Hi. We were at Beaches Sandy Bay in Negril in February this year. They share their dive ops with Beaches Negril. The boat is huge and fast. The first dive of the day was actually pretty good. Once you demonstrated you knew what you were doing, they were more willing to go to the deeper sites (deep plane, for example). I had a fun drift dive there--the current was significant. Generally on the first dive of the day, there were just more experienced divers, so that made it more fun. The second dive of the day there were resort divers and classes, so the dive was 30-40 feet, There were few big fish in Jamaica, but many smaller ones. I was pleasantly surprised with the diving there. I would not go to Jamaica to specifically dive, but it is nice enough to do some diving while you are there. The beaches dive ops were strict in limiting you to 30 min of bottom time, which I wasn't thrilled about, but it's not as bad as it seems, especially if diving is included in your package (at beaches it is)--I was going to arrange diving off resort, but then decided against it since on the first dive of the day we wound up hitting all the places I wanted to do anyway. I liked the beach in Negril a lot--very pretty. I didn't get up to the cliff area--we got to the town on the beach side, which wasn't much, unfortunately--maybe the town is better up the cliffs? There just wasn't much of a town on the beach side-I think because there are so many all inclusives there. For a family vacation with some diving on the side, Jamaica is fantastic.
