Mike
Contributor
We are a newly certified diving family and will be cruising to cozumel for a one day dive over fall break. This will be our first ocean dive. I have been putting together our own dive equipment including regs, tanks, computers, wetsuits, etc.
im a little worried about rental regs and will be diving with my 13 year old daughter. My wife will be with our 22 year old daughter. Should we take our own regs and computers, or just wrist computers and be done with it? Or notHing at all and rent everything there? My computer is air integrated....would they attach it to their rental 1st stage and remove it after the second dive?
Carnival uses Sand Dollar Sports for their dive excursions. If anyone has dove with them before, what did you think of their equipment? We have cruised several times and the only reason im going with the carnival excursion is incase there is a problem....we don't get left.
Thanks in advance for your response.
Jay
What you do is ultimately up to you. Ultimately what you need is information to help make a decision, so..
Cozumel and being left behind - Cozumel is a huge dive destination, the diving has and is going on every day with hundreds of dive boats going out every day to diving locations that are basically all on the safe leeward (sheltered) side of the island within view of land at all times and at dive sites where you'll never be alone. In other words, if the worst case scenario happened and your boat sank or disappeared while you were diving, you'd be picked up in about 60 seconds from another boat and brought back to the dock. The dive times are very routine and scheduled. The dive community there is huge and everyone knows each other and works with each other and the diving is busy. So in short, Cozumel is the last place you should be worried about diving with the cruise ship dive operation in regard to being left behind. If you want a more personallized catered dive experience than the ship will offer, Cozumel is the place to get it of any of your stops. With 4 people already in your group there are some independent ops who will give you your own boat.
Equipment - the worries of reg failure is so highly over rated it's not even funny. First off you have two on you. Secondly you have three if you follow proper buddy procedures. The chances of a regulator failing are about the same as one of your fins failing, it's just not a worry. Secondly, again this is a huge dive destination, the equipment and those who maintain it are top notch. Dive with a reputable, highly reviewed dive operation and the equipment should not be a problem. I've dived all over the world with nothing but a pair of fins, a mask and a dive computer. About every 5 years I start thinking those same old devil thoughts... I wonder if I should buy a regulator and a BC...be nice to have my own on dives, something I'm familiar with and confident on the quality.... then I snap out of it and come back to my sense that diving is not about the equipment, you can dive without most of it, we used to dive with nothing but a set of fins, mask, some weight and a tank strapped on your back with a web harness with no BC.... too many people too worried about things that are irrelevant in the big picture. Nobody needs to drag all that stuff around to do dive travel, the dive operators have you covered.
If it was me... 1st ocean dives with 4 people I would contact some of the highly rated dive operations in Cozumel, tell them when you will be there and set up a private dive master for just you and your family, leave most of the gear at home and travel light and enjoy the experience. That will be a night and day different family experience than getting onto Sand Dollars' cattle boat operation.