Crusie ship diving in Grand Cayman

[Tuckster]

We use a skin & a shorty & that works well for us. We also carry our own gear...more of a comfort thing.

 

[wdlk]

Another option for Grand Cayman is to beach dive Eden Rocks/Devil's Grotto. When you get off the tender at the GC harbor, hang a right and walk down the street to Eden Rocks Dive Center. It's a couple hundred yards down from the harbor. You can easily get in two beach dives and still have time for lunch at Paradise cafe, or Hard Rock Cafe and a little shopping before getting back on the tender. Have a great trip!

I'd agree with the shore dives. Been to GC a couple of times, both on cruise ships and land trips. The cruise ship prices are over-inflated in my opinion. We dove with Red Sail in GC when diving from the cruise ships. No bad report, but nothing special either. They were very restrictive on dive profiles.

There are several excellent dive sites that are accessible from shore. Eden Rocks/Devil's Grotto are good sites. One of my favorites is the Turtle Farm. Dive shop onsite, easy access in/out of water. Easy taxi ride to sites along the beach. Shore diving allows you to go at your own pace and will give you plenty of time to explore the town afterwards. We carry our gear in backpacks so we can more around town a little easier.

Either way, enjoy your trip.

 

[diversteve]

I think I'm going to try to find out from Royal Carribbean who they book with in each stop and contact those operators directly.

In case you haven't found out yet:

http://www.redsailcayman.com/gc_cruise.html

I second the option of shorediving the Turtle Reef site. It's called Turtle Reef though, not Turtle Farm - that's something else entirely. It's Divetech's second location and is probably the closest point to the Wall if you're up for a swim. If not, there's a mini-wall 40yds offshore that's really a great dive in itself - full of coral and fish and it bottoms out in the sand at about 65'. Generally see Tarpon hovering in the shadows, a good chance for Turtles(obviously) and we saw Eagle Rays go flying overhead. For even more fun, they rent Apollo scooters.

Probably a 20min cab ride each way though, it's pretty far north.

http://www.divetech.com/index.htm

If you want to stay near town, I'd recommend Sunset House over Eden Rock. It's just a 2 min. ride south of the Cruise port, the diving is better off their "cement ocean pool", there's the mermaid Amphitrite in 50' for photo ops and another small wreck farther out. And it's deeper past that - not sure how old your "kids" are.

There's also a great, inexpensive bar/grill there, My Bar, it's the divers hangout on Cayman. And the Cathy Church photo gallery is in the basement of the main house. Full diveshop on site, they rent anything you'd need.

Eden Rock, while an easy entry, is pretty tired and beat up. Mostly because they do get thousands of cruise divers yearly. And their reef ends in sand flats in about 45' of water, beyond that there was a jetski riding area and your ship(and others) is 1/2mi. offshore past that so you can't go out there. Not that there's much to see, just a lot of junk dropped off the ships.

Of all the shoredives listed above that we did, Eden Rock is the only one we thought was disappointing. They do have good facilities and staff and they rent everything also.

 

[dman]

For the cruise veterans, do you find that the excursion dives are mostly cattle boats?

 

[Diver Kat]

In Coz we use Scuba with Alison - she's a great DM & Op, and a blast to hang with to boot. Last couple trips we even worked out doing 3 tank dives.

In Grand Cayman, we take the local bus up to Dive Tech (next door to the Turtle Farm) and do shore diving. The Dive Tech people are extremely pleasant, and the dives are nice.

 

[PapaBob]

Dman:

I can only share my experiences. Last year was a banner year for cruises for my wife and I (we took two on Princess). Stops in Coz and Grand Cayman. I have not had good experience with ship operators and did not want to do tourist dives since I have dove Cayman and Coz several times. I tried to hook up with Christie in Coz but her boat was full and being a real trooper she refered me to Raul who runs Bottomtime Divers on Coz. For Grand Cayman, I have heard a lot of good things about RedSail, but was really impressed by the treatment we got from Nick and Pat at Red Baron Divers.

Red Baron runs out of the marina on the North sound and I really love the North wall dive sites. Most cruise ship operators will do the west end stuff others have described. Time was tight and we did not expect Pat to hold his boat for us, so we made plans the first day at sea to go ashore on the first tender (the Princess staff was very nice to hear our request, why we were on a tight timetable, and accomodate us). Also, we had to buy a cab (ie pay for a full car even though there were only two of us) and got the cabbie to agree to pick us up for the return to the boat. We got to the dive boat with time to spare.

Hope this helps some. Enjoy your cruise and good diving.

---Bob

 

[Tuckster]

Definately Scuba with Allison in Coz !!! She is great & flexible. We used the ships excursion in GC only due to time restarints.

 

[dman]

Tuckster - How were the ship excursions in GC? How many divers per boat, etc? If the time is a concern we may end up using this too.

 

[dman]

Just booked with Diving with Alison for the Cozumel dives. Her operation looks great and she sounds nice. Looking forward to it. Thanks to all who gave advise and steered me to Alison.

Still working on the GC dive.

 

[dman]

Just booked with Diving with Alison for the Cozumel dives. Her operation looks great and she sounds nice. Looking forward to it. Thanks to all who gave advise and steered me to Alison.

Still working on the GC dive.