Chilly & Joe
I am going to post a longer report on Scuba Board next week. Quick answer to you folks is that our stay on the Galapagos Sky was a truly great trip. There had been some reports last fall that they were having problems with the crew and the boat engines. Comments I picked up suggested that they had hired some new folks because the former ones were "tired." It is a hectic life. One of the two guides we had (Max) was picked up from Buddy Dive, and he was great, as was Santiago, the principal guide and naturalist. Both spoke very good English.
Here is a synopsis of comments I made to a friend a few days ago that will be amplified in my trip report:
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The crew on this boat were fantastic, and they deserve very positive recognition. The naturalists/dive guides, Santiago and Max, were the most professional I have ever seen. We had some divers who were not enough advanced to be on some of the more challenging dives, and these guys took care of them without sacrificing quality for the rest of us. We had one diver who would not obey the rules, and they took care of that also. Plus, they found the little stuff. Max even found a frog fish in a 6" deep little hole in a volcanic wall. There were a thousand holes in that wall and he must have looked in half of them before he found it.
The boat is beautiful, and is now undergoing a two-week refurbishment in port. That is a good thing for the future. As we left, boxes with engine rebuild parts were all over the after-deck. Underway, we moved pretty slowly, but I don't know if we were in a single engine mode or not. Whatever was happening with the engines, we made our time slots and all our dives. The crew made it work. They also were able to adjust the schedule of dive sites and times to get the most of what the situation presented. For example, when there were few sharks or big critters showing up at Darwin Island, they asked us if we wanted to go back to Wolf (20 miles) early and have more dives there. We went back and found one of the huge schools of hammerheads.
The diving was challenging--more on the surface than underwater. Vis varied from 80-90 feet to maybe 50 feet, with a few spots where it was better and worse. Water temps were warmer than usual--76-80 degrees F. and the current was never very bad. Unfortunately, this gave us fewer big critters, which seem to like lots of current and low water temperatures. Rules were 700 lbs and start up, but on an individual basis, not as a group. Generally speaking, my wife and I outlasted the other members of our subgroup of 8, and I had no problem with leaving my wife, who breathes like a fish, with Santiago to finish a couple of dives.
The entire crew rolled out to support the dive cycle; even the captain carried tanks. One minute, Gonsolvo would be orchestrating breakfast, and 30 minutes later he would be on the panga riding to a dive site as a tender. Then as you took off your wetsuit, he would reappear with hot drinks and snacks. I am still not sure how he did that.
At Darwin and Wolf Islands, and to a lesser extent farther south, the conditions were very rough--it took four or five crew members just to move a diver from the Sky's dive deck to the rolling, bouncing zodiac (panga) and back. Nevertheless, over the week, among 16 passengers, the crew generated around 240 to 260 dives without a mishap.
..........and the food was unf**kingbelievable.
