Revillagigedos storm

[RCB1882]

Ah, that makes sense. They could have passed a hat for contributions!

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Just a quick-ish follow up on this until I get around to writing a proper report/review. As I understand it, the typical plan for these trips is to depart Cabo in the evening for the journey to the islands, which takes around 24 hours. We ended up leaving around 9 am the following day -- after spending the first night rolling at anchorage in Cabo. Transit took about 30 hours and our first dive wasn't until around 3 pm on Monday afternoon.

The crossing was pretty rough. I would say about 1/3 of the passengers were in their cabins because of being seasick, another 1/3 were feeling crummy but not actively sick, and another 1/3 seemed unaffected. The "bonus" 12 hours spent rolling at anchorage certainly did not help. It's unclear why we had to spend that time in unprotected water versus at the dock, where it would have been much more sheltered.

Once at San Benedicto, we dove the checkout site twice, which was disappointing but it allowed them to say we only missed 2 dives due to weather. The joys of hurricane season travel! (NB: the storm that caused all the drama was Celia, which happens to be our niece's name -- that provided at least some amusement for us) The rest of the cruise seemed to go off as it normally does. The seas had calmed quite a bit for the journey back to Cabo, which was nice.

This was our first time to Socorro, but from talking to others who had been before, it sounded like we had a good showing with respect to sea life. Mantas appeared more often than not, dolphins on a handful of dives, hammerheads on a few dives, small whale shark, and a tiger shark. Belle Amie is a comfortable boat, but with 27 divers on board it made for congestion both when gearing up and on the dive sites themselves.

I had a similar experience in 2019, on the Quino out of San Jose del Cabo. Very rough conditions the whole week ... a 30 hour trip down, and 32 hour trip back due to heavy seas. Pretty much everyone on board was seasick during the crossing ... including crew. We pulled into San Jose del Cabo at around 2 am, and were forced to ride out the waves for five more hours before they'd allow us to enter the harbor. Apparently, they won't allow boat traffic in except during daylight hours.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)