Eilat

[Conor]

Hi all

I'm off to Eilat from the 18th for a week and was wonderng if anyone has any pointers. I'm AOW trying to get some specialties and my friend in OW doing his AOW and specialties.

Any info on dives, diving and nightlife would be appreciated

Cheers

Conor

 

[vicky]

First of all you need to bring along with your certification cards also a valid insurance and a logbook. Without these you will not get any scuba services in Eilat. If you cannot prove that you've dived in the last six months (logbook...) you'll be obliged to make a "refresh dive" where they check if you know to empty your mask, buyancy control etc.

What "specialties" are you looking for? IMHO most of them are crap, so it is better to focus on something more valueable like a DM courese, but you can't do it in a week. Better to spend the time diving instead of doing specialties.
Your friend can do his AOW in a couple of days or so. What organization he wants?
PADI: Manta/RedSea Sports Club
SSI: Marina Divers or Coral Sea divers
NAUI: Siam Divers
Most clubs can also make CMAS certifications.

Dive sites?
Boat dives: there are daily boats from Aqua Sport club to the Coral Island and some other "near" sites in Sinai.
-Japanese Gardens. You can dive there only with a boat through one of the clubs.
-Coral Beach
-The Caves
-The "Sufa" missile boat wreck
-Paradise
etc.

Let me know by email when you arrive to Eilat and I'll give you more detailed information. Anyway every club will give you information on all these sites. Coral Sea will do even better: they provide you free transportation to/from any dive site if you rent your gear from them (I think that even if you take only a few items like tank-weights). Coral Sea divers are located in Carlton Hotel near the Coral Beach.

Night life? Don't know. I only go there for diving and the only night life I know concerns the reef during night dives..

Enjoy your stay.

 

[Conor]

Hi Vicky

Thanks for the reply. We are both PADI certified, there doesn't seem to be many PADI centres there (compared with a lot of places). The specialties we/I are considering are some of...
Wreck
Deep
Navigation
Night
and poss enriched air

The main reason is to build up the skills/experience etc together with some nice dives (my experience is that the specialties are mostly pleasure dives with a little bit of theory before hand (with the notable exception of the Enriched air and navigation). I am a realtively inexperienced diver so any opinions on this plan would be appreciated, I will have to wait for a while before attempting a DM course so would like to improve my skills in the mean time.

Coral Sea seem like quite a good place to start, although their website seem to pitch them as mostly SSI, is this accurate ? Have you any opinions on Aquasports or RedSea sports club ? Is there anywhere particularly good for buying equipment ?

As for the documentation, I'll have my log, c cards, medical form and insurance (to 30 M) with me as always but I will remind my friend as he has a tendancy to forget his. The nightlife will hopefully be a place to unwind after a lot of diving as opposed to anything more strenuous.

Sorry about all the questions (I just can't wait to get out there)

Thanks again for your thoughts,

Conor

 

[PK]

I visited that area 11 years ago before I was certified. I was still able to dive but I had to go hand in hand with a DM and was limited to 18ft depth. It was still great!

Since it was so long ago, I cannot give you useable advice. But I hope you post about your trip afterwards and let us know how it went.

 

[vicky]

If you just want to rent gear and dive for fun you can go to ANY diving club and they will rent you anything (provided you have insurance and logbook).
If you want PADI courses then there aren't many choices as far as I know.
BUT, IMHO doing the specialties you've mentioned is a waste of money and a waste of good time that you could spend doing "real diving".
-Wreck specialty: Eilat is NOT the placs to do it. There aren't any "serious" wrecks around.
-Deep: I don't know what this specialty is, but by law in Israel an OW cannot dive deeper than 20m and an AOW can't go beyond 30m regardless of any specialty. DM and above are limited to 42 regardless of whatever organization (i.e. CMAS *** can dive to 50m but not in Israel). Anyway, it sounds to me like crap, if you are AOW you can dive to 30m and it is enough.
Navigation: it is supposed to be taught in AOW. Don't they teach it in PADI's AOW?
Night: Why do you need a special certification for this? Just make a recon dive during daytime, do the same dive at night and voila! In the first dives you can limit yourself to 10m until you feel safer. You can also join the club's guided night dives. BTW if you make night dives on your own you have to announce the Israeli Navy by phone WHERE and WHEN you're going to dive. All clubs can arrange this for you or just ask for help from a nice diver with a cellular phone (99% will have one ).

IMHO these specialties don't really offer for you anything that you can't get by yourself with expereince. Better: save the money and do DM and/or Rescue it is by far more important and you'll really learn something more usefull...

 

[Conor]

Hi

Vicky - I do see your point about the specialties. There is some basic navigation on the OW, and some more on the AOW Nav dive, but as with nearly all the specialties I feel there is still more to learn.

Thanks for your point about the deep dive, my understanding is that with OW you are restricted (by PADI) to 18M, AOW to 30 and Deep spec course involves dives to 40 ( I could be wrong). If local law means I can't dive between 30 and 40M then I guess I won't be able to do the specialty. Like wise if there are no suitable wrecks then I guess the wreck course is done better elsewhere.

I will be doing the rescue diver course after this holiday (once regular buddy has caught up to AOW) I agree it is one of the most valuable courses I could do.

I guess the idea behind doing the specialties (and the rescue diver course) is to reach a point where I feel confident enough to dive without a DM or instructor. As I don't get to dive that often the specialty dives give me a way of accelerating the process of gaining the skills to be confident enough to do this. If I feel confident to dive deep, navigate, investigate wrecks or at night then I feel I will be confident to start diving independantly (with an appropriate buddy of course).

And you are right, I really wouldn't want to encounter the Israeli Navy during a night dive

I think I'll revisit the new2scuba list and see if there are any postings on the value of these courses.

Specialties or no specialties I think I am going to enjoy Eilat.

Conor

 

[Conor]

Just back from Eilat, had a great time.

Didn't do any of the specialties (partly due to being ill for the first day and partly because the facilities for the types of specialties I wanted to do weren't there ), but did a few dives. Besides a few shore dives (including a beautiful night dive) we dived at the Japanese gardens, dolphin reef and a couple of sites from the Taba boat. The Japanese gardens were beautiful and the dolphin dive did guarauntee seeing the dolphins, but the best dives were the taba boat dives. Especially the final dive where a turtle decided to buddy up with one of the divers and a couple of wild dolphins paid us a visit on our safety stop (and escorted our boat prt of the way back).

A note on the rules on dive insurance, you had to have insurance from a company that had an office in Israel, so I ended up getting DAN/Phoenix insurance which has given me a years cover for Jordan and Egypt as well.

Eilat itself was quite quiet which was good for diving but not so good for night life. The people were very friendly and outgoing and the weather was perfect. Culturally it really was an experience (reminds me of Northern Ireland in quite a few ways) and so would reccomend anyone to go there and decide if they like it or not.

The good news is that I now have enough dives to go on to my Rescue Diver.

Cheers all

Conor

 

[vicky]

In the last months there are lots of observations of turtles in the area, including one that spends the nights in one of the "Sufa" wreck compartments (behind the stairs).
As for the dolphins: about a month ago they were not allowed out of the "dolphin reef" anymore. After a few cases in which they attacked people (probably tried to feed or touch them) the local authorities demanded that the dolphins shall be locked in the "dolphin reef" area. Also, there were many claims that the dolphins hunted "for fun" too many reef fishes, leaving lots of maimed fish behind..

 

[Conor]

I didn't know that about the dolphins, sounds unfortunate. The wild dolphins we saw were in Taba, so I guess they weren't from the same pod.

 

[vicky]

Are not indigenous... They were brought from the Black Sea. (They were bought from the Russian Navy).

Anyway, in the beginning people claimed the "Dolphin reef" are abusing the animals by caging them in a relatively small area so they actually proofed that the dolphins actually like to stay there. The gate was kept open 24 hours a day and the dolphins were free to come and go whenever they wanted. None escaped. Most of them got out during the day but returned to sleep there at night. Several dolphins were born in their premises, so it seems the dolphins were having good times in there.

Now there are claims that the dolphins are a nuisance so the gate is closed and the dolphins are not allowed to go out anymore until this whole tihng is settled.

So, you met wild dolphins that are not related at all to their Russian cousins in the "Dolphin Reef"...

By the way, did you notice how many Kassiopea jellyfish there are inside the "Dolphin Reef"?