Picking a Caribbean Live-Aboard

[dmoore19]

I have done 2 live aboards. The AquaCat and the Cayman Aggressor. I very much enjoyed them both. The food on either of them was very good, the food on the CA was better IMO. The AquaCat was very well maintained and the cabins are roomy compared to the CA. I thought the crew on the CA was better. We made the crossing during our 10 day trip on the CA. The diving in the Caymans was superior to that of the Bahamas. Though I can't say I didn't enjoy both places. The price for the AquaCat was less than the Cayman Agressor if that plays a role in the decision. Getting there doesn't really amount to much difference from here. I do however appreciate the fact that you pass through Customs in the Bahamas and bypass that mess in Miami from the Bahamas.

On my CA trip Tom the Captain was going to retire, I hope the crew and the boat maintain what was there when I was on it. Overall, if I was making a decision on which trip I would probably want to take the Cayman Aggressor again but wouldn't rule out the AquaCat for another trip. Both trips were enjoyable and without much for problems.

 

[PACKRMAN]

Thanks, guys. What do you see as the main differences that matter (either in operator, or the diving?
Richard.

While the operations do run a little different you basically get the same thing, a great crew. I did find it a little easier getting to and from the boat on T&C. The diving is the big difference. The Cat will put you on more and varied sites. Some shallow coral heads, some walls, decent diving, lots of sharks and lion fish. T&C is almost all walls and they start around 80'. Great diving, some sharks, not to many lion fish. I kind of like shallower dives and more bottom time, some like deep dives.

Back to Belize, wall dives but they start shallow. You can cruise the tops or go deep however you like.

 

[drrich2]

T&C is almost all walls and they start around 80'. Great diving, some sharks, not to many lion fish. I kind of like shallower dives and more bottom time, some like deep dives.

Any idea what your max. & average depth times tended to be on T&C dives?

When I did 10 dives out of Jupiter, FL, last September, the dive briefing tended to put the sand at 90 feet, but it was pretty flat topography, with the reef a long, broad flat rocky shelf on which crew a 'lawn' or corals & gorgonians. My max. depths ran roughly 63 - 89 feet deep, average depths roughly 47 - 66 feet.

On the other hand, in Bonaire, it was wall diving, sloping hillsides covered with coral & gorgonians, starting around 25 - 30 feet deep & sloping down towards 200'. My max. depth might run 50 - 65 feet, with average depth around 20 - 25 feet (due to dragging out bottom time in the shallows at the end of shore dives). I typically aimed for 40 foot depth swimming out parallel to the wall going, 30 foot depth coming back, then messed around in the shallows 'rubble crawling' or whatever, getting a near hour dive.

My point is, in wall diving, if the wall starts at x feet, I tend to dive at (x + 10-20 feet) deep, and in T&C if the walls tend to start around 80 feet without much to see shallow, that is some serious deep diving! Even with nitrox.

Is my understanding of Turks & Caicos diving reasonably on target, or am I misunderstanding or missing some nuances?

Richard.

 

[Damselfish]

My point is, in wall diving, if the wall starts at x feet, I tend to dive at (x + 10-20 feet) deep, and in T&C if the walls tend to start around 80 feet without much to see shallow, that is some serious deep diving! Even with nitrox.

Is my understanding of Turks & Caicos diving reasonably on target, or am I misunderstanding or missing some nuances?

Yeah, bottom line is to expect diving in T&C to average deeper than many places. (For this reason I can't talk my airhog spouse into going back.) West Caicos is thought of as the place to go by dayboat from Provo, and the current liveaboards spend a fair bit of time there as well. I don't remember the wall always starting at 80, I seem to remember a lot of 50-60ish, which is still a deep start to be doing every dive. They also go to French Cay where I've not been, but I don't know if that area is any shallower. (I have to think the liveaboards aren't dropping people on deep walls 5 times a day and have some other options out there, but since I haven't done either of the current ones it beats me.)

There is shallower diving in T&C. Of course there's Grace Bay and Northwest Point off Provo, but they're not generally as highly thought of. The wall starts much shallower off Grand Turk, plus there seemed to be better non-wall diving options around there. Same goes for South Caicos and Salt Cay, but dive op and lodging options are even more limited than Grand Turk - I'm not even sure if there's a dive op on South Caicos, which we thought was the best diving we did there. I'm pretty sure there are other areas with some shallower diving, but whether for quality or distance or whatever they're not as popular.

 

[drrich2]

Yeah, bottom line is to expect diving in T&C to average deeper than many places. (For this reason I can't talk my airhog spouse into going back.)

My actual SAC rate varies with the effort I'm making to control my breathing, my 2 different dive computers give me different SACs and MacDive gives me better SACs than my Cobalt that I use to feed it data. Let's say my SAC probably runs around 0.6 cf/min or a bit higher, but sometimes lower.

Any idea what your husband's SAC runs? Did you have the option to dive 100 cf tanks? Although I couldn't find the info. online, by e-mail correspondence I learned the Sun Dancer 2 (Belize) can provide 100 cf tanks. When I dove Jupiter I rented 120's with 36% nitrox to be on the safe side, and always came up with plenty of left-over gas. What kind of dive times did he get, I wonder?

Richard.

 

[Damselfish]

no idea on his SAC, never had a practical reason to bother figuring it out. (Or mine, since the answer is way less than him and almost everyone else.) Besides being a big guy much of his issue is maneuvering with his camera - when not doing photography he actually does pretty well, but he's kind of attached to that camera. Occasionally he dives 100s when available, but I don't remember there and it would be outdated info anyway. If we're diving with other people or a group he tends to compensate by staying shallower when it makes sense, but that doesn't work well or accomplish much when stuff is basically deep, hence his objection to T&C.

 

[diversteve]

I don't know where all this is coming from but the reef at French Cay starts in 40' of water. The mooring is a little shallower and you swim out to the wall and go as deep as you want. In some areas there's a flat plateau around 100' before it drops off deep.

All the Stingrays rest in less than 40'. Scattered all over the bottom. And there's patchy reef there with some really large coral heads - most are a macro lovers dream since they're 8-10' or so tall and fish nurseries. You don't even notice them until you get really close.

The West Caicos sites like Gulley start to get good at 50'. The Cut is at 85'. The big Black Coral tree at Magic Mushroom is at 85' but the wall there closer to the mooring is only 40'. I got "ambushed" by a very old turtle there in 35' of water among the coral - didn't even get it on film since it was so surprising - I hadn't set my camera up yet.

One of the first shakeout dives they do is the old "Thunderdome" site off Provo's NW Point. The top of the cages is at 15' and the bottom at 35'. There's nothing deeper nearby IIRC. We spent the whole dive swimming between the cages looking for stuff - for as barren as they are it's surprising how much hides out there.

There are some deeper sites like Amphitheater - the best of that (where the undercut is) is about 85'. Eel Garden though has really lush corals at 50' and you can drop down there to the sand patch at 130'.

None of the night dives we did were over 80' - most closer to 60'. I measured the depth once or twice as I was trying to see how far my light worked.

Borrowed from Caicos Adventures website:

Typical diving is on the edge of the Turks and Caicos bank (a 40 mile flat plateau) whereby the water depth is about 45 feet where the boat anchors, with a short path to "the walls" whereby the depth drops from 45 feet to 6000 feet. It is at this juncture where the wall meets the plateau (bank) that the tides wash out all the natural live sediment over the edge, and where there is live sediment, there are huge coral formations, giant pools of tropical fishes, and many larger species too (reef shark, nurse shark, sting ray, eagle ray, turtles). The Turks and Caicos walls are some of the finest diving in the World.

I'm almost positive I was offered (and took) an AL-100 on the Explorer. The DM offered and said they only had about 5 or 6 IIRC. Since they hot-fill you keep the same tank all week.

 

[PACKRMAN]

Any idea what your max. & average depth times tended to be on T&C dives?


Richard.

I looked back in my log and came up with these two trips.

Bahamas
max depth 25 70 60 25 25 60 65 95 70 30 25 90 95 35 25 80 30
average 20 50 50 20 20 50 60 60 50 25 20 60 40 30 20 40 25
time 70 45 55 85 70 50 45 45 55 75 45 35 45 65 75 65 80

T & C
max depth 85 85 60 95 85 80 85 45 80 85 70 40 90 60 90 80 65 85 55 90 40
average 60 75 50 70 70 50 60 35 40 40 50 35 65 50 65 60 55 60 55 50 35
time 50 50 60 45 45 60 50 70 50 55 50 70 40 55 50 50 45 45 60 45 65

These trips are within a couple of months of one another but with different dive buddies.

 

[ppatin]

If you want to do the Bahamas have you considered the Juliet or Lost Island Voyages? They're both cheaper than AquaCat but a lot less spartan than Blackbeard's. Juliet also has the advantage of leaving from Miami which will minimize the amount of time and money you spend on your flight.

 

[KeithG]

this issue with T&C is not max depth, it is min depth. On west caicos most of the walls start at 50 feet. So 50 feet will be your min depth with the mooring pin at around 45 ft. you can go as deep as you want.

Over at french caye the top of the wall is normally shallower, around 35 feet. But, if there is any wind you will not get to french caye. We have been blown out 3 of 6 trips.

In belieze most of the dive sites have shallows around 35 feet. Some of the night dives are even shallower.