Liveaboard vs Dive Resort for newbie divers?

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ssssnake529

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It seems for experienced divers that the liveaboard experience offers the most diving across a broad spectrum of sites.

My wife and I are new to diving and want to get out and do more of it. We've got trips booked to Jamaica and Cozumel this summer, and are looking to do another trip in the fall or winter.

For our fall/winter trip, I was initially considering a 7-10 day liveaboard in either the Maldives, Australia, or Raja Ampat.
However, as I dig into the itineraries and read various trip reports, I wonder if we should do more resort based diving and become better divers before we sign up for a liveaboard.

It seems that liveaboards tend to attract more experienced divers and I'm worried we would be out of our depth on a diving liveaboard.

As an alternative to liveaboards, there are lots of shore based diving options in all of these areas, and I'm wondering if we would be better off basing out of a dive-centric resort rather than signing up for a liveaboard.

What is the wisdom of the collective? Should we forego the liveaboard trips until we become better divers?
 
Your profile says « not certified » , so not sure what your certification level or how many dives you have. It might help people replying if you could update it.

I would not have gone on a LOB to the Maldives or to Raja Ampat with less than 50 or even 100 dives. One’s air consumption needs to be fairly good and you will need to be able to cope in currents with relatively little hand holding by your guide. Do lots of rescort diving diving first.
 
It depends on your ultimate agenda. If its to dive, eat sleep. It's a live aboard. It's pretty safe to assume you'll get 20-25 dives in a week. Or another way of looking at it you can get 12-15 hours under water which is far more valuable than the number of dives. It would be a mutually shared experience of a life time with your wife and she with you. Another perc is no need to dress up, do make up, fix hair( that's easy for me to say, I shave my head:)).
If you just want to do a vacation with a dive component then a shore based trip is the way to go. You do a couple of morning boat dives and then just chill the rest of the day. You'll pack more luggage=wife's clothes( I'm not being sexist here, its just a fact of life and we all know it). You'll have a fun vacation but secretly wish you went on the live aboard.
And to your other concerns about being new. Live a boards have dive masters available to dive with you. They offer specialty courses, for example, like nitrox or even advanced diving. If your new and go on a live aboard, at the end of the week with 15-25 dives under your belt you won't be a newbie diver any more. And. you'll have a new t shirt to wear home. It, and the pair of shorts you wore to the trip will be the only dry and clean piece of clothing you'll have left to go home in..lol....
 
Agree with Tippytoes12. I think you will be happier on a LOB after you have gotten at least 50+ dives under your belt and have your gas consumption and buoyancy under control. I know a lot of LOBs prefer/require an AOW certification (as much as they are worth...) so you should consider that.

While many divers are patient, I've been around enough that have little tolerance for 'newbies' on their LOB.
 
It seems for experienced divers that the liveaboard experience offers the most diving across a broad spectrum of sites.

My wife and I are new to diving and want to get out and do more of it. We've got trips booked to Jamaica and Cozumel this summer, and are looking to do another trip in the fall or winter.

For our fall/winter trip, I was initially considering a 7-10 day liveaboard in either the Maldives, Australia, or Raja Ampat.
However, as I dig into the itineraries and read various trip reports, I wonder if we should do more resort based diving and become better divers before we sign up for a liveaboard.

It seems that liveaboards tend to attract more experienced divers and I'm worried we would be out of our depth on a diving liveaboard.

As an alternative to liveaboards, there are lots of shore based diving options in all of these areas, and I'm wondering if we would be better off basing out of a dive-centric resort rather than signing up for a liveaboard.

What is the wisdom of the collective? Should we forego the liveaboard trips until we become better divers?

We did the Belize Aggressor IV 3 weeks ago. (It was fantastic, BTW.) On our trip there was a pretty big mix of divers. One young woman had just gotten her OW certification and had only one other dive...so she had 5 dives upon boarding. She was traveling with an experienced diver who had over 3000 dives. There were probably 4 or 5 other divers who had in excess of 1500 dives. The rest of us all had under 100 dives....in fact, there were about 10 of us who hit our 50th dive on that trip.

So, it's entirely possible that you'd have a good mix of divers. That said, a couple of things to keep in mind. At least with Aggressor we were on, the dives are not guided. You can swim along with whichever DM is in the water, but they don't necessarily hang out and wait on you to begin following. (If you're last in the water, the DM may already have headed out. That said, if you specifically let that person know that you want to follow along, they will wait.) Either way, it's a good thing to be comfortable navigating unless you're diving somewhere that the dives are more controlled. Also, make sure to research locations. We were all set to book a luxury LOB in the Maldives for the winter. However, we found out that the diving there can be pretty challenging as far as current goes. Not all the diving of course, but you don't always get to pick and choose. We might be ready now that we've picked up another 20+ dives (and will be adding more next month), but I think we'll take a drift diving course first. We have been diving in current - some of it pretty fast - but not to the extent that we feel ready to take on some of these more challenging drifts.

Finally, be aware that many of the dives on the LOB may be deep dives, depending on where you go. I'd say if you aren't AOW, it might be better to get that before you book a LOB. BA IV didn't monitor that, but that's just one boat and one crew. Most locations you could stay shallow and up on the reef when there were walls, but sometimes the wall diving was so much better than the shallower reef. (There were a couple of shallow reefs that were amazing though.)

I know this is long, so I'll just add that we had a fantastic time on the LOB that we did and we'll definitely be planning another, hopefully for later this summer. We also met some absolutely fantastic people that we plan to dive with again. If you do book a LOB, I hope that you have just as good of a group.
 
Go to Bonaire do as much diving as you wish when you wish. Go shore only, no boats maybe one to Klein at the end of the trip. You plan your dives, and dive your plans. Your skills and confidence will improve dramatically over the course of a week. You will also develop a really good diving relationship with your spouse, or a strong desire to find a new buddy:rofl3:
 
My son (who was 13 at the time) and I had 9 dives (5 OW cert dives in Cozumel, 4 quarry dives) each when we did a Blackbeard's liveaboard in the Bahamas, and I believe it made us better divers -- and we certainly got very used to getting in and out of our kit often! We did check with the liveaboard company first and I would recommend doing that -- in our case they said that being new divers was no problem.

We also opted to do our AOW class during the liveaboard trip. This worked out well, as it gave us 5 more dives with a divemaster. Also, we ended up informally tagging along/behind different groups of experienced divers -- not necessarily for help, but to make sure that we didn't get lost.

For us, doing a liveaboard was a worthwhile experience. However, it did help me realize that I prefer 2-3 dives a day (with perhaps an off day thrown in) and some land activities, rather than 5 dives a day on a regimented schedule with nowhere else to go. I'm not saying I won't do a liveaboard again, but when I do I'm going to give myself permission to skip a few dives here and there -- I really like diving, but 5 dives a day, in and out of wetsuits, can start to feel like work to me. Again, it definitely was a good experience that helped us to be better divers, so I'm glad that we did it.
 
Given Australia’s covid restrictions, I wouldn’t count on that country for a trip anytime this year.
Ditto Indonesia.

OP, if you and your wife aren't certified yet, I wouldn't book a LOB yet. A land-based trip to a place that offers enough topside entertainment to be worth spending the entire length of the trip not diving might be an OK thing to book now. I would pick a place that's not too far from you and not likely to have COVID travel restrictions, maybe within the US or Mexico. (You're in Virginia, right?) I would also look for a place with lots of newbie-friendly dive sites.
 
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