cmm1970:
I have been sifting through the posts on Caymen looking for particulars on the shore diving aspects of Cobalt Coast and Sunset House. My buddy and I are learning to use our DSLR camera rigs and want to go to a "Buddy Dive" style operation to work with our gear. We really enjoy the long, leisurely, shallow dives that we get in off the dock at Buddy Dive and want a similar experience on a new island. I have read that the shore diving at Cobalt Coast involves a fairly lengthy surface swim and that their inflatable "taxi" has not really been in service. This doesn't sound so great for lugging our huge rigs out and back 3-4 times per day.
I haven't found a whole lot about the shore dive/house reef from Sunset house. Can any of you post your experiences with either operation in relation to use of camera gear, shore diving, distant out to reef, and overall operation?
Thanks,
Mike
I'd say there's tradeoff's involved with both ops, it depends what you're looking for. Sunset House just recently re-opened post-Ivan so I don't know what their facilities are like now. I'm not even sure all their facilities are functioning yet, as of 1/20/05 they weren't.
The reef at Sunset House starts almost immediately and is a bunch of spur/groove formations with lots of fish life. And the Mermaid is in 50 fsw just a couple hundred feet off shore. There's also a small wreck in 90' just a short distance offshore with some resident inhabitants. I wouldn't say that their reef is the best I saw on Cayman, those were on boat trips a couple miles north of there.
They've got the Cathy Church Photo Center teaching classes there so there must be good photo ops in the area. Check out her gallery even if you don't stay there. My Bar is very highly recommended for lunch/post dive libations.
As far as location, Sunset House is a couple minutes south of central Georgetown - but probably not walking distance to town. Sunset House is also in the flightpath, and the planes are climbing as they go over, so it can be loud there briefly. I found it annoying once during an afternoon there.
Georgetown pretty much shuts down at night once the cruiseships leave, so you'll be driving a little further up Seven Mile Beach for any sort of entertainment. There is a Hard Rock in GT that stays open later but the stores close down around 5:30 or when the last ship leaves.
If you're diving Stingray City, it's so far from Sunset House that I assume they'll take you by van to their boat. I don't think any dive op near GT/SMB travels around to SRC from the west side of Cayman, most keep a boat at a residential harbor near SRC. You should do SRC, it's a blast. We've got some great pictures from there. Although it gets a little cloudy as soon as the rays arrive, it's only 15' of water. They call the dive after 45 min. otherwise they'd be there a long time till someone runs out of air.
I never dove Cobalt Coast, but I also heard it's a healthy swim out to the wall, we talked to them about renting scooters once and they offered to ferry us out with the scooters to save the batteries. Given their location, I'd guess Cobalt Coast goes to SRC by boat from their location, it's pretty close by. I did read that CC was undamaged during Ivan.
We did dive Turtle Reef, their other dive op, it's just a small dive store with a dock that leads out to the mini-wall, there was a great deal of larger fishlife there and there's usually some Turtles in the area as the Turtle Farm is just to the south.
The Mini-wall there is a nice dive, it's a short distance out, the top is only maybe 40' and the bottom is at the most 80-90'. Then there's a sandy area that leads out to the Big-wall dropoff. Lots of big tarpon gather there in the shadows and there's lots of corals/fans all down the Mini-wall. We actually dove twice there and never made it out to the drop, that's how interesting it was. They rent scooters there for $40, we did that and ran unescorted down the mini-wall to the south, it was a lot of fun.
Turtle Reef is in sort of a residential area and all that's there is the dive shop, dock and a small parking lot with a restaurant above the diveshop called Cracked Conch. We went by it twice before we realized it was there.
And Cobalt Coast, although it looked nice on the website, seemed to us to be too far away from everything except their facility, I'm guessing it would be 10-15 min. south to the civilized part of SMB from there. Probably 20-25 min. to GT or the airport.
If you're looking to shore dive on Cayman, those are really the only two good areas we found. Off SMB is all flat and sandy. There's diving in GT at Eden Rock/Devils Grotto but it's kind of tired and worn out, the cruise ship divers beat it up pretty good since it's the nearest site off the boat - you can walk there from where the cruise tender drops off. And it sort of abruptly ends in about 40' of water, then it's just sand(and old tires, concrete pilings and other junk) out to where the cruiseships drop anchor. And the jetskiers in the harbor scare away a lot of the other life.
One thing I'd strongly recommend no matter where you stay is renting a car. Things on Cayman are much more spread out than the literature leads you to believe. I've also recently read that there's a car shortage on Cayman post-Ivan, it's been suggested to reserve in advance. The local bus service consisted of locals with mini-vans who pick up for $1Cayman along SMB routes.
I'd recommend booking some boat dives, there's a lot of better divesites a little too far offshore. You can see diveboats at the moorings from shore, but it's too far to swim in most cases, especially with a camera.
PM if you have other questions,
Steve
P.S. Cayman is outrageously expensive for food so be prepared. Like the Bahamas most things are flown/shipped in so everything's priced accordingly at restaurants and the markets. There's a big market you'll pass leaving the airport, the prices there are better than the smaller markets to the north so stock up there.
