John_B
Grasshopper
So I got an email from a friend in late February that her shop had some sort of a late cancellation for their group Roatan trip to Coco View Resort in mid-March, which meant they had a last-minute opening. Included was airfare and the standard CCV all inclusive package (room, board, 4 boat dives per day, unlimited shore diving, etc.; drinks are extra and unlimited nitrox is $125/week or $8/tank, whichever is less).
I had already done a couple of dive trips in the last few months including CCV just last November and Catalina Island in January, and I have a three more dive trips scheduled through this fall. Basically using up most of my time off for the year. So naturally I said, "Of course I'll go!" (Note to self: Exactly how much vacation do I get again?
) Seriously, I doubt if I would've have gone if it had been any other resort, but CCV made it a "can't miss".
This shop is about an hours drive from where I work, but it turned out that I didn't know anyone in the group of 24 (which actually consisted of this shop and a group of spearfishers from an affiliated shop that hosts an annual freshwater spearfishing trip for the larger group). So basically two groups of very tight-knit divers that included several instructors and divecons, plus groups of friends and families and whatnot that had all done previous dive trips together recently. Almost all were fairly active warm water divers. Many of the divers had been certified by the instructors on this trip. I was the only diver who didn't know most if not all the others in their group.
Our group was assigned the entire yellow boat with Gringo as the captain and Mark as our DM, and the divers in the other group were all on the Reef Nut. A couple of the instructors on my boat had been to Roatan before, but everyone except me was new to CCV and had to do the obligatory orientation dive (which was rescheduled for Sunday morning after what can only be described as a comedy of errors on the part of Delta Airlines, and both the ATL and RTB airports). So I managed to find a Saturday afternoon buddy at the dock/locker area to get a shore dive on the Prince Albert wreck to practice shooting a bag. Video link of the Prince Albert dive shamelessly stolen from YooToob here (love the soundtrack on this one).
This was a really fun group, but I soon found out they there were there for a vacation while I was there to dive. Everyone's dive vacation should suit their needs and desires, personally I can relax and drink beer and lay in the sun at home some other time. There were plenty of divers in our group going out on the morning and afternoon boat dives, and many did the second drop-off dives. But finding dive buddies for dawn dives or night dives in my group proved difficult. Most afternoons found the group relaxing with a few beers before diner, which is fine for them but would rule out a night dive for me. So a really great group, but not a great fit for me and the number of dives I had planned to get in that week.
The standard procedure at CCV is a boat dive that leaves at 8:30 am for a mooring line-based dive (sometimes done as a sort of drift dive with a live boat following, depending on current), then after a surface interval they do a drop off dive on Newman's Wall that ends at the Prince Albert, and through markers in the eel grass back to the resort. Then an afternoon boat dive that leaves at 2:00 pm followed by a drop off dive on CCV Wall that also ends at the Prince Albert, etc. Which wall for the drop off has mostly to do with the time of day and how well sunlit the walls will be. Neither is set in stone, on request they will do the other wall, and by the end of the week a small group on my boat was able to talk the captain into dropping us quite a bit farther back on CCV than normal. Gringo and Mark took very good care of us.
The wall dives and the path back to the resort are the primary reason that divers new to CCV are required to do an orientation dive with one of the DMs. It's always good to be able to find your way back.
This dive also includes performing a skills demonstration of a reg recovery and mask clear. The one complaint I hear from experienced divers about this is that they have [fill in the blank] dives and shouldn't need to perform skills for anyone. From my view, those two skills are one third of the Basic Six I learned as a UTD/DIR diver. And because I find nothing defogs a mask like warm saltwater, I've been known to just take my mask off underwater and rub my finger on the inside of the mask then replace and clear, which I think freaked out two of the teenagers on our boat the first time they saw me do that (but they had great buddy responses!). I also do a modified s-drill to start every dive. So it wasn't a big deal for me on my previous trip, but I do understand that some people feel like their honor has been challenged or something like that. And in every group there always seems to be some uberdiver on dry land that has no skills underwater. So I'm sure they take that into account. :shrug:
At the end of the week, I had done 28 dives over five and a half days. The south side of the island consists of mostly shallow reefs right off the island which are between 10' to sometimes 40' in depth for about 100 yards offshore before turning into wall dives that go well past 110'. If there is a standard profile on these dives, it's to start down the wall for 20 to 30 minutes and then ascend up to the top of the reef for about an hour of total dive time. These are my favorite dives. Unfortunately I discovered that I had a camera malfunction two days before leaving so I have no pictures to post.
The first two days were quite windy (20-30 mph) and the dive sites for the boat dives were rescheduled to sites that were as protected and close as possible, but a few people still got nauseous even if they weren't full-on seasick. By Tuesday the winds layed down nicely and the seas were calm which made for great diving the rest of the week. As the seas were calm we did a rescheduled 30 minute boat trip Tuesday morning to Calvin's Crack. Calvin's is a swimthrough created thousands of years ago due to seismic activity that starts through a smallish hole in the top of the reef, and is is my second favorite reef dive of all time. The highlight of this trip was an optional all-day three dive boat trip to the West End on Thursday. The reef structure there is different from the south side of the island, and that meant chances to see different sea life; we saw 16 turtles (four hawksbills and twelve green sea turtles) and a nurse shark on this day trip. It also gave us a chance to spend an hour shopping on the kitschy West End after lunch on the surface interval between the second and third dives. All in all a great day diving! We also spent a couple of other surface intervals at a sand channel between a pair of Cays where an island monkey liked to play a sort of game with one of the teenaged boys in our group. The culmination of the week was a Friday morning trip to do swimthroughs (twice) at the break in the reef at Mary's Place which is still my all time favorite reef dive. There was a friendly green moray eel on a ledge that seemed as interested in me as I was of him. Video link for Calvin's and Mary's shamelessly stolen from YooToob here.
There were a lot of other opportunities for activities. Rides on a three man ultralight seaplane around the island, ziplines, island tours, the infamous shark dive (I was told one person's Suunto dive computer went way into deco in the middle of their 70' shark dive), restaurant dinners out, etc. Great for those who were interested, but those of you who've been diving with me before know that I wasn't going to do any activities that would significantly take away from my underwater time. Before I left, I noticed that the resort next door was offering some sort free nitrox plus free beer package (apparently including some small print worth reading), while CCV was booked up full including the beach houses and is booked well into the future. This probably has to do with the resorts reputation as place that has been designed for divers and divers only. I'm told CCV gets more repeat business than all the other resorts combined, if that's true it wouldn't surprise me in the least. It definitely fits my mantra of "Let's Go Diving!"
All in all, I really enjoyed this trip to CCV and can't wait for the trip my LDS has organized in November. In the mean time, I've got a Coz trip I need to finish planning.
John_B
I had already done a couple of dive trips in the last few months including CCV just last November and Catalina Island in January, and I have a three more dive trips scheduled through this fall. Basically using up most of my time off for the year. So naturally I said, "Of course I'll go!" (Note to self: Exactly how much vacation do I get again?
) Seriously, I doubt if I would've have gone if it had been any other resort, but CCV made it a "can't miss".This shop is about an hours drive from where I work, but it turned out that I didn't know anyone in the group of 24 (which actually consisted of this shop and a group of spearfishers from an affiliated shop that hosts an annual freshwater spearfishing trip for the larger group). So basically two groups of very tight-knit divers that included several instructors and divecons, plus groups of friends and families and whatnot that had all done previous dive trips together recently. Almost all were fairly active warm water divers. Many of the divers had been certified by the instructors on this trip. I was the only diver who didn't know most if not all the others in their group.
Our group was assigned the entire yellow boat with Gringo as the captain and Mark as our DM, and the divers in the other group were all on the Reef Nut. A couple of the instructors on my boat had been to Roatan before, but everyone except me was new to CCV and had to do the obligatory orientation dive (which was rescheduled for Sunday morning after what can only be described as a comedy of errors on the part of Delta Airlines, and both the ATL and RTB airports). So I managed to find a Saturday afternoon buddy at the dock/locker area to get a shore dive on the Prince Albert wreck to practice shooting a bag. Video link of the Prince Albert dive shamelessly stolen from YooToob here (love the soundtrack on this one).
This was a really fun group, but I soon found out they there were there for a vacation while I was there to dive. Everyone's dive vacation should suit their needs and desires, personally I can relax and drink beer and lay in the sun at home some other time. There were plenty of divers in our group going out on the morning and afternoon boat dives, and many did the second drop-off dives. But finding dive buddies for dawn dives or night dives in my group proved difficult. Most afternoons found the group relaxing with a few beers before diner, which is fine for them but would rule out a night dive for me. So a really great group, but not a great fit for me and the number of dives I had planned to get in that week.
The standard procedure at CCV is a boat dive that leaves at 8:30 am for a mooring line-based dive (sometimes done as a sort of drift dive with a live boat following, depending on current), then after a surface interval they do a drop off dive on Newman's Wall that ends at the Prince Albert, and through markers in the eel grass back to the resort. Then an afternoon boat dive that leaves at 2:00 pm followed by a drop off dive on CCV Wall that also ends at the Prince Albert, etc. Which wall for the drop off has mostly to do with the time of day and how well sunlit the walls will be. Neither is set in stone, on request they will do the other wall, and by the end of the week a small group on my boat was able to talk the captain into dropping us quite a bit farther back on CCV than normal. Gringo and Mark took very good care of us.
The wall dives and the path back to the resort are the primary reason that divers new to CCV are required to do an orientation dive with one of the DMs. It's always good to be able to find your way back.
This dive also includes performing a skills demonstration of a reg recovery and mask clear. The one complaint I hear from experienced divers about this is that they have [fill in the blank] dives and shouldn't need to perform skills for anyone. From my view, those two skills are one third of the Basic Six I learned as a UTD/DIR diver. And because I find nothing defogs a mask like warm saltwater, I've been known to just take my mask off underwater and rub my finger on the inside of the mask then replace and clear, which I think freaked out two of the teenagers on our boat the first time they saw me do that (but they had great buddy responses!). I also do a modified s-drill to start every dive. So it wasn't a big deal for me on my previous trip, but I do understand that some people feel like their honor has been challenged or something like that. And in every group there always seems to be some uberdiver on dry land that has no skills underwater. So I'm sure they take that into account. :shrug:At the end of the week, I had done 28 dives over five and a half days. The south side of the island consists of mostly shallow reefs right off the island which are between 10' to sometimes 40' in depth for about 100 yards offshore before turning into wall dives that go well past 110'. If there is a standard profile on these dives, it's to start down the wall for 20 to 30 minutes and then ascend up to the top of the reef for about an hour of total dive time. These are my favorite dives. Unfortunately I discovered that I had a camera malfunction two days before leaving so I have no pictures to post.
The first two days were quite windy (20-30 mph) and the dive sites for the boat dives were rescheduled to sites that were as protected and close as possible, but a few people still got nauseous even if they weren't full-on seasick. By Tuesday the winds layed down nicely and the seas were calm which made for great diving the rest of the week. As the seas were calm we did a rescheduled 30 minute boat trip Tuesday morning to Calvin's Crack. Calvin's is a swimthrough created thousands of years ago due to seismic activity that starts through a smallish hole in the top of the reef, and is is my second favorite reef dive of all time. The highlight of this trip was an optional all-day three dive boat trip to the West End on Thursday. The reef structure there is different from the south side of the island, and that meant chances to see different sea life; we saw 16 turtles (four hawksbills and twelve green sea turtles) and a nurse shark on this day trip. It also gave us a chance to spend an hour shopping on the kitschy West End after lunch on the surface interval between the second and third dives. All in all a great day diving! We also spent a couple of other surface intervals at a sand channel between a pair of Cays where an island monkey liked to play a sort of game with one of the teenaged boys in our group. The culmination of the week was a Friday morning trip to do swimthroughs (twice
) at the break in the reef at Mary's Place which is still my all time favorite reef dive. There was a friendly green moray eel on a ledge that seemed as interested in me as I was of him. Video link for Calvin's and Mary's shamelessly stolen from YooToob here. There were a lot of other opportunities for activities. Rides on a three man ultralight seaplane around the island, ziplines, island tours, the infamous shark dive (I was told one person's Suunto dive computer went way into deco in the middle of their 70' shark dive), restaurant dinners out, etc. Great for those who were interested, but those of you who've been diving with me before know that I wasn't going to do any activities that would significantly take away from my underwater time.
Before I left, I noticed that the resort next door was offering some sort free nitrox plus free beer package (apparently including some small print worth reading), while CCV was booked up full including the beach houses and is booked well into the future. This probably has to do with the resorts reputation as place that has been designed for divers and divers only. I'm told CCV gets more repeat business than all the other resorts combined, if that's true it wouldn't surprise me in the least. It definitely fits my mantra of "Let's Go Diving!"All in all, I really enjoyed this trip to CCV and can't wait for the trip my LDS has organized in November. In the mean time, I've got a Coz trip I need to finish planning.
John_B
I really would go back to CCV in a heartbeat but I doubt I will ever go back to Coz. The best diving we did all week was over at the cenotes or the shore dive (shallow, 10-20' depth) right in front of ScubaClub where we stayed. 
