Cayman Brac Beach Resort - Shore Diving?

[hthomps]

Planning my first visit to the Brac and will be staying at the Cayman Brac Beach Resort. I'm debating boat versus shore diving in the afternoon, and can't find anything about the diving right off the resort. Looking at a map it appears that Tarpon Reef would be close/right there - does anybody know if this is accurate? Working through the options - boat, get a truck, or is there a decent reef just off the beach. If so does anybody know if CBRR lets you grab a tank and do night dives? Any info would be appreciated!

 

[KathyV]

No shore diving at CBBR, boat diving only. Two tanks in the morning and 1 in the afternoon and 2 night dives per week.

There is some shore diving available on Brac, search this forum for more information. I am sure that the dive shop could tell you where to go but you would have to rent a car.

 

[Doctorfish]

For the Brac and LC, we take the afternoon boat dives
Both lodges are in lagoons with no access to the diving reefs except by boat

There is shore dive access on both islands but not nearby.

 

[KathyV]

There is a third all-inclusive dive resort on Grand Cayman that, like CBBR and LCBR, is also owned by the Tibbets family and has Reef Divers as their onsite dive op. It's called Cobalt Coast Grand Cayman Resort and they offer 2 boat dives in the morning and unlimited shore diving on the house reef, see link below.

It was bought by the Tibbets family late last year but it had been a popular GC dive resort for many years under a different owner. Divetech used to be the onsite dive op but now it is Reef Divers (both operations have good reputations).

It is at the north end of GC and off the beaten bath. I have never stayed there but they are close to the North Wall so the diving should be very good, but I understand that they can get winded out pretty easily. That shouldn't hurt the boat diving too much because they can go to another area to find good diving, but it could affect the house reef shore dives.

Grand Cayman All Inclusive Resort | Cobalt Coast

 

[drrich2]

If you go to this thread, scroll down to post #'s 9 & 10, and see this bit:

Cayman Brac is occasionally mentioned regarding shore diving. Vincent54 posted his experience with that and reported one way to do it was grab tanks from Reef Divers or Scuba Shack (at the latter he paid $10 U.S. air, $12 nitrox/tank, tanks by the dozen). He noted it more difficult than Bonaire; if there’s wind very little of Brac is calm. If it’s calm, he heads to northeastern spots, but didn’t recommend some end-of-island sites when surge is up (can get unpredictable currents), and the southeast is also advanced (lots of surge, hard to get in & out).

 

[divezonescuba]

We are sitting at the Cayman brac airport now. more about that once we get back to the States

Our group did between 2 and 4 two tank boat dive trips with reef divers. This included a trip to Little Cayman.

We did between 10 and 18 dives total per person including a number of night dives.

We shore dove every day. Reef divers allowed us to have two tanks a piece. Brac scuba shack would only allow us one tank per person and was only open for two hours per day. although they said we could call them when we needed fills, it would have been too inconvenient to go back to the brac scuba shack after every dive as some of us did four dives a day

The sites we used were Scott's dock / cemetery wall / mv Kissimmee, buccaneer reef / mv tibbetts, radar reef, and creek dock / Panama Canal / handcuff reef / police reef. All of these had easy entry ladders or steps.

If you do do any shore diving rent or bring an inflatable dive flag. We got stopped by the police at one site and were told to go back to the other side of the island to get a dive flag. You can rent a conventional dive flag for $5 a day from reef divers.

If the weather is not rough you can easily swim out to the my tibbets contrary to what we were told.

We could not dive anywhere on the south shore due to the surge. We wanted to dive kings point but it would have been suicide. The whole south shore is littered with debris and there is a lot of iron shore.

We also tried to swim off of our location at secluded sunsets but did not want to damage the coral and sea fans.

 

[KathyV]

...We shore dove every day. Reef divers allowed us to have two tanks a piece. Brac scuba shack would only allow us one tank per person and was only open for two hours per day. although they said we could call them when we needed fills, it would have been too inconvenient to go back to the brac scuba shack after every dive as some of us did four dives a day. The sites we used were Scott's dock / cemetery wall / mv Kissimmee, buccaneer reef / mv tibbetts, radar reef, and creek dock / Panama Canal / handcuff reef / police reef. All of these had easy entry ladders or steps. If you do do any shore diving rent or bring an inflatable dive flag. We got stopped by the police at one site and were told to go back to the other side of the island to get a dive flag. You can rent a conventional dive flag for $5 a day from reef divers...

This is great information, thank you for sharing! Where is Secluded Sunsets? I am guessing the West End!

This is the first time that I have heard about combining boat dives and shore dives with Reef Divers. What was the price for a tank and weights and is the price in US or CI dollars? Or do they sell you an unlimited shore diving package?

I have always heard that there are shore diving options on Brac but could never get much information about the sites. Did the dive shop direct you to the sites? I see that you dived Radar Reef, did you also dive Atlantis? Is worth it? Thanks!

 

[hthomps]

Thanks everybody - this is exactly what I needed. Now I just need to decide if I want to be lazy and get the afternoon boat package or get a car and explore. Or maybe even mix it up and do a little of both, although it looks like we'll end up paying more for the boat dives if we don't book the entire week.

 

[divezonescuba]

We now think that Cayman Brac is way better than Bonaire for shore diving. It may completely replace Bonaire for our group shore diving trips.

In particular, there are a number of docks / basins with ladders, the entries are far easier than Bonaire. There are a couple of sources for shore diving including the dive shops. There is a also book that has the words adventure and cayman brac in the title that we found at the complex.

Most people who stay at the resorts or larger complexes do not rent cars, so it is difficult to do any shore diving. Reef divers also includes afternoon dives in their packages as well, so that limits the interest in shore diving.

You pay $108 per two tank boat dive with reef divers if you don't have the package. The fuel surcharge to Little is another $35. So it is way more expensive for the boat dives if you do it al a carte.

In reality, the only boat dive that you must do is Little Cayman. After doing the Tibbits once from the boat, we did it a second time from the shore. It took a few minutes to get out there, but it is within the capabilities of any experience diver that does mind a little exercise. Of course, any boat dive is likely to be less strenuous and more convenient than a shore dive, so I don't see shore diving eating into the boat diving industry on Cayman Brac particularily with divers staying at the Reef Resort with an all inclusive package.

We rented the air tanks from reef divers for $10 tank per day us. The nitrox tanks were $15 US. There were no unlimited shore packages as in Bonaire. There simply is not enough competition for that to happen. It was suppose to only be $7 dollars for air refills the same day according to the US point of contact, but that did not happen. You are better off bypassing the US contact completely and email the shop directly. We tried that before we left, but could not get the email address. We did not rent the weights separately, but that may have had something to do with the fact that we were also boat diving with them.

I attempted to find Atlantis a couple of times, but ended running out of time. I could only find the dolphin statue. I would suggest swimming on the surface to one of the buoys and looking down in the water rather than swimming around aimlessly like we did.

Secluded Sunsets is a property on the northwest most corner of the island. The complex consists of several units either connected or next to each other. We rented out the whole complex and had a wonderful time there.

 

[KathyV]

Thanks everybody - this is exactly what I needed. Now I just need to decide if I want to be lazy and get the afternoon boat package or get a car and explore. Or maybe even mix it up and do a little of both, although it looks like we'll end up paying more for the boat dives if we don't book the entire week.

Just wondering if you already have a buddy lined up for shore diving on Brac? The Cayman dive ops usually insist on buddy pairs for boat diving and they will pair you up if you are a single diver. They may also insist on a buddy team before renting tanks for shore diving, I'm not sure about that.

My understanding is that it is cheapest to sign up for the full boat dive package with Reef Divers in advance (2 morning tanks and 1 afternoon tank) and that it is more expensive to add on extra dives after you get there.

Since this is your first trip to Brac, and you are not sure about doing shore dives, you might want to take the full boat dive package this time and check things out while you are there to plan for a future trip.

We always stay at CBBR and we rent a car for one day to explore the island. It's not large and you will have time to look around. The front desk at the hotel will help you to rent a car, but insist that it has good A/C because we had to return a car one time.

Just an FYI, if you plan to spend any time on Grand Cayman and rent a car, save your temporary driving permit (20$ I think?) because it is good for a month and you can use it on all three of the Cayman islands.

Have you been to Little Cayman? Diving the Bloody Bay Wall and Jackson's Bight is spectacular IMO. We love both Brac and Little and if you have the chance to take the 2 tank trip to LC for an extra $35 be sure to take advantage of the opportunity.

The 2 islands are only 5 miles apart and if enough guests are interested and the weather is good they will take a boat over there one day for the 2 morning dives. Reef Divers is also the dive op at Little Cayman Beach Resort and the two hotels are owned by the Tibbets family so they make mutual accommodations. If enough guests at the LCBR want to dive the Tibbets wreck (the Russian Frigate) they will take a boat over to Brac for an extra charge.

The Tibbets is a nice, easy wreck dive, so make sure that the boat you are assigned to plans to dive it one day while you are there. If not they can temporarily move you over to another boat so that you can dive it. There is no extra charge to dive the wreck if you are staying at CBBR and diving with RD. The only extra charges are for night dives and the trip over to LC to dive BBW.

When are you going to CB? Have fun!