Hurricane diving?

[puffer]

Thanks everyone for the advice.

Beaches is telling me I have to wait till Monday to see what happens before I can do anything like switch Sandals/ Beaches resorts or get my money back. I am not scheduled to leave for T&C until late Monday nights. Needless to say it is turning out to be a painfully agonizing weekend. In case I can get a refund I am thinking of making an alternate last minute travel plan. Maybe I will go to Hawaii or something. I will go some place tropical I'v already taken the time off of work and I need the vacation. If I do switch Beaches/ Sandals resorts any recommendations for one with good scuba diving?

 

[DocVikingo]

Don't know of any that can take you to sites as good as the better sites on TCI, but the one on St. Lucia is situated on a gorgeous tropical island where there is some okay diving.

I recommend against the one on Jamaica.

Best of luck.

DocVikingo

 

[Stormy]

Hi, St. Lucia is a beautiful island and the people are friendlier than Turks and Caicos. It's lush and volcanic. A nobel prize winner came from that island. Sandals has three resorts. Don't stay at the smallest. We stayed at the golf resort (though we don't play golf) and had a great time. Since then they have built the Grande which is supposed to be spectacular. Try one of those two. Excellent food. You can eat at all three resorts. The catamaran cruise to the twin Pitons and is fabulous. Unfortunately, we weren't able to dive at all or even swim since a hurricane passing by had churned up the waters too much. That is probably what will happen at T&C. We still found alot to do on St. Lucia and will definitely go back there someday.

 

[scubajoe]

I was in Cayman for hurricane Mitch. The ailines never stopped bringing passengers to the island. Thousands of people standing in the rain waiting to get off the rock and planes unloading passengers expecting sunshine and drinks with paper umbrellas!
We rode the storm out and discovered hurricane partys! I wish they could come up with a few days warning for tornadoes here in the Tx panhandle, we could party before they came!
It got real scarey in Cayman, the beer supply got low. I know that Mitch missed Cayman but it was still quite an adventure and it could have turned out a lot worse. I have since tried to quit traveling in the season.
Joe

 

[Washy]

Izzy will be making landfall in Washington DC by all accounts - Caribbean is now well clear...

 

[puffer]

I have decided that I don't want to go Hurricane diving. I am going to try to get a refund or reschedule for another month. If I absolutely must because I would lose the money I will go to Sandals St. Lucia. I am worried though I will be forced to go to T&C. To make matters worse I am expected to fly out to T&C via North Carolina and from T&C into North Carolina. Ugh!!!! Any suggestions on how to deal with Beaches, the airlines and the travel agent would be appreciated as I am running out of time. I leave tonight!!! Thanks Scuba family for all of your suggestions and ideas it has been very helpful. Wish me luck

 

[RichLockyer]

Just got back from Columbus Isle/San Salvador.
We arrived Monday and were greeted with a Club Med offering no waterskiing, windsurfing, snorkelling, or archery.
They could have offered board surfing, but the breaks were too close to shore. Oh well, no diving was cancelled except for the Tuesday night dive. Diving is why we went, and diving is what we did.

Isabel passed at least 200 miles away, so our weather was nice. The breeze kept the humidity to a tolerable level and we only had a couple of mild thundershowers, but the water was extremely choppy with 2-3ft swells. The dock at the sea center had been dismantled before the storm, and the waves were crashing through the remaining pilings and catwalks.

Dive conditions:
Above 50 feet vis was pretty blown out... certainly by tropical standards. We could BARELY see the bottom from the boat, and could only vaugely see the shadow of the boat from the bottom. We could not clearly see the hang bars or other divers doing their stops until we got to within 30 feet of the boat. Vicky's Reef was the worst viz... 5-10ft less than the other shallow reefs.

Fortunately, the viz improved (modestly) as we went deeper. I'm logging my dives as 45ft for the deep dives on Thursday/Friday, and 40ft for Tuesday/Wednesday, though I think the viz was closer to 70-100 when we exited the deeper of the two caverns at "Double Caves" at somewhere slightly below 135ft. It was at this site that I felt a thermocline... I was certainly not cold when we exited the cavern, but in crossing through 125ft there was a "warming" feeling similar to a cloud clearing the Sun on a mild afternoon.

We had a bit of current on the south tip of the island right at the point, and some slight surge... nothing intolerable, I think we just moved up and down the wall maybe 5 feet as we swam along, and we just avoided swimming directly over any coral projections.

Conditions slowly improved as the week progressed, but just our luck, when we left our room to check out Saturday morning, the sea was completely flat and the ski boat was running.