help me pick another dive site on my cruise please...

[kennyw12345]

in july i will be going on my honeymoon. It will be with Royal Caribbean cruise out of San Juan... We want to dive in 2 of these ports. One i have pick is St Lucia, but i need another opinions on which other port... I have been told not to dive in St Maarten. So between Barbados, Antigua, St Thomas, which should i choose? Book with cruise or outside of cruise?

Bridgetown, Barbados 8:00 AM 5:30 PM Docked
Castries, St. Lucia 8:00 AM 5:30 PM Docked
St. Johns, Antigua 8:00 AM 5:00 PM Docked
Philipsburg, St. Maarten 8:00 AM 5:30 PM Docked
Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas 7:00 AM 5:30 PM Docked

After researching, i have decided to dive in St. Lucia with:
http://www.divefairhelen.com/cruise_ship_special.htm

I have not decided on the other port to dive... Any recommendations?

thanks in advance

 

[ronbeau]

in july i will be going on my honeymoon. It will be with Royal Caribbean cruise out of San Juan... We want to dive in 2 of these ports. One i have pick is St Lucia, but i need another opinions on which other port... I have been told not to dive in St Maarten. So between Barbados, Antigua, St Thomas, which should i choose? Book with cruise or outside of cruise?

Bridgetown, Barbados 8:00 AM 5:30 PM Docked
Castries, St. Lucia 8:00 AM 5:30 PM Docked
St. Johns, Antigua 8:00 AM 5:00 PM Docked
Philipsburg, St. Maarten 8:00 AM 5:30 PM Docked
Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas 7:00 AM 5:30 PM Docked

After researching, i have decided to dive in St. Lucia with:
http://www.divefairhelen.com/cruise_ship_special.htm

I have not decided on the other port to dive... Any recommendations?

thanks in advance

I was not impressed with the dive in St. Thomas that I took from the cruise ship (Carnival). The dive was called a "Five Star certified diving tour". The description further states

"Participate in a certified 1-tank dive conducted from the East End of the island at Coki Point Beach. "

The "Five Star" part is a joke. This is a shore dive where you have to fight your way out through a sea of snorkelers. For the cost of that dive I could have booked a two-tank boat dive.

Carefully research the ST. Thomas dives. Don't waste your time if it mentions Coki Point.

 

[johnny46]

I and my family will be on the exact same cruise ! I also have booked St. Lucia dive! This dive will be outstanding!
For the other ports, we have chosen the following activities: Barbados .... swim w/turtles shipwrecks snorkel & beach, Antigua ..... swim with stingrays, St. Maarten ... just let wife go shopping (diving stinks ... snorkeling ok at best), St Thomas ..... more diving or snuba (depending on money and/or mood)

Hope to see you on the ship and/or the dive boat!

Congradulations!

 

[kennyw12345]

thanks jonny46, you too!

also thanks to Ron.

Anyone else have any suggestions on another place to dive...?

 

[kennyw12345]

anyone got any idea or preferences between these 3? not corki beach..

Barbados, Antigua, St Thomas

thanks to all

 

[diveborg]

I'd probably pick St. Thomas, but I certainly would not go with the ship's dive excursion. I don't care for lowest common denominator diving. I prefer a small boat operator that allows more diving freedom and visits more advanced sites. www.admiraltydive.com is who I'd probably pick.

 

[diversteve]

There is decent diving on St. Thomas. Just not at Coki Beach as mentioned above. It's a Snorkel/Snuba/Watertoys place, shallow reef, not much to see.

In St. Thomas, your ship will(I think) dock at the cruise ship pier. So you should be able to get off fairly quickly. There will be a lot of cabs waiting, but most of them on St. Thomas are vans which they try to fill before leaving for a destination so you might have a short wait, although the Red Hook area is a popular destination.

There may be other closer options but two I'm aware of are:

Sawyer's in downtown Red Hook. Red Hook is on the East End, probably 10 minutes closer than Coki Beach. Probably 20-30min. to get there. They schedule dives around the cruise arrivals/departures, their morning trip leaves at 9am. I've never dove with them though.

The other option is DiveIn, they're 5min. past Red Hook at Sapphire Beach. We did two with DiveIn a couple months ago, they took the time to get us out near where some tigers had been seen two days prior but we didn't see them. So we did a drift dive instead. Didn't see a lot of stuff though, highlight was probably a couple of Rays. I got the impression from the DM that generally St. Thomas diving is like that. Not really deep diving where we went so lots of time to look around.

If you have non-divers in the group, Sapphire Beach is a nicer beach resort. Red Hook would be boring after about 1/2 hr., it's the American Yacht Harbor so everything is geared around sailing except for a few restaurants/bars.

To get back you'll have no problem getting a cab in Red Hook, they're everywhere, and really punctual, anytime we called one locally they were right on time. East End Taxi is a good option to call for a ride back to Charlotte Amalie.

http://www.sawyerdive.vi/cruiseship.html
http://www.diveinusvi.com/
http://www.eastendtaxi.com/

 

[dolphinfish]

I've been diving off a cruise twice in St. Thomas (first time was 2 of my OW cert. dives). Diving is fine there. On our last cruise, I booked my own two tank dive in St. Thomas with Blue Water Divers. I would recommend them. They picked us up right by the cruise ship dock & there were only the 5 of us on their boat. They set up our gear. The dives sites they took us to were very nice.

Can't remember the dive op we were on for our OW dives there. We went out to Buck Island to dive. It was very nice. There was a wreck there - only 40-50 ft. deep dives, though.

I hear the diving in St. Maarten is not very good. We snorkeled there on two different cruises. Went to Dawn beach (the better of the two places) & Little Bay beach.

Timing is everything when booking your own dives while on a cruise. We were forced to use the ship's shore excursion in Nassau once due to when we docked & left.

Don't know much about Barbados & Antigua diving.

Have fun!

 

[scuba_guy62]

I just spent a week on St. Maarten and did 5 dives there and 2 in Saba. I've only logged 134 dives from Australia to the Caribbean and some on the east and west coast of the US so I'm no expert but I and my dive buddy who is a new diver thoroughly enjoyed our dives on St. Maarten. Sea Safaris have a shop at Bobby's marina which is very near where the ships dock and they cater to the cruise ship market. http://www.divestmaarten.com/diving_with_us.htm try the link or google them. I understand they do a shark awareness dive twice a week and dive all days other than Sunday. We had great luck with the Simpson Bay location and were very satisfied with our experience. Any questions pm me. Namaste

 

[Allison Finch]

The diving areas best on St Lucia are a long drive from the port. As the island is incredibly mountainous, the drive takes a couple of hours each way. The diving is pretty good, with occasional strong currents along the shore. Anse Chastenet has a very good dive center if you have the time to get there and back on the Cruise itenerary.