charlesml3
Contributor
Gang,
Just got back from a week aboard one of the Blackbeard cruise ships. We did reefs/wrecks near Grand Bahama and Bimini. If you're only interested in the diving, skip down to the "Diving" section below. If you've never been on a trip with Blackbeard there is info here on that.
So let's get started.... The ship is about 65 feet long and there were 17 divers and 5 crew. Doing the math, that means tight quarters. There is little privacy on the ship. You constantly either find yourself in someone's way or you're in their way. If you are prone to seasickness.... this is a pretty small boat. We sailed back from Bimini to Grand Bahama in 5-7 foot seas (not my estimate, I asked the skipper.) It took 10 hours to make that trip. I was fine but it was a long day with nothing to do but hold onto something. Two of the crew got seasick and one passenger.
There is storage out on deck for all of your dive gear but that's it. Nothing in the cabins. All of your clothes, toothbrush stuff is on your bunk. You kind of end up sleeping with all of that crammed in the corners. That didn't really bother me but I pack really light. Even with that, there were clothes I didn't need. The operative phrase for a Blackbeard cruise is "Camping at sea."
The food was plentiful and surprisingly good. The cook did a fabulous job and nobody could ask any more of her. She really stepped up and did a great job.
The rest of the crew was a bit mixed. Very young. Not so experienced. They knew how to handle the boat but there was a clear lack of leadership. It seemed like the skipper had some great plans and procedures in his head but didn't clearly communicate them to the crew. They seemed lost at times.
The Diving: This is probably what you're most interested in reading anyway. The diving was poor to fair. Sorry, but that's how I saw it. I made 17 dives during the week. 4 of them were Good. 5 of them were "Why bother?" The rest were somewhere in the middle. Not that this is any fault of Blackbeard. The fault lies with The Bahama's lack of a protected marine park. There is none and everything is overfished. Any lobster over 6 inches is fair game to be speared and live conchs are virtually non-existent. No conchs = no spotted eagle rays. The result is reefs that lack life and vibrance. There wasn't much color. I looked all week and saw a total of two anemone. One Flamingo Tongue. Two file fish. Compared to Cozumel, Belize, and Roatan, the diving just wasn't there. There is a large dive op in Grand Bahama that has sunk several ships as artificial reefs and some of those are decent. The Sea Star was a good dive.
We did see quite a few gray reef sharks, especially when we were near the "Shark Feed" sites. They hear the boat and come looking for food. That was pretty cool.
Overall, the Blackbeard cruises are cheap, but that's about the height of it. For my money, I'll put the $800 towards a trip to Coz or Bonaire. I only have so much time and money for dive vacations and having 1/3 of the dives during a week be ones where I was wondering why I even got in the water.... Just not where I need it to be.
I'll probably take a beating here for this but I call it how I see it. Even if the ship had been huge, comfortable and wonderful it wouldn't make up for the lackluster diving. That is why I'm there after all.
I don't have my log book with me here but if you want to know which sites we dove, please reply here and I'll post them.
-Charles
Just got back from a week aboard one of the Blackbeard cruise ships. We did reefs/wrecks near Grand Bahama and Bimini. If you're only interested in the diving, skip down to the "Diving" section below. If you've never been on a trip with Blackbeard there is info here on that.
So let's get started.... The ship is about 65 feet long and there were 17 divers and 5 crew. Doing the math, that means tight quarters. There is little privacy on the ship. You constantly either find yourself in someone's way or you're in their way. If you are prone to seasickness.... this is a pretty small boat. We sailed back from Bimini to Grand Bahama in 5-7 foot seas (not my estimate, I asked the skipper.) It took 10 hours to make that trip. I was fine but it was a long day with nothing to do but hold onto something. Two of the crew got seasick and one passenger.
There is storage out on deck for all of your dive gear but that's it. Nothing in the cabins. All of your clothes, toothbrush stuff is on your bunk. You kind of end up sleeping with all of that crammed in the corners. That didn't really bother me but I pack really light. Even with that, there were clothes I didn't need. The operative phrase for a Blackbeard cruise is "Camping at sea."
The food was plentiful and surprisingly good. The cook did a fabulous job and nobody could ask any more of her. She really stepped up and did a great job.
The rest of the crew was a bit mixed. Very young. Not so experienced. They knew how to handle the boat but there was a clear lack of leadership. It seemed like the skipper had some great plans and procedures in his head but didn't clearly communicate them to the crew. They seemed lost at times.
The Diving: This is probably what you're most interested in reading anyway. The diving was poor to fair. Sorry, but that's how I saw it. I made 17 dives during the week. 4 of them were Good. 5 of them were "Why bother?" The rest were somewhere in the middle. Not that this is any fault of Blackbeard. The fault lies with The Bahama's lack of a protected marine park. There is none and everything is overfished. Any lobster over 6 inches is fair game to be speared and live conchs are virtually non-existent. No conchs = no spotted eagle rays. The result is reefs that lack life and vibrance. There wasn't much color. I looked all week and saw a total of two anemone. One Flamingo Tongue. Two file fish. Compared to Cozumel, Belize, and Roatan, the diving just wasn't there. There is a large dive op in Grand Bahama that has sunk several ships as artificial reefs and some of those are decent. The Sea Star was a good dive.
We did see quite a few gray reef sharks, especially when we were near the "Shark Feed" sites. They hear the boat and come looking for food. That was pretty cool.
Overall, the Blackbeard cruises are cheap, but that's about the height of it. For my money, I'll put the $800 towards a trip to Coz or Bonaire. I only have so much time and money for dive vacations and having 1/3 of the dives during a week be ones where I was wondering why I even got in the water.... Just not where I need it to be.
I'll probably take a beating here for this but I call it how I see it. Even if the ship had been huge, comfortable and wonderful it wouldn't make up for the lackluster diving. That is why I'm there after all.
I don't have my log book with me here but if you want to know which sites we dove, please reply here and I'll post them.
-Charles