Guided diving for advanced divers

[AdivingBel]

Dive experiences and attitudes can vary widely. I wouldn’t give up dive travel over this if you otherwise still enjoy it. I’ve found I can generally find “do your own thing” within reason experiences, but it does require a bit of due diligence in planning. Over time I’ve learned what to look for.

It’s helpful to accumulate like minded divers during your travels. Nothing beats “buying the boat” on LOBs. Even a small group can help dictate your dive travel experience. All IMHO, YMMV.

 

[Pressurehead]

It’s helpful to accumulate like minded divers during your travels. Nothing beats “buying the boat”

This has worked for a few of us at some resorts here, often they have a morning dive, say 7am and a afternoon dive at 1pm, talk to the dive shop staff and often they let a small group of us do a double dive around 9am and again mid to late afternoon, depending on weather and tide.
They use guides because of the 'mixed bag' of divers that turn for set times they dive [been there, done that], one trip a guide came with us for the first dive , it was obvious to him and the boat coxswain we 'knew our stuff' , you can guess the rest.
So "buy the boat" can work at resorts as well if you can find like minded divers, we only needed 6 for a couple of trips.
It can work.

 

[MB NZ]

I was a bit complacent when booking because I never had any issues before and it was a big company with a good reputation, although I hadn't used them personally. I tend to travel alone for diving, so that makes it a little trickier.

 

[Nemrod]

Just ran into that also in the Red Sea. My usual dive buddies were largely there but there were these three divers in particular who kept winding up somehow in the mix, a yo-yo and two extreme air hogs. Ultimately the groups were split with the horrible divers in one group and me and the others in the other group and that worked fine.

And I do not want to hear about how they were nice people and everybody needs to learn. In places I have been to many times or can get back to easily enough, sure, I am happy to mentor new divers who are willing and eager to learn. But not in a (expensive) place I may never get back to again and especially when these three were particularly obtuse and resistant to learning .

I too would as soon not dive but at least this time several of us, several much more so than me, made it pretty clear that 20 minute dives were not in the cards and that we expected hour plus dives and we mostly got them with some ranging out nearly 1 hour and 20 minutes on single 80s.

And if another microscopic nudibranch gets pointed out to me, equipped with a wide angle lens, I might go apoplectic, what is with the snails . Is there anything bigger than .25 inches in this ocean?



Rant over.

 

[scubadada]

In 2019 I went to the Revillagigedos with Nautilus on the Explorer. A large group from the Philippines were on one RIB. The other two groups were one more experienced and one less experienced, I was on the former. Our group was not assigned buddies and we stayed within reasonable distance of the rest of the group and ascended at the same time, to be picked up by the RIB. This was a very reasonable compromise with regard to diving in a group. Each of us had a reasonable amount of autonomy during the dive. It was reasonably easy to close ranks at the end of the dives, that averaged a little over 50 minutes.

 

[The Chairman]

Nothing beats “buying the boat”

Hell, twice a year, we buy the whole resort!

 

[lermontov]

Unfortunately thats the nature of popular tourist destination diving. Had a recent experience in Port Vila where I had a couple of days spare and wanted to dive the Star of Russia. (34M) they wanted me to do a reef dive first to check me out - despite me having my cert cards with me (OC adv trimix, Mod 3 ccr . Cave)
If you want to go do technical stuff and have freedom to do what you want then theres very few options. There are technical charters you can join but theyre expensive eg Pete Mesleys trips or go with a 2-3 friends and go to bikini or solomons on a LOB (space still available)
If you want to go on a local trip in NZ were doing a 5 day wreck charter in NZ in Nov Hippolus , Lastingham Rangitoto and Lermontov ( $2100 plus o2 and trimix if you need - inc food and accom ) contact brent at Go dive in Malbourough. DM me if you want more info

 

[Pressurehead]

Hell, twice a year, we buy the whole resort!

The whole resort.

How big is the resort and how many people do you need for that to happen?
Sounds like a logistic nightmare, the largest group I have travelled with was 13, it worked, but never again, some people could not agree on the colour of an orange.
More power to you if you can 'deal' with more than 6.

 

[scubadada]

Hell, twice a year, we buy the whole resort!

I doubt that your group dives result in any more dive freedom.

 

[BoltSnap]

The magic has gone

Why? You don't like diving anymore? Why?

don't think I'd book another dive holiday again

Why? What am I missing?