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Thook

Contributor
Messages
302
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Location
Tennessee
# of dives
200 - 499
watch


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April 6, 2019, we traveled to Grand Cayman and stayed with Cobalt Coast dive resort. The reason primarily being that this is the sister site to Cayman Brac and Little Cayman Beach resorts and diving operations is run by Reef Divers at all three sites. We were impressed with the service on the sister islands so it was a logical choice on the big island, and yet again Reef Divers did not disappoint.

Accommodations

Cobalt Coast is a cozy, no frills resort situated in West Bay on the north side of the Island. There is absolutely nothing to do there when you are not diving, in the pool or hot tub, hanging out on the small beach, or snorkeling. There is nothing in proximity to the resort so if you want entertainment or wish to be absorbed in shopping and typical tourist stuff, you will have to take a taxi elsewhere. A $35.00 one way 15 minute trip will get you there. The rooms are comfortable and spacious. The beds are a bit on the hard side. Having a hot shower is a crap shoot. I think I had hot water three times the entire week. There is cable TV with a good selection of channels and a mini fridge. Wifi is available throughout the site and has a strong enough connection to stream shows if need be. There is no enclosed gathering space. Most hang out at the pool or bar. Seating for every meal is Al Fresco with a beautiful view of the ocean. It can get very hot here but, with almost constant trade winds and ceiling fans overhead we were never uncomfortable. The food to be quite honest is outstanding. Breakfast, served at 6:30 am and lunch, served at 12:30pm are buffet style. Dinner is served at 6:30pm and menu style and you will never tire or be disappointed in anything served.

DIVING

The dive shop is on the premises. They were working two 42' Newton dive boats that are spacious and comfortable. If your booking 3 tank days they push off the dock at 7:45 am do two tanks, then you come in for lunch about noon. The 3rd tank goes out at 1:45pm. There are also tanks stowed outside near the dock and available for unlimited shore diving as well. There are over 200 marked sites around the island. Most of our dives were on the North side some of which were a quick 3 minutes, and a few were about a 30-minute trip. Average depths were 60 to 80 feet, but we also hit some of those plunging deep walls the Cayman's are so famous for and did a few 100+ dives. Ambient temperatures during the day were in mid 80's and upper 70's at night. Water Temp averaged 80 degrees. We only had one day of overcast skies and several quick squalls move in and out on a few days. For the most part seas were relatively calm with only one day I would call a bit rough. Visibility was not good at all averaging only 50-60 feet with maybe the best day hitting 80. I asked if this was normal and got no real solid answer. Service on the boat was top-notch. DM’s were very knowledgeable about sites giving very detailed briefings. They did not however, do much in the way of pointing anything of interest out. This in perhaps because the majority of the boat consisted of well-seasoned divers, and most ventured on their own. My opinion as well as the overall general consensus was that diving was disappointing to put it mildly. The reef seemed to be generally healthy. The walls particularly exhibited impressive barrels an tubes. However, fish species were grossly lacking. There were limited small and very scattered schools but, nothing at that impressed. This unfortunately fell very short compared to the sister islands. This is why you wont see many fish on my video. I can’t say I was not warned. In short, if the areas we dove are indicative of the rest of the island I would say Grand Cayman is a great place to get your feet wet as a diver but, don’t have high expectations for a vast plethora of marine life. FYI, Stingray city, is way over rated. You sit in 12 feet of water in a circle while a DM feeds them. All the while divers and the waves are kicking up sand and ruining visibility, which makes for pretty much unusable footage or photography. I did have one land on my head and try to suck my brains out which was interesting, but no one was impressed with the circus. Anyway, we completed 18 dives in a week, absorbed nitrogen and got wet so that's not a bad thing. Safe Diving!


 

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Rent a car, gives you tremendous freedom, sight seeing, other dive sites and operators, sampling other restaurants..... Did you do any shore dives at Cobalt Coast? Did you go to Turtle Reef or Lighthouse Point?
 
Interesting report. In the past when I looked at Cobalt Coast online, it looked rather pricy to me, the shore diving often blown out (I'd like to know more about how time of year affects that, and what the odds are of it being disable at a given time), and the relative isolation might be off-putting (plus from what I understand it's not a 'sandy beach' site, if non-divers were along).

A $35.00 one way 15 minute trip will get you there.

Ouch. $35 Before you even arrive to buy anything, make it $70 by the time you get back? Wow. Is there a bus that serves that area? Sounds like a rental car would be the way to go.

Wonder how practical it would be to rent a car for only part of the week? I'm thinking in terms of picking up & dropping off without having a hire a taxi to get there and/or back.

Since part of Grand Cayman's appeal is the topside scene, did you get out and around and what did you think of it?

Richard.
 
Thanks for the report. I just don't see the attraction of Cobalt Coast but that is just me. It is far away, nothing close by. Food and accommodations seem just so so from the average of reviews and shore diving is hit or miss depending upon conditions.
 
Thanks for the report. I just don't see the attraction of Cobalt Coast but that is just me. It is far away, nothing close by. Food and accommodations seem just so so from the average of reviews and shore diving is hit or miss depending upon conditions.
I made two trips to Cobalt before it became Clearly Cayman, 2007 and 2008. Obviously, it was under different management and Divetech was the operator. We stayed in one of the 2nd floor, 1 bedrooms, it was more than adequate. The food was quite good back then. We did 2 boat dives each morning and generally got out on very good north wall sites. We did some very nice shore diving at the resort. We rented a car and also did shore diving at Lighthouse Point and Turtle Reef. We had been to Cayman several times before and did some afternoon 2 tank dives with a friend that is no longer in business, Renee Knight and Cayman Diving School. Having the car allowed us to explore and eat out on a couple of nights. These were very good trips back then, I would imagine it could also be good now. I must admit, we had hot water every night :)

After these two trips we moved on to Compass Point and Ocean Frontiers out on the east end. I prefer the variety of diving and the quiet atmosphere, though not for everyone. OF may be the best land based operator I have used.

I could easily see giving Cobalt Coast another try, if given the right incentive. Reef Divers now does a PM dive, always a shortcoming in prior years.
 
I stayed at Cobalt Coast a couple times before it changed hands and it was always a good experience. With hot water. :wink: There's been lots of improvements and I would expect as good or better experience now overall that will suit some fine.

There are mini-buses that get nearish there. You might be able to walk to the route and flag one down, and supposedly you can pay to get them to divert a bit off route to drop you off someplace. It all seems pretty flexible, but not what I would mess around with on vacation, we always rent a car. Rental cars are one of the better priced things there. I don't consider it far away from things, but just far enough. It doesn't take that long to get to stuff, by my outer-suburban standards. (Just try to avoid rush hour, we hadn't been there in awhile until recently. There was traffic before but it's gotten amazingly bad some times/places.)

The shore diving is a crapshoot, yes. Summer best bet winter worst bet, but crapshoot. It's ok but a long swim to much. Personally if I can do a few there great, if I can't I won't lose sleep over it, but that's me - I'll do 4-5 on a liveaboard but don't mind relaxing a bit more on land. Having the afternoon boat is a big improvement. And just being able to grab gear and go dive at Lighthouse Point or Turtle Reef nearby (TR included back then, not now of course) is a good option if you have a car. Viz anywhere they dive around there is going to depend on conditions, weather, whatever.

When we stayed there we always had a package with breakfast only, preferring to take advantage of the many restaurants for most dinners and wing it (often dinner leftovers) for lunch. It's not clear to me if it's possible to get a dive package without dinners now?

We got back from Compass Point a few days ago. Ocean Frontiers just keeps getting better. South was nice for all the swimthoughs but was definitely lacking in fish life. Much better (but still not great) fish life to the north. Lots of wind but generally awesome viz.
 
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