Sailing & Diving from St. Lucia

[denniscloutier]

We have a chance to get some cheap accommodations for a week in St. Lucia. Right now we're considering a week on St. Lucia, followed by a week of sailing. We'd bring our diving gear and hopefully be able to sail to some other islands and dive there as well. I've read a thread elsewhere on the board on diving from a sailboat. It sounds like it has issues, but can be done.

So, I have a few questions:
1. How does the diving on St. Lucia compare to say Bonaire or Cozumel?
2. We're thinking of renting tanks and weights from someone on St. Lucia and getting the tanks refilled at various places on other islands during our trip. Does this sound practical?
3. Is this nuts?

 

[jaybombs25]

In St. Lucia foreign divers by law must be accompanied by a local divemaster. Also shops generally would not agree to lending out weights and tanks. The easiest thing is to contact a local dive shop to provide a guide for you and your dives. Any idea of the dates which you will be visiting?

 

[denniscloutier]

We haven't fixed any dates yet. Mostly I'm just trying to decide if the concept works. The general idea is that we would fly into St. Lucia, or one of the other nearby islands, and then sail and dive at a few different places.

This is something my wife and I are considering, but I'm beginning to think that trying to combine sailing and diving is probably more effort than it is worth.

Since we'd be staying in St. Lucia, we would probably just go out on boat dives with one of the resorts while we're there. But we'd want to rent tanks & weights to bring on the sailboat for diving on other islands.

Do you know if there are yacht charter operations on St. Lucia?

Thanks,

 

[Damselfish]

when you say "other islands" what specific islands are you talking about?

From what I've seen, places with significant sailing traffic and decent diving tend to have a dive op that caters to it and will happily come pick you up from your boat and bring you back there, at least. And if you're someplace that can fill tanks, you could just as easily go diving with them. There's something to be said for local knowledge.

 

[denniscloutier]

when you say "other islands" what specific islands are you talking about?

From what I've seen, places with significant sailing traffic and decent diving tend to have a dive op that caters to it and will happily come pick you up from your boat and bring you back there, at least. And if you're someplace that can fill tanks, you could just as easily go diving with them. There's something to be said for local knowledge.

At the moment I don't know which islands. Obviously more research is required. Do the dive resorts in these areas have VHF radios (ie. can you radio ahead and get them to pick you up)? If they'll pick you up from your boat and take you out, that sounds pretty good, as long as the cost isn't too extreme.

Thanks for your help.