Sint Maarten and Saba Trip Report
Hi all. My turn to give something back to the board. My wife and I just returned from Sint Maarten and Saba, and heres how things went. I should note that we were dodging some of the outer regional weather effects of both Dennis and Emily while there from 3 14 July, 2005, so the weather wasnt ideal (we had 7 seas getting back into the boat Tuesday ouch!) which limited the dive location choices as well for some of the days, but aside from not traveling in the summer/fall you cant choose your weather. Water temp was uniformly 86 degrees or so at the surface dropping to 82/84 or so at depth, visibility lows were perhaps 40 feet on some of the shallower sandy dives but up to 70 feet or more on some of the deeper Saba dives.
First a paragraph or three about the dive operators we used, then on to the dives and site highlights specifically.
SINT MAARTEN OPERATORS:
On Sint Maarten we dove with both Dive Adventures/Aquamania and with Dive Safaris five dives with the former over two days (including 1 night dive) on Tues July 5th and Thurs July 7th and three with the latter (including their Shark Awareness dive) all on Fri July 8th. We used our own equipment so I cant comment much on rental gear aside from visual impressions, but everything from both operators had that nice sun-faded look (BCs, wetsuits) but appeared to be in reasonable repair.
We had some slight equipment issues with our own regulators with both operators, and I was satisfied with the way they were handled in both cases. [With DA we had our high-pressure lines come loose to the point an o-ring wasnt seating right poor initial torquing during assembly by our shop, or just travel gremlins? Not sure and they identified and corrected the problem with no time lost. With DS both my wife and my fairly new Oceanic 180-swivel octopus secondary regs started free-flowing the morning after having dove with them at DA, which was really confusing! and after they determined there wasnt a quick adjustment that would stop the free-flow without perhaps making them too hard to breathe thus useless as backups, DS did an intermediate pressure test for us to verify it wasnt a first-stage problem, then swapped us out for octos from their own stores so we could proceed with the dives. Will be talking to our local shop about that bit later ]
Both DA and DS seemed professional and gave reasonable briefings before the dives, and had dive masters diving with us at all sites who clearly knew the sites and had good dive skills of their own. With DA we had a max of like 18 on a boat, with DS 14, and people were split into 2- 3 groups of 7 max based on a mix of who they came with and ability. Both operators made it a point to try to keep like divers together. My wife and I dove Nitrox for all these dive and both operators made it a point to have us personally verify the gas mixes and log them, and provided either 30, 32 or 36 based on the expected dive profile. All operators took pains to introduce themselves (dive masters and those staying on the boat) and be friendly and personable.
While Id never accuse anyone of lax safety procedures without cause, so please dont read this as any such accusation, I think I would have to say that after diving with both of them that DS seemed to run a much tighter ship. No specific complaints against DA, but DSs entire operation just seemed very, very crisp with everything well handled like getting everyone in gear and prepped as the boat was making final approach to the dive sites, etc. for immediate descent and no significant waiting for the cattle to get in a row. I liked the arrangement of their dive boat better too. DA felt a bit more like it was running on island time to us but that mightve been just bad luck of the draw given some of the others we ended up diving with (you know the typeroto-tillers and those who shouldnt be diving) and given that we dove them earlier in the week when weather was rougher, so the site selection was way more limited. There was just this definite feeling of improvement when we started diving with DS on Friday.
The only significant complaint my wife and I had (which we will share with the operator directly as well) was that the DA-run night dive we did had 14 people in one of their smaller boats and both groups of 7 ended up just lumped in the same direction although the initial briefing said we were coming in over a reef and one group would go one way, the other group the other way to reduce diver clutter. Despite color-coded lightsticks affixed to our equipment to identify group 1, group 2, and group 1 and 2 divemasters, that dive ended up being a milling swarm of rototillers and just plain not terribly fun. (Even the dive master subtly indicated his frustration without coming out and saying anything that would get him into trouble with his own management ) Given the propensity of people to cluster to the light at night, they really should limit their night dives to fewer than their day dives, and/or make sure the divemasters coordinate with one another better.
So if I had it to do over again, I would choose Dive Safaris over Dive Adventures for my future diving in Sint Maarten (although to be fair there are other operators like Ocean Explorers who have good reputations we should also give a shot, so this is just a preference of the 2 we did experience). Weather and luck of the draw on other divers there at the same time as us probably played a factor, but thats the opinion Im coming away with. Dive Safaris, in particular the lead guide we dove with named Jefferson from Brazil, were just absolutely on top of the game the whole time and very satisfying to dive with. They were a tad more expensive than Dive Adventures, but given the way the dives were run wed be willing to pay the differential.
<to be continued>
Hi all. My turn to give something back to the board. My wife and I just returned from Sint Maarten and Saba, and heres how things went. I should note that we were dodging some of the outer regional weather effects of both Dennis and Emily while there from 3 14 July, 2005, so the weather wasnt ideal (we had 7 seas getting back into the boat Tuesday ouch!) which limited the dive location choices as well for some of the days, but aside from not traveling in the summer/fall you cant choose your weather. Water temp was uniformly 86 degrees or so at the surface dropping to 82/84 or so at depth, visibility lows were perhaps 40 feet on some of the shallower sandy dives but up to 70 feet or more on some of the deeper Saba dives.
First a paragraph or three about the dive operators we used, then on to the dives and site highlights specifically.
SINT MAARTEN OPERATORS:
On Sint Maarten we dove with both Dive Adventures/Aquamania and with Dive Safaris five dives with the former over two days (including 1 night dive) on Tues July 5th and Thurs July 7th and three with the latter (including their Shark Awareness dive) all on Fri July 8th. We used our own equipment so I cant comment much on rental gear aside from visual impressions, but everything from both operators had that nice sun-faded look (BCs, wetsuits) but appeared to be in reasonable repair.
We had some slight equipment issues with our own regulators with both operators, and I was satisfied with the way they were handled in both cases. [With DA we had our high-pressure lines come loose to the point an o-ring wasnt seating right poor initial torquing during assembly by our shop, or just travel gremlins? Not sure and they identified and corrected the problem with no time lost. With DS both my wife and my fairly new Oceanic 180-swivel octopus secondary regs started free-flowing the morning after having dove with them at DA, which was really confusing! and after they determined there wasnt a quick adjustment that would stop the free-flow without perhaps making them too hard to breathe thus useless as backups, DS did an intermediate pressure test for us to verify it wasnt a first-stage problem, then swapped us out for octos from their own stores so we could proceed with the dives. Will be talking to our local shop about that bit later ]
Both DA and DS seemed professional and gave reasonable briefings before the dives, and had dive masters diving with us at all sites who clearly knew the sites and had good dive skills of their own. With DA we had a max of like 18 on a boat, with DS 14, and people were split into 2- 3 groups of 7 max based on a mix of who they came with and ability. Both operators made it a point to try to keep like divers together. My wife and I dove Nitrox for all these dive and both operators made it a point to have us personally verify the gas mixes and log them, and provided either 30, 32 or 36 based on the expected dive profile. All operators took pains to introduce themselves (dive masters and those staying on the boat) and be friendly and personable.
While Id never accuse anyone of lax safety procedures without cause, so please dont read this as any such accusation, I think I would have to say that after diving with both of them that DS seemed to run a much tighter ship. No specific complaints against DA, but DSs entire operation just seemed very, very crisp with everything well handled like getting everyone in gear and prepped as the boat was making final approach to the dive sites, etc. for immediate descent and no significant waiting for the cattle to get in a row. I liked the arrangement of their dive boat better too. DA felt a bit more like it was running on island time to us but that mightve been just bad luck of the draw given some of the others we ended up diving with (you know the typeroto-tillers and those who shouldnt be diving) and given that we dove them earlier in the week when weather was rougher, so the site selection was way more limited. There was just this definite feeling of improvement when we started diving with DS on Friday.
The only significant complaint my wife and I had (which we will share with the operator directly as well) was that the DA-run night dive we did had 14 people in one of their smaller boats and both groups of 7 ended up just lumped in the same direction although the initial briefing said we were coming in over a reef and one group would go one way, the other group the other way to reduce diver clutter. Despite color-coded lightsticks affixed to our equipment to identify group 1, group 2, and group 1 and 2 divemasters, that dive ended up being a milling swarm of rototillers and just plain not terribly fun. (Even the dive master subtly indicated his frustration without coming out and saying anything that would get him into trouble with his own management ) Given the propensity of people to cluster to the light at night, they really should limit their night dives to fewer than their day dives, and/or make sure the divemasters coordinate with one another better.
So if I had it to do over again, I would choose Dive Safaris over Dive Adventures for my future diving in Sint Maarten (although to be fair there are other operators like Ocean Explorers who have good reputations we should also give a shot, so this is just a preference of the 2 we did experience). Weather and luck of the draw on other divers there at the same time as us probably played a factor, but thats the opinion Im coming away with. Dive Safaris, in particular the lead guide we dove with named Jefferson from Brazil, were just absolutely on top of the game the whole time and very satisfying to dive with. They were a tad more expensive than Dive Adventures, but given the way the dives were run wed be willing to pay the differential.
<to be continued>