Juliet Trip Report- Mona Island March 13-19th

[dianna912]

My husband and I spent the last 7 days on the Juliet diving Mona island, and it was incredible. The food was out of this world good. We are vegetarian and we’ve had some pretty awful experiences on other liveaboards (think French fries and mashed potatoes being our only dinner one night.) So, we are always a bit concerned about meals, but Juno was superb! We had Liza, Max, Jimmy and Juno (and Rico!) as our crew. (Forgive my spelling if wrong.) The diving was spectacular but definitely challenging. Currents are swift and change on a dime. I actually had my first experience (roughly 300 dives now) where I had to request help after we came up swimming against a tough current, we got separated and I completely panicked. Max was literally there before I knew it, and reassured me that my husband was not actually lost at sea (irrational panic had set in) they had, in fact, already gotten a line out to him. It was a humbling, frightening experience, if mainly just in my own mind, but it also served to show me that had the worst case scenario actually transpired, the crew is exceptionally attentive. It was a learning experience that I’m glad I learned with them, and it certainly taught me to never short cut my prep, even on a seemingly simple “pool’s open” style dive.


We stayed in the aft ensuite. If you end up on this specific trip, make sure you bring plenty of meclazine/sea sickness meds. It is a very tough passage. That is what makes it so special, though. Knowing that you are one of few to ever dive these sites is incredible and the reef and marine life show it. Monito was a different experience every time we dove it, which we were lucky enough to get to do 4 days.


The DM leads the dives on all drift dives, but the static dives were “choose your own adventure” as Max put it.


Covid-19: if you read up on their website, they are pretty open about it: not much has changed once you are on board. They do not wear masks. If you are concerned about exposure, I’d recommend waiting until we are out of the woods with the pandemic. My husband is a doctor, and we understand the severity of Covid. I think the crew aboard the Juliet just realizes that in the close quarters, with 4 dives a day, if someone on board did have it, it would be nearly impossible to effectively contain it. Plus, everyone is tested before departing, which gives a small degree of security. This is not a knock on the Juliet, to be clear. Just expectation-setting. We’ve been lucky enough to have the vaccine so between pre-testing and the majority of us being vaccinated on board, we felt reasonably safe. YMMV.


All in all, Mona is a great trip for experienced divers, with a fantastic crew. We will definitely be doing another trip aboard the Juliet as soon as possible!

 

[dianna912]

I thought I’d add some more details about the diving itself and what we saw. And if anyone wants details on my learning experience above, I am happy to expound.

We did 18 dives over the 5 dive days. We could have done 19, but we all opted out of the night/dusk dive the day we got caught in the current. We had all done a tough swim to the beach and a hike through the caves in Mona just before the third dive of the day, so I think we were all tuckered out. One thing I really loved that the Juliet did was doing the night dive the same site as the 3rd dive of the day. It gave a lot more peace of mind for navigation at night. We did a lot of repeat dives, but the sites are so diverse and the current changed the experience so much each time, that everyone was happy as could be. If anything I’d have repeated Aquarium a 4th/5th/6th time, ha. It was just that stunning! I appreciated that we never dove the site of my scary experience a second time. I’m not sure if that was by accident or by design, but I was quite happy not to dip back in there.

We saw nurse sharks of all sizes, reef sharks, a turtle, tons of lobsters, lion fish, flounders, and monster crabs. Scorpion fish in abundance and the biggest spotted eagle ray we’ve ever seen! Along with tons of other fish! AND we had whales come right by the boat! A mother and calf, either humpback or sperm. It was incredible!

 

[<*)))><]

Thanks for a great write up. Succinct and full of useful info. Mona Island is definitely on my short/bucket list of Juliet trips. If you don't mind could you explain your learning experience in a little more detail. What happened, why or how did it happen, what could be done to avoid it? I'm significantly less experienced than you and hoping to learn.

Much appreciated and glad you had a great time!

 

[<*)))><]

Also, just out of curiosity what were water temps like?

 

[dianna912]

Thanks for a great write up. Succinct and full of useful info. Mona Island is definitely on my short/bucket list of Juliet trips. If you don't mind could you explain your learning experience in a little more detail. What happened, why or how did it happen, what could be done to avoid it? I'm significantly less experienced than you and hoping to learn.

Much appreciated and glad you had a great time!

Thank you! It is definitely worth it, and then some! I’ve never been so sad to leave a boat.

So, we were doing our third dive of the day, right after we’d done a very long surface swim/snorkel against the current, to the boat from a shore trip and hike. I was half-assing getting ready and never put my cargo shorts on, where I keep my PLB and SMB. I was complacent, because the non-monito dives had been super chill, with very little current. We hopped in the water, and early on in the dive, I had a splitting headache and seriously considered calling the dive but I didn’t. Mistake #1. Around 2000 PSI, though, my ears started bothering me, too, so I signaled to my husband to head towards the boat. I figured I could go up, and he could stay under the boat looking around. He was navigating, and took us the wrong direction. Around 1000 PSI, I was getting exhausted and wanted to surface. The depth on the dive wasn’t much at 30-50 feet and at some points during the dive, I’d even triggered the safety stop on my watch. So I wanted to just go up at that point, but he signaled to do the safety stop, so we did. Mistake #2. As we are doing the SS, we stop hearing the boat engine. He surfaces, just 5 feet above me and points that the boat is the other way, straight into the current, and we’ve been pulled further from the boat during the SS. Mistake #3 is that I did not look myself to see how far. For some reason, I just assumed the worst, and immediately dropped down to the bottom (50 feet at that spot) to swim/pull myself as needed. My husband would not come back down, though, so I’d kick, kick, kick, look up at him, a couple of times. My watch is now beeping that I’ve got 5 minutes Air Time Remaining, which is absurd at 700 PSI, but that gives you an idea of what state I was in that point. (I can usually go 90 minutes on a 40-50 foot dive) But it got worse when I looked up and didn’t see him. At this point, I panicked. Full blown lost-my-mind panic attack. I spun around searching for him, and got myself disoriented in the process. They think I ascending kicking the wrong direction, because, yeah, I was a crazy person at this point. I have literally every worst case, lost at sea scenario playing out in my head, and my husband claims that when I did finally turn around and face the boat, I was looking right at him, but not seeing him. I yelled out to the boat and asked if they could see him, and seemingly, out of nowhere, Max popped up beside me and said “he’s on the preserver. He’s fine. I’ve got you.” And he did. It was probably a lot more traumatic in my head than the the reality looked, but as we all know, panic is more likely to kill us than anything else. I’ve read every DAN story, I’ve read the cautionary tales on here, and I’ve taken the Rescue Diver course to prepare myself for when **** goes wrong, and maybe that kept it from being as bad as it could have been. If I had trusted my instincts, and bailed on the dive, or blown through the safety stop, we’d have been fine. If I hadn’t half-assed it and had my cargo shorts on, I suspect I’d have mentally been more calm. But I second-guessed myself and put myself at risk in the process.

Oh, and maybe most importantly, if I wasn’t so out of shape right now, I wouldn’t have been scared of a surface swim against the current to begin with. As soon as we get home, we are enrolling in swim lessons, and putting in the work for our NOAA science diver. I’d poo-pooed their swimming test (500M in 15 minutes) as unnecessary, but now I definitely see the importance.

Water temp was roughly 78-80.

 

[drrich2]

Thanks for the frank, practical trip report. Good to see one on the Juliet, which enjoys a good reputation on the forum but I don't see a lot of reviews for.

Richard.