Rccl Grandeur Of The Seas, April/may

[Pinecube]

The wife and I will be on a cruise heading to the caribbean in late April(yay!). Since our last diving season was cut a little short we are eager to get back in the water, and this cruise will likely be the first chance we get. For now I'm trying to plan dives at each stop and from there we can work out whether or not we will actually dive there or enjoy the rest of what the islands have to offer. I've done some research but would appreciate any input you guys have.

Labadee, Haiti, doesn't seem to have any way to dive, so I'll skip that one for now.
San Juan, Puerto Rico. We're looking at the Escambron Marine Park. It is very close to the port we'd be docking at, it seems mostly protected from the ocean and it looks like there's a shop (Scuba Dogs) right beside it. I'm not sure if it's actually a shop or not?
Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, I hear good things about Admiralty Dive Center. Has anyone else used them?
Phillipsburg, St. Maarten, Not sure yet, seems to be a couple dive shops in the area to choose from. Any recommendations?


There's one thing that has confused me so far, that is this "Ship time" thing. Our ship leaves from Baltimore (Eastern time), does this mean that the ship itself will use eastern time throughout the entire cruise no matter what time zone the ship is actually in? Also, we just changed over to "daylight savings time", do the Caribbean islands follow that?

 

[diversteve]

Scubadogs has a 2nd location at Escambron Park. I checked into it once when we had a long layover thinking if we stayed shallow enough we could still fly that night. Scuba Dogs l Scuba Diving and Swimming Classes - click on the Escambron map and click thru to the pictures on google maps. There's a video near the bottom of the page here showing a dive class: Scuba Dogs l About Us - looks kind of murky...

Admiralty will pick you up at the port and since they're located closer to downtown, after the dives I've read they allow you some time to look around b4 returning you back to the port - it's only a few minutes away. Another option is Blue Island DIvers. I have not used either since we dove further east (land-based) but both seem to get good reviews here. Blue Island Divers Dive SItes

On the off-chance that you dock at Crown Point Marina and not Havensight (WICO) you can walk to Blue Island.

 

[claymore]

In Philipsburg there are two shops within easy walking distance of the cruise ship pier. Octopus Diving and Scuba Fun. I believe Scuba Fun services the Cruise lines. They run bigger boats with more divers, they say they split the divers into groups of 6 or 8. Octopus diving runs smaller boats 8 divers max.

I do not know about the diving in St Maarten/St Martin. I have head St Maarten, Dutch side is more wreck type diving with bigger marine life while St Martin, French side is reef diving.

I think there are several better places in the Caribbean to dive than your ports but we have to go where the ship takes us and enjoy the warm water and easy diving.

As far as ships time I think it is line an cruise dependent. We are on the RC line Oasis of the Seas in early April and I contacted Royal Caribbean about port arrival times and was told that the port time listed on the itinerary are local times.

 

[Pinecube]

The dive sites may not be the best of what the Caribbean has to offer but we'll make the most of it either way! Escambron does seem murky but no more so than what we're used to. Besides, I'd like to take some time on our first dive to get our weighting down and practice some skills. So starting off with an easy shore dive makes sense.

We looked at the cruise ship's excursions but they're more than twice the price of the local charters

I'm liking the sound of an 8 diver boat in St. Maarten. I'll give RC a call and see what they say for our ship times.

Thank to both of you guys, very useful info!

 

[claymore]

In St Maarten you should have plenty of time to book your own dive operator. Octopus has a boat/boats that go out at 8:30 or 9:00am. The ship is supposed to disembark at 8:00am and depart at 5:00pm, lots of time even if something goes wrong. I have contacted both ops on St Maarten by email and phone because I will be there on the 6th of April on the Oasis of the Seas. I am leaning towards Octopus because of the smaller boats and I have had some not the best experiences with the cruise operators.

 

[Pinecube]

Just got back earlier this week.
The Scuba Dogz shop at Escambron set us up with whatever we needed and we had a great dive.
We went with Admiralty on St. Thomas, had lots of fun! The other 4 divers were DSD students, so on our first dive the DM gave us free reign to explore as long as we were back at the specified time.

I am leaning towards Octopus because of the smaller boats

Funny you say that, the Octopus boat was actually a bigger boat (physically) than the other dive boats I've been on. It could have easily fit 15 people comfortably, and like you said their max is 8 or so. That said... it gets better, it turns out we were the only two people booked!

Thanks again guys for the help, it was a great set of dives!

 

[freedc]

@Pinecube Thanks for your report. Can you say more about Scuba Dogs? What was the dive site like? Were their prices reasonable? Did the shop seem organized and professional?

 

[Pinecube]

@Pinecube Thanks for your report. Can you say more about Scuba Dogs? What was the dive site like? Were their prices reasonable? Did the shop seem organized and professional?

Sure thing. I can't speak for their main shop inland since we were only at the park. The "shop" at the park is more like a kiosk; it's not really a shop, it's small but they have everything you need to go diving. Great staff, they answered our questions and gave us a run-down of the park. We showed up while they were trying to get a big group of snorkelers signed up and they still made time for us.

I don't remember exactly what we paid for rental gear, but as I recall it was similar to what we were paying for rental gear on other islands. They also have lockers (I think these were $2 extra), though they are pretty small.

The site itself certainly is not the best the Caribbean has to offer. The vis was about 20', surge (this was first time feeling surge) was maybe a couple feet, and compared to our other dives in the Caribbean there were not many fish at all. That said, we still had a blast. Our local diving has 20' vis at its best so it wasn't really an issue and since this was our first ocean dive we were excited to see any colourful fish. It didn't matter how many or how few of them there were. They have some underwater sculptures that are kind of neat and the old bridge that had some fish hiding in it. It is a nice and easy shore dive. I strongly recommend using open-heeled fins with boots rather than full-foot fins. There are lots of urchins in the water and since it is a public beach, the odd piece of broken glass too. Neither would be fun to step on in bare feet.