the North and Brothers route. This was low season, so there were only 9 divers in total on this particular trip (US, Catalan, German and Swiss), which was nice.
Even though the boat was scheduled to go to dry dock the following week (our trip was the last one of the season), it looked as good as many Red Sea liveaboard boats when they come out of dry dock. Part of it is the fact that the boat is still pretty new and it shows. The crossing to the Brothers was slightly rough (this was winter), but the boat did very well (steel hull). Bunks were comfortable and cabins very roomy. There was no need for AC, so I can't say anything about that.
The zodiacs both had a retractable aluminium ladder which made it easy to get back on the tender BUT if you were a large diver with a fully inflated BCD, the space was tight. I was told they they had plans to address this issue while the boat was in dry dock, but I don't know if they have or not.
The crew and dive guides (2 guides for 9 divers!) were a solid team and you could tell they'd been working together for some time. I thought the food was good to very good, but we've had better on less upscale Red Sea boats, to be honest (this trip was a bit of a post-covid splash-out for us). We felt safe at all times and the guides tended to err on the side of caution, which is fine by me. Night dives were done independently, as was the last dive of the trip, at a site which we had dived only hours earlier with a guide. The Germans and Swiss divers each had hundreds of dives and preferred to dive at their pace and pretty much on their own. We stayed with the guide, which was good at pointing out stuff that we might have missed otherwise.
I happen to have about 3-4 minutes of a Thislegorm dive briefing which I videoed on the boat with the guide's permission. Send me a private message if you'd like a link.
At the end of the trip we were surprised when we were asked to tip the captain and dive guides separately (one envelope) and the crew (in a different envelope). We hadn't encountered this on a liveaboard before, but more experienced divers might be able to say if this is common practice or not.
Overall it was a very good trip, but we would have been equally happy with a more modest boat at a lower price, as we have been other times. As I said, this was a bit of a present to ourselves.
- Messages
- 543
- Reaction score
- 402
- # of dives
- 1000 - 2499
Oh, thanks for clarifying that. To be honest, this was not made clear to us at the time but nobody made a fuss (you tend not to in such situations) and we just tipped as generously as we could, as we'd been looked after very well.Some boats do it this way, so you can favour the hard workes over the top dogs.
dflaher
Contributor
Thanks for the writeup!
LeggoDiveyDivey
Registered
Thank you for the informative post, i too am hoping to dive with them! You mentioned other less expensive liveaboards which have a similar standard of dives/food, may I know what they are?
Myself , I am considering BlueOTwo (cheap, old boats, good service), Golden Dolphins, Sea Serpent, and Red Sea Explorer (expensive and new)
Similar threads
