Best (Safest) Dive Ops from Ambergris Caye

[AWMIII]

Wives are like that.

amen!!

 

[Shasta_man]

<<Unless I am being paid to worry about the other divers, I do not do so.>> If this extends to all your diving, and you do liveaboards where we don't know who we're diving with, please announce this intention clearly at the beginning of the trip. I don't expect people to risk their lives for me but I do want to know who I can count on if I need it.

OP: Don't worry about going through more classes. Experience is your teacher and best friend now. Good luck.

 

[driftwood]

AWMIII is almost right - I used to be an active tech instructor here, with my own dive shop. Now I don't teach much - mainly specific "problems" such as yours. But he's right that the best way to do a deep dive like the BH is to build up to it. In the BH there's effectively no bottom, and to build confidence I like to make progressive dives on the sloping bottom we have on the Barrier Reef - however deep you are you can always drop just a few feet to a hard reference bottom. Because there's always stuff to see it's nowhere near as intimidating.

Hire Peter for your run up to BH. Met him a few years ago, great guy. BTW, he pointed us to Island Divers. We were impressed with Rudy's operation.

 

[cubbiegirlem]

AWMIII is almost right - I used to be an active tech instructor here, with my own dive shop. Now I don't teach much - mainly specific "problems" such as yours. But he's right that the best way to do a deep dive like the BH is to build up to it. In the BH there's effectively no bottom, and to build confidence I like to make progressive dives on the sloping bottom we have on the Barrier Reef - however deep you are you can always drop just a few feet to a hard reference bottom. Because there's always stuff to see it's nowhere near as intimidating.

This is best done over two or three days, depending on time available and your experience level. The PADI AOW course teaches you to dive to 100ft (it doesn't "allow" you to as you're allowed to dive to whatever depth you want). But the AOW course "deep dive", just one of them, can be as shallow as 61ft, so you don't necessarily learn much from it. The "deep diver" course in theirs teaches you to go to 130ft, but again anything deeper than 100ft meets standards, and the course if run by the book only contains two "deep" dives. I do it rather differently, with four deep dives, all to 130ft, and obviously spread over 4 days. But you may not have time for that. In any case, I don't "officially" teach any more because of local regulations, although I am certified to do so.

What is your experience of "deep" dives, and what do you regard as "deep"? Assuming it's adequate, I suggest two days of local diving with the first dive each day being deep, ideally preceded by a "confidence building" day. After those three days, all being well, you should be able to face the BH with a lot more confidence! For operational reasons I'd prefer to do that with Island Divers. Chuck 'n Robbie's is still very much in existence, but I have no idea of their PADI status. They still have a good reputation.

obviously you can't use intros for the BH dive - it's best for the 60-100 ft range. But it'll be a good idea to use it for at least one dive per day. Nitrogen is retained in the body for a couple of days or more, and you don't want it to rise steadily. The other key factors are to avoid alcohol as much as possible during the trip, don't drink coffee before diving, and keep well hydrated (with water). And always ascend slowly, especially the last few feet - take a minute going from the safety stop to the surface.

Thanks for the tips. Right now, we have 3 diving days planned in Belize, but we have discussed the possibility of extending it by a day. (We haven't booked travel and haven't made this decision yet.) As of right now, my deepest dive (real dive) is to 90 ft. That was a bottomless wall dive, which I think really built my confidence. I was nervous before the dive, but once I was diving I found it was really not a big deal to me that I couldn't use the bottom as a reference--I just had to be more diligent than usual about checking my computer. (This was not on my AOW course--my AOW course was in a quarry, so we only went to 80 ft simply because that's the deepest point--and it was 42 degrees so I wouldn't have wanted to go through another thermocline in that weather! .) I expect in Fiji I'll do some deeper dives, depending on what conditions are like and what dive sites we visit. My experience (and my buddy's) in Fiji will likely largely dictacte whether we decide to dive the GBH in Belize. We'll see how deep we end up diving and how comfortable we feel.

I also did a chamber dive to 130 ft awhile back. Now I certainly wouldn't call that "deep diving experience," since I didn't get wet but I did start to feel a bit of the effects of nitrogen, which was good experience. Although not nearly so much to act a total fool (unlike most of the men in the chamber... ahem... had to wonder if it was a little placebo effect! )

Anyway, this is lots of good information for me to share with my buddy and for us to consider in planning our trip! If we do decide to do the GBH, sounds like maybe we should schedule an extra day to permit our "warm up" dives. Sounds like Island Divers has an excellent reputation, so we'll have to look into them.

Thanks for the feedback!

---------- Post added August 26th, 2013 at 01:47 PM ----------

Oh, and Peter, I may message you again if we do decide to do the GBH!

 

[Blue River]

We were just on AC and unfortunately went with Aqua Scuba. The big boat stopped at Caye Caulker to pick up folks which made us late starting. They seem to have taken along fairly new OW divers as well as several of us with more experience (ten years, for both hubby and I--he has over 200 dives, I have 175). We knew to expect a shorter and deep dive at BH. We did it for the experience. We had about 16 divers, 3 DM. We had a 29 minute dive. What annoyed us was they way they rushed us along the rest of the (12 hour) day. 30 min SI before the second dive; dive profile was no more than 60 feet, 45 - 60 minutes. The DM was banging on the tank that we all had to go up at about 35 minutes. We were last up at 51 minutes. Nice lunch and a SI of almost 2 hours before the last dive of the day...profile of no more than 45 feet for 45 - 60 minutes. They were banging tanks for us to surface at 35 minutes. We did another day of diving later in the week with Ambergris Divers and liked them a lot. Amigos, we hear, doesn't stop for additional divers at Caye Caulker, so they were out on the BH site on time, and one of the folks who dove with them liked the dives a lot. Your mileage may vary.

 

[chillyinCanada]

Easy. Don't go with Aqua Dives.

It's been years since I've gone to the Blue Hole with anyone besides Amigos del Mar. Therefore they are who I recommend and there are many reasons why, not the least of which were mentioned in the prior post. Yes, the BH dive is a short dive but I've never beensignificantly limited on the two fabulous followup dives. One does need to keep in mind that a schedule needs to be kept to get the divers back to Ambergris Caye in a timely manner.

 

[cubbiegirlem]

Easy. Don't go with Aqua Dives.

It's been years since I've gone to the Blue Hole with anyone besides Amigos del Mar. Therefore they are who I recommend and there are many reasons why, not the least of which were mentioned in the prior post. Yes, the BH dive is a short dive but I've never beensignificantly limited on the two fabulous followup dives. One does need to keep in mind that a schedule needs to be kept to get the divers back to Ambergris Caye in a timely manner.

Thanks very much! I will look into amigos del mar.

 

[diveDavedive]

We just dove the Blue Hole last weekend, Thanksgiving 2013. We went out with Amigos Del Mar and they were fantastic. They had a really big boat and fantastic customer service. I would choose Amigos before any other dive center, hands down. Can't vouch for the experience of the divers in the group but each group went down with two dive masters, one leading and one following. We are new to the sport and we had about 40 dives under our belt before the blue hole trip. We went to 80-100 feet many times the days just prior to the trip so we had a "crash course" in deep dives. Yes we exceeded 130', 142' to be precise. Yes my computer yelled at me. Yes the dive masters know this, won't tell you this, but they are very serious about monitoring the group. I felt totally comfortable with the group, the dive masters and the depths. We did not experience any equalizing problems and had zero narcosis effects. We went up slow enough that I satisfied the deep stop my computer wanted me to do. My wife's computer wanted her to do a second deep stop (40' or so) as the group was starting 8 minutes at 20'. The dive masters had no problem with this. Surface intervals exceeded an hour between the other two dives. In fact, lunch on Half Moon Caye made the surface interval between two of the dives more like 2 hours.
Being so new I don't have the experience to have a real say in the matter. I do think that the blue hole is definitely an AOW type dive and I think the more experience the better. I think my wife and I had just the right amount. We are Rescue Diver certified, and as I mentioned about, 40 dives at time of blue hole dive and about 15 of those were 80'+, 5 to 100'.

 

[Downing]

Did ADM hang a few redundant tanks off the boat at 15 feet? Just curious.

 

[chillyinCanada]

To the best of my recollection they always have done so.