Thanks for the head's up on the boat, we'll probably do them on the front end of the trip. It seemed hard to pass up on the boats when with their special it's $120 for 6 days of Nitrox and with the package it was $209 for 6 days of nitrox and 6 boats. I was just thinking 6 boats for $89 not a bad deal. As far as the naturalist course I need any help I can get. Been diving SoCal for 7 years now just over 300 dives and yet to see a BSB or make it to San Miguel 0 for 5, damn Santa Cruz again???
I don't think you need any special spotting techniques in order to spot a BSB. They're kind of hard to miss. Still, I have around 200 SoCal dives under my belt, and I only saw one once, at San Clemente. It was a beautiful fall day, 100' of viz vertically at least since I could see the boat from the bottom of the wall at Little Flower, when this massive shape approached. I was ready to wet my drysuit when my fish ID instinct kicked in and I realized it was shaped a lot more like a giant fish than a shark. Whew. (Later that dive, a huge bat ray buzzed by, and then at the end as we were ascending, we were treated to a nice bait ball. What a dive!)
The boat diving is a great deal in Bonaire, there's no doubt about that. The boat rides are very short which keeps fuel and maintenance costs down. And there's simply no other way to dive Klein Bonaire. When I stayed at Buddy the time before last, we opted for the 11-dive package and used all 11, mainly because Janna slipped on their slippery floors and wrenched her leg so bad she could barely walk, let alone shore dive. I really liked the boat diving at Buddy because it's very convenient.
On the other hand, with BDA, I didn't find their boat diving so convenient. They use a small boat that doesn't have room for tank holders. So instead, they stuff 12 divers on a boat sized for 8 and you assemble your gear when you moor at the site. That means that they pass out tanks on a crowded boat, not just any tanks, but everyone has to have their own particular nitrox tank and everyone is diving nitrox because it's free. Then you have to try to get your BC on your tank while balancing it between your feet on a bouncing boat. Inevitably someone drops their tank, hopefully not on someone's toes. You then follow the DM until someone on the boat runs out of air in 15 minutes, then you follow the DM back to the boat where you spend 30 more minutes in the shallows until the dive is called at about an hour. If the DM spots a frogfish or seahorse, you have 12 divers crowded around it kicking each other and making photography generally impossible.
Not only that, but you're on a schedule, since you usually have to sign up for the boats in advance. On the last trip, where we did almost exclusively shore dives, I fell in love with the lack of schedule and finally got to know the meaning of dive freedom. No "be at the dock at xxx time if you want to make the boat", no "this is where we're going because ...", no "turn the dive when the first in the large group uses half his air"; it's mosey downstairs whenever you feel like it, grab your gear and 2 or 4 tanks and throw them in the back of the pickup, drive to wherever you feel like going right then, gearing up at your own pace seated on the comfortable tailgate, make an easy walk into the ocean, and dive at your own pace for as long as you both can still breathe. By grabbing four tanks instead of two, you can make another dive, again wherever you want, after whatever surface interval you want, and it's just as easy. Then head back to BDA for more tanks, maybe a lunch somewhere, and repeat. That's dive freedom and that's what Bonaire is all about.
I can't wait.
