Red Sail Dive shop - Aruba

[dhuskins]

My wife and I dove with S.E. Aruba Fly 'n Dive, a dutch group that was a blast to dive with. Uncrowded boats, great service. If I have any complaint, it would be they take forever to finish drinking coffee and get on board. The boat never left on time. On the plus side, they are extremely accommodating friendly.

Red Sail Sports is a huge operation with huge cattle boats. I'm more interested in personal treatment offered by the smaller dive shops.

 

[Michael_Lambert]

I dove with Fly n Dive the first day there and had that complaint boat was schedualed to leave at 8:30 i got to there for 8am no one showed up at the boat till almost 9am and we never left till like 10... I understand we are on vacation time however when i promise my wife i will dive the mornings and give her the afternoon ( Compromising ) and i don't get back to the hotel till 3pm because the boat was late leaving and in no rush to get back... she was not thrilled

 

[dhuskins]

I was trying to be kind about their coffee drinking habit. Yeah. . . I think we left one day around 9:30, but that was the exception.

I didn't care what time they returned (and yes, 2 or 3 PM was normal) as my wife is as addicted to diving as I am and neither of us had anything else we wanted to do that week.

My wife's week was a series of wake, breakfast, get ride to shop, drink coffee, more coffee, swap stories/jokes, another round of coffee, decide on what to go see, coffee, go dive, surface interval, dive again, return. . . look, more coffee . . . afternoon dive, hotel dinner, fall asleep. Repeat. My week was exactly the same, except I don't drink coffee. - sigh -

 

[dgower]

Red Sail at the Hyatt was clearly the worst dive operation I have been with. You reserve your dive in the lobby before 4pm the day before and pay for it. There is some language and cultural problems and most of the people selling the dives don’t have any detailed knowledge of what the dive involves.

No Help with the equipment. The morning of your dive you must move your equipment from your room through the lobby to the check out window and pick up weights and anything else like a BCD. They don’t keep lead on the boat. Then carry all of it to the boat dock across the sand. After your dive you carry all of your stuff back to the window to check it in since there is no locker or equipment storage on the boat pier. The window is not manned all the time so you stand till someone from the boat comes to help with check in. Shelly in equipment checkout earns extra credit for poor customer relations. There is a trash can of “fresh” water on the boat for all divers to clean their equipment but if you want it really clean and secure you must carry your stuff back through the hotel to your shower and hang it over your balcony.

No Help on the boats. One dive we has 21 divers with only two dive masters and a boat captain. The people who have not dove other sites in the Caribbean may not realize that there are places that help you lift tank and BC into the boat and even help with tank turn over for the second dive. At Red Sail you are lucky to have someone grab your fins.

Nitrox is so poorly handled that I am amazed they keep PADI certification. Only 32% nitrox is available but the tanks we had were not properly marked in fact they were only identified by a piece of masking tape with 32 on it not the usual and required green and yellow band on the cylinder. No sign out record. The one oxygen sensor went out with the other boat and we had to stop at another facility to use their sensor. Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy dive operation. My first and last Red Sail experience.

 

[allistoy]

Nice to see I'm not the only one who has had bad experiences with them. I could add a book of other things they do poorly but what good would it do, you really have to experience great service operator when diving to appreciate the bad operators out ther even more. When the boat captain tell you he has never seen a bigger cluster $%^^ in his life you know you did not read the events of a trip wrong.

 

[ScubaDocER]

I echo the comments on a horrible experience with Red Sail in Aruba. I initially went to Aruba as a part of a cruise and dove the wreck there. I decided to come back for my birthday and stay longer on the island. The dives were awful!! Swimming over sand patches with weeds sticking up. Poor customer service. Poor dive site selections. There were only 2 dives during my stay that were worthwhile and they would not return to those areas. It was so bad I flew home 2 days early. I am sure the diving in Aruba is very good, despite my experience with Red Sail. Hopefully I'll get to experience it with a different dive shop. I wish I had known about SB before that trip.

 

[boulderjohn]

First of all, welcome to ScubaBoard. This is a huge site and very confusing to new users. We have regional travel sites lower on the list, and you will find one for that area. There you will find a lot of people who really know Aruba ad Red Sail very well.

I have asked that this thread be moved to that area, because many people who will be helpful will not look in this part of ScubaBoard and will miss your question.

I have dived Aruba, but not the Red Sail operator there. I did dive a Red Sail operator in Grand Cayman, and I did one dive and never went back. If you were to search the Aruba area site for information on Red Sail, you will see many posts similar to the ones you have already read here.

When I was in Aruba, I dived with Dive Aruba (Clive Paula), who has been recommended here already. I had an excellent time and would use him again were I to return, but unless his operation has grown, he is much better suited to the confident and self-sufficient diver than most operators are. When I was with him, he was very much a one man operation, and one man can only provide so much support. If you feel that you can operate without a lot of help, you will have a hard time finding anyone better for you.

 

[Hragin]

Boulderjohn,

Thanks for the information and the move of the thread. I just returned and did my diving with Unique. Very organized and competent instructors and dive team. As I look into new travels I will use the area you recommend.
Howard