Planning 1st trip to Bahamas

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

I've been to Nassau and Freeport 3 times each, though I didn't do any diving in Nassau. Stuarts Cove seems to be considered the premier dive op in Nassau, but it's 45 minutes away.
Freeport is more relaxed, does have a little bit of a nightlife down in Port Lucaya, and generally seems (much!) slower paced.
I dove with Grand Bahama Scuba twice there, and had dives each time - even took my daughters there to get certified. On plus about Fred & Melinda @ GBS was that they came by and picked me up on our first trip (I had a car the second time), and they let my wife ride along on the boat so she could watch - I'd definitely go back there again with no reservations.

KevinL

+1 for GBS
 
We've been heading back to Freeport each year diving with Grand Bahama Scuba. They are located on a gated resort ORYC.com, the resort is a 6.5-7 out of 10. Fred and Melinda now have instructed my two sons and on our trip last week my wife. Thanks to GBS we now dive as a family. We were able to have casual as well as fine dining, an eco tour to the east end where pirates of the caribbean was filmed (one or two of them) and as usual something to do for all on the trip. dont know if this is allowed here but this is one day of our trip last week... https://www.dropbox.com/sh/mk8x2g9iji67tgi/P5hiOWMYhu

btw from south florida (FLL) they now have a fast power catamaran service that was quick, inexpensive and a joy to cross on. www.ferryexpress.com this is much better than the short flight or other boat service that used to run. 5 divers with gear under 1000 round trip first class...

Fred and Melinda will take good care of you no matter where you stay, but its very nice waking up around 8, walking 100 yards to the dive boat and all of the dive sites were within 15 min boat rides. the dive sites accommodated all divers with sites from 15-110'. hope the link above works ....enjoy your trip
 
Last edited:
Hi bhubb!

We're sitting in an airport now on our way back from freeport. Had a great time diving and dove each day for 5 days. We were with Grand Bahama Scuba - Fred and Melinda Riger's operation. Great pricing. Probably saved about 50% over what we'd have paid for the certifications we did vs U.S. costs. Amazing instruction! Melinda finished up dive 1800 while we were there and I imagine Fred is around triple that. He's lived and dived there for 30 years. More history and info than you can imagine. Absolutely NOT commercial. Other folks with us were multi-hundred dives to new open water and each did there own thing. But they gave good pre dive info and were always watching over those who needed it. Very personal ...IF you want that. We thought they were great. The two of us finished our advanced and couldn't have found a better place. You can go from gourmet to subway sandwiches so any budget works here. Visibility was great and we saw sharks, moray, Lionfish, remora, rays....you name it. Tropical setting with music nightly for free for those who want it. Some grocery stores if that works for you but still all kinds of restaurants. Not much gear to be bought on the island so make sure you have anything special you wanted with you. Pretty warm during the days with water temps around 84. Our deepest wreck was a gorgeous one at between 100 and 110 but Lots of reefs as shallow as the 30s are there. You can find them easily on the web. We found them through other recommendations here wanting something "not so commercial". We were able to leave our equipment with the boat all week. They cleaned it each night and had everything ready to go when they picked us up each am. They dropped us back at our hotel each day. Dive entry you go to the back of the boat and they put the bc on you. No moving around the boat with gear. I'm sure i'm going on too long but can't imagine anything better or easier that isn't a live aboard.
 

Back
Top Bottom