i thought I responded to you earlier but I guess not.
There's almost no shore diving on Roatan outside of the AI dive resorts. Cocoview has 3, Barefoot^ has none and Anthony's Key about 1.5 if you count their muck dive in between the mainland and the Key. I think overwater cabanas at any of them are 1-2 br. max unless couples want to share a room - some have two larger beds.
There's a few places I can think of but one of the bigger issues you'll have is finding anyone to rent you tanks/weights you can
remove from the property. I know of one maybe - Sueno Del Mar in the West End - an older smaller hotel with a small beach that happens to be shore access to the Blue Channel dive site. The only reason I think they do is when our shop rented us a couple larger AL100's they were marked SDM property.
As far as a waterfront house with diving - maybe the best option is one of several houses just off Spooky Channel - they have a 400' dock to get you closer to the reef and it's for guest use only. It's these 4 houses specifically -
VRBO - Sunnyside Vacation Rentals I think the smaller casita is shared by one of the other 3 - same pictures on both.
You'd still have to find tanks somewhere though - probably a 10min. drive to the West End if anywhere. Most shops have enough tanks for their guests boat use and not much else - there's not much demand for tanks when there's nowhere to use them. Even the shop we boat dove with offered us tanks only if they dropped us on West End Wall and we swam back into their dock. And my larger group was much of their business that week.
There's 2 larger houses rented by Cocoview that could be an option as you can then dive with them - I believe 24/7 to their 3 shore dives - Newman's Wall, the Prince Albert (I forget the last one's name) You can't day visit at Cocoview - it's guests only. Last two on the
list here - downside is it's pretty isolated and they have no pool.
Barefoot is a great option if you don't want to shore dive. Some of the villas on the Cay are lockouts so you can have part pr all of them. Probably only 2br's total but check. Excellent dive operation, restaurant, pool/spa area and they're literally 5mins. by boat from Mary's Place one of the signature Roatan dives. We also rode over to Cocoview and dove the Prince Albert for our 2nd dive. Not really any shore diving to speak of there but I have heard it gets to about 16' near the breakwater. Nice beach also, they rake/treat it for sand flies.
The DM told us maybe 1/2 their guests even dive daily so their boats are pretty uncrowded. If you have luggage restrictions, they have very nice, new looking Scubapro rental gear - a buddy remarked their rentals were better than his,
Honestly there are a lot of better places to shore dive than Roatan and quite a few have good dives right off your beachfront house. Bonaire is especially good, Aruba not so much (from what I've heard) Also St. Croix - much of the north shore has condos/houses for rent waterfront. An acquaintance lives there - he walks thru his neighbors back yard and dives Cane Bay Wall. The Pier on the south side is another good shore dive area.
Scuba Shore Diving Site Listing for: USVI, St. Croix, Caribbean
