Easy short trip to warm waters from YYZ?

[Dogbowl]

My apologies @Dogbowl I just realized that we hi-jacked your thread to discuss Cobalt Coast and shore diving on Grand Cayman - sorry!

No worries! I think it’s within scope lol!

 

[Hoag]

@Dogbowl, have you considered Nassau? Both Air Canada & WestJet offer non-stops out of YYZ. You could book a Stay & dive package with Stuart Cove and then they will pick you up at the hotel, take you out on your dives and drop you off again when the diving is done for the day. I have stayed at both the Orange Hill Inn and the British Colonial Hilton and depending on what you are looking for, they each have their pros & cons.

 

[Dogbowl]

@Dogbowl, have you considered Nassau? Both Air Canada & WestJet offer non-stops out of YYZ. You could book a Stay & dive package with Stuart Cove and then they will pick you up at the hotel, take you out on your dives and drop you off again when the diving is done for the day. I have stayed at both the Orange Hill Inn and the British Colonial Hilton and depending on what you are looking for, they each have their pros & cons.

Thanks I’ll look into that...

 

[Stoo]

At the risk of stating the obvious, a trip to dive for less than a week seems like such poor value. When you account for needing a day to offgas before flying home again, you're only going to get a couple or three days of diving in. If it's "work" that's the issue, can you consider booking a place that has reliable internet and cell coverage and do what you need to do?

 

[Dogbowl]

At the risk of stating the obvious, a trip to dive for less than a week seems like such poor value. When you account for needing a day to offgas before flying home again, you're only going to get a couple or three days of diving in. If it's "work" that's the issue, can you consider booking a place that has reliable internet and cell coverage and do what you need to do?

I agree that going less than a week is poor value and oh so difficult to pull together due to flight constraints. But I’m trying to utilize our long weekends in July and August, which I get 4 consecutive days off legitimately, and I’ll add a day in on one end to stretch it to a total of 5 days, to wing a trip down south. I already go on 3-4 dive trips a year. It just starts to look real bad from a work perspective. Work politics.

Ideally, I should aim to dive Tobermory or Brockville in the summer, but I’m hesitant as a cold water newbie. And we all know that Tobermory is a zoo on summer long weekends! It was unpleasant enough the last time I went that I swore I’d never go on a long weekend again! All those dang Torontonians (me being one also)!

 

[Trailboss123]

A complaint that I have heard about diving the Caymans is that it can be difficult to find a place where hardcore divers can do 4-5 dives per day at a reasonable price. Compass Point offers 4 dives per day but those are all boat dives and that can get expensive.

There are some places with house reefs like Sunset House, Lighthouse Pointe, Coconut Bay, and Cobalt Coast that have shore diving available which provides more dives cheaply (weather permitting) but if CCGCR added the option for 3 boat dives per day at a reasonable price AND the opportunity to shore dive when the weather is good, that would be very attractive to some divers. (There was a time when we regularly did 4 to 5 dives per day on vacation, but we have tapered off as we've gotten older!)

I've brought this up before (see link below) but when the conditions and interval are right, I think that dive ops on GC that have house reefs should offer "Drop Off" dives like they do on Roatan. They bring extra tanks on the boat and drop off divers that want to dive the house reef on the way back to the dock. So the dive begins as a boat dive but ends as a shore dive - it's nice and it is easier - you are already wearing your gear and you won't have to carry heavy stuff down to the shore or do a beach entry.

Why Don't More Dive Ops Offer Drop Off Dives?

You make a great point. I actually did that once with Sunset House. They are certainly open to it. Ours was more spur of the moment though. Our 2nd boat dive that morning was at a location that we just were not at all interested in. Viz was poor for some reason- just wasn't an appealing dive site, so we ascended with 2000 psi left in our tanks. I asked the captain if he wouldn't mind dropping us off at the deep wall outside of Sunset House and we would make our own way back in and he obliged. We spent a bit of time at the wall, navigated to the resident wreck and then back in to the shallow house reef and then to shore. It worked out great. My sense is that they'd be open to allowing for an extra tank if it was only a few people. Additional tanks for lots of people might be problematic from a logistics and storage perspective, if it is a full boat. The only other challenge is having enough surface interval time after dive 2. It worked for us because we cut dive 2 short. Had we done a full hour, we likely would have got back to Sunset House too soon to jump back in and dive the wall.

 

[Stoo]

It just starts to look real bad from a work perspective. Work politics.

And we all know that Tobermory is a zoo on summer long weekends! It was unpleasant enough the last time I went that I swore I’d never go on a long weekend again! All those dang Torontonians (me being one also)!

LOL... Ya, I had a job once, but I found it interfered with diving....

As a part-time Tobermoron, Try to come up in the fall... September is awesome. The water is warm, the crowds are gone, charters are less expensive etc...

 

[Dogbowl]

LOL... Ya, I had a job once, but I found it interfered with diving....

As a part-time Tobermoron, Try to come up in the fall... September is awesome. The water is warm, the crowds are gone, charters are less expensive etc...

I take my weekly lottery buying seriously, so that one day, just maybe, I won’t need a job.

 

[Stoo]

I take my weekly lottery buying seriously, so that one day, just maybe, I won’t need a job.

Or do what I did, get old.

 

[rsingler]

What you really want is a guaranteed 3rd dive per day like they offer at the other 2 resorts, not a promise if enough people sign up. I would have no interest in going to SRC. I would not mind going to the Kittiwake, once. The other two resorts also offer 1 or 2 night dives if there is interest. These are nice dives. Cobalt Coast is deficient

My dive shop (No Cal) just advertised an end of summer trip that addresses this. Perhaps folks are listening?
Cobalt Coast is advertising as newly renovated.
"Aug 25 - Sep 1. $2200 incl air from SFO.
17 boat dives - 2 a.m. + 1 afternoon; unlim shore diving (wx permitting); 3 meals/day; Kittiwake and Stingray City extras."

So my question is, is it still worth it given the location on GC, and a late summer arrival?