Diving at St. Maarten & St Thomas - Help

[Joseph M Pfotenhauer]

Anyone have recomendations for places to dive to and with at St Maarten and St. Thomas? I'll be cuising to both locations soon and would like to know who is good to dive with and were to dive. Thanks in advance for your assistance.

 

[sharkdiver00]

First of all, welcome to the board Joseph. I would suggest you do a search using the 'search & advance search' functionalities (top menu bar) you will find several existing threads with the information you are looking for. It would probably be best to do this in two different searches.

Or, put your post under the Greater Caribbean and Bahamas forum to get better responses.

Hope you find what you are looking for and have a good trip.

cheers,
Maria

 

[Tractor Tom]

Anyone have recomendations for places to dive to and with at St Maarten and St. Thomas? I'll be cuising to both locations soon and would like to know who is good to dive with and were to dive. Thanks in advance for your assistance.

Joe,

We were on both islands a couple years ago on a Celebrity Cruise. On St. Maarten I dove with Dive Safari. They send a guy to the pier in his car to meet me and haul my gear to the boat. The diving was pretty good too, dove a wreck and a spot on the reef they called the fish bowl. It was warm a pretty and the dive boat was well stocked with snacks and cold drinks.

On St. Thomas I really like Blue Island Divers. The guys came out the the cruise ship pier with their dive boat and I just stepped aboard. We did the paperwork on the way out to the first dive. Dove the Navy Barges and a reef, had a great time! The boat was a little old and funky, but I was treated so well that I just couldn't find fault with them! Check http://www.blueislanddivers.com . They have a special page for Cruise Ship divers that expains where they pick you up. I just stood at the appointed place at the appointed time and held up my dive log that has a dive flag on the cover and they backed right to the pier and handed me on. Much better than the dives on the cattle boats that the cruise ship was using. Would go back and dive with those guys any time.

Drop a line if I can provide any other info for you. Have a good cruise!

 

[Theojt]

I was in St. Thomas in late June and did my OW cert training there with Underwater Safaris. We primarily dove at the Cartanser Sr. near Buck Island. Service was very good from them and they are located right at Havensight Mall where the cruise ships dock. This is a popular dive site with the wreck, reefs, and lots of sea life. About 60' max as I recall.

I have also heard that Admiralty is fairly popular, located in Charlotte Amalie.

A little farther away near Red Hook is Chris Sawyer's. He is also very popular and will pick up and drop off at the cruise docks.

There are some dive trips to the RMS Rhone near Salt Island in the BVI's (you saw it in The Deep) that might suit you - some are scheduled to leave at 8:00AM but I don't know how late they get back.

Here are some of the links I collected:

http://www.admiraltydive.com/

http://www.scubadivevi.com/

http://www.sawyerdive.vi/

http://www.blueislanddivers.com/

Jeff