Cayman diving advice

[icouldcarelessbutdont]

Many of shore dives on Grand Cayman are restaurant dives. Eden Rock, Lighthouse point, the new Dive Tech Cobalt Coast and Turtle reef (aka Macabuca) all have food/adult type beverages right there on site. Macabuca is one of my favorite places to be.

People drink and then dive?

 

[gamon]

People drink and then dive?

Believe it or not, not only do people drink and dive but they also drink and drive.

It doesn't always end well.

 

[icouldcarelessbutdont]

Cayman Brac seems closest to what you want, but still nothing like Bonaire or Curacao.
Cayman has a few good shore dive facilities, but IMO mostly good for supplementing boat dives there not the whole deal. And traffic between them can be a nightmare.
I love Little Cayman but I prefer boat diving. It may be possible to do some shore diving there, but not so practical for a visitor. For starters, unlike Brac not sure there is anywhere to rent tanks.

I don’t think any op will refuse to let you set up your own gear. (Most people do bring their own gear.) Just don’t cop an attitude. Going with most of the flow of a valet op may be easier for both parties though, just watch and check your gear after. When we last dove with divetech (many years ago) they seemed less inclined to do the valet thing, but I don’t know now.

Yeah, our response to people is always "No, we setup our own gear, please leave it in the bag" but I've encountered all types.

The more we research the area the more we're realizing Bonaire is the most ideal place (especially for tech dives) and Curacao is ok, as long as you stay on the West end (but Directors Baai is still one of our favorites). We do over 200 boat dives a year, so we like to take a break from it, and especially in area with resort/tourist divers since that is also what we deal with here

At this point all thing seem to point either to resort style diving, purely boat diving, and a lot of valet type stuff, since we're looking for independence with shore diving it seems we're back at Bonaire, a first world problem.

Now, if there are other countries where we have good shore diving, we're all ears.

 

[icouldcarelessbutdont]

Believe it or not, not only do people drink and dive but they also drink and drive.

It doesn't always end well.

We helped out another guy by being his alternate DMs for a customer of his, little did we know the guy loved to drink before diving, it was a soup sandwich of a situation but he didn't get on the boat and we stopped helping him with future clients. People love to roll the dice.

 

[CT Sean]

People drink and then dive?

More often, they do it the other way around. My wife grabbing a table at and ordering while I finished rinsing the gear was a pretty nice way to wrap up a couple shore dives at Eden Rock/Devil's Grotto.

 

[Damselfish]

People drink and then dive?

A place to hang out by the water, grab lunch, do some dives, rinse gear and self, then have a post dive beverage and nice meal - all without moving anywhere. It doesn’t suck.

 

[bradlw]

That being said, is there a ton of shore diving in the Cayman Islands?

This is ancient history...coming up on 26 years ago, but I was at Grand Cayman on a dive trip back then, and we did a shore dive, just snorkels, about here. I logged it under the name Eden Rock. Yes I logged it becasue it was probably one of the best dives we did...well it was not as epic as the wall, but still it was a good dive. In the water for a full hour. I logged the depth at 40ft. I just remember it as a very well-developed reef with huge slot canyons. Large Tarpon and tons of life...and it was cool with a cruise ship passing close by.

I think we might have entered the water at the dive shop there, but I can't remember for sure

 

[Saboteur]

Macabuca. Possibly one of my favorite places. Dive entry is past the end of the bar on the right. Live webcam.

Web Cam — Cracked Conch Macabuca

www.crackedconch.com.ky