Sailing with dive gear & Diving from a sailboat

[Offshore]

Probably my second favorite water sport is sailing. So far, I mostly sail around the Northeast's Atlantic coast, and occasionally around San Francisco Bay, but have never seen a sailboat around here appear to have dive gear, nor have I ever seen or heard about sailboats anchoring / mooring to dive sites in Wreck Valley.

I have never been to the Caribbean, but hope to go soon, and have heard that it is very common for bareboat charters to also pack their own dive gear and sail to their own dive sites. At a few vacation destinations, I have seen larger (likely commercial) sailing catamarans, at least one of which seemed to have a rack of scuba tanks, but others at least routinely took out snorkelers if not divers. According to one sailing instructor I have talked to though, some sailors who vacation in, say, the BVI, charter the sailboat (bareboat, no captain), and arrange with a nearby dive shop to pack the boat with dive gear and easily enough seem to dive from their own sailboat. I've even seen an ad for a sailing school in the Caribbean that offers a combined course to get certified PADI Open Water and US Sailing Basic Keelboat on a week-long sailing vacation.

Has anyone here done this? If so, any pointers from your itinerary? Some questions that come to mind:

1. Is this much easier to do on a catamaran, or easy enough on a monohull, and if so, what size?

2. Did you need any training / experience beyond diver training and bareboat cruising? What about the rest of the crew?

3. What is the optimal number of tanks to take per diver, so that the boat is not too packed with tanks (and too much spent renting them), but that you are not forced to dock so often near dive shops for fills? Or maybe did you dive a rebreather and find this made logistics more compact?

4. Since someone always has to stay on board (I'm guessing), if you did this with a group that was all divers, was it still relaxing, or did "rotating" make it stressful / difficult, or in any limit the number of dives you could do beyond surface intervals?

5. Would you do it again / do you do this often? If it is hard, what is the main difficulty? If it is easy, why don't I see / here about more people doing it?

Thanks in advance for any replies...

 

[bvibound]

In the BVI, you could grab a mooring at many of the popular snorkel and dive spots and then nobody would have to remain on the boat. So I'd say sometimes you might want someone to remain with the boat and other times you could all dive.

Stormy
BVI Bound

 

[The Kraken]

Don't have a great deal of experience in diving from traditional sailboats, but those times that I have I found it to be quite problematic.

1st problem, decent boarding ladders; 2nd problem - space, 3rd problem -- space; 4th problem - sail boat owners are generally pretty sensitive about dents, dings and things like that and don't seem to be especially happy about divers bumping about their boats . . . see problems 2 and 3.

the K

 

[Tom Winters]

The K pretty much got it right - I just didn't feel like typing a novel to answer your questions. I've been there/ done that....and once was more than enough. I wound up offloading the dive tanks in the middle of the trip. Just way too much work - the sailboat I was on was only 38' which did not help. The advantage of a cat is that you can sail to the next island and the next bunch of dive ops that much quicker.
This is why whatever Supreme Being you subscribe to invented tropical dive shops.

 

[dpbishop]

I did a bare boat sailing/dive trip in the BVI's about 15 years ago and it was a blast!! There were 4 couples on an Irwin 52, 4 private cabins & a pilot cabin to store photo equipment, air-conditioning, inverter to power the blender, and a hinged dive platform at the stern with a hot water shower built in. We rented tanks and weights, and the dive shop would send out a boat to exchange tanks with us for a nominal fee. Most of the shops there now list "redevous diving" on their web site, where they will come out, bring equipment, and guide your dive; I don't know if they will just do the tank exchange anymore but you could check.

Catamaran or mono-hull isn't as important as the set up. The charter web sites will have deck layouts for the boats, so you should be able to see what kind of entry & exit you have. Generally the bigger the boat the more amenities; so if you can get 3 or four couples that can stand a week of close quarters I would go for size. It also lowers the cost per couple. Sailing is sweet in the BVIs, it blows 20 -25 knots every afternoon, and the islands are close together so you can always see where you are going.

 

[CaptainHornblower]

I think the K has identified the problems; has anyone seen a site or information on overcoming or dealing with the issues. I have a sail boat and am trying to figure out the logistics of using it as a dive platform. My swim ladder is marginal so my thought was to doff all my gear in the water and then winch it aboard using one of the halyards. Carrying enough tanks was another issue; maybe using a rebreather would solve that one. In open water another concern is using the swim ladder when the stern is bucking up and down from the waves; any thoughts?

Bruce

 

[dpbishop]

Captain H:
Two words...inflatable dingy.

I have an Ericson 35; high free board, vertical stern. When we dive I tie the dingy alongside. Either gear up on the sailboat and do a giant stride entry, or inflate the BC, throw it in and don it in the water. (note: don't attempt option two if you are negative without the BC.) After the dive we

1. remove weight belt and toss into dingy.
2. remove BC and tie off to dingy.
3. grasp rope handles on dingy, give a strong kick while pulling up, and enter dingy with all the grace of a drunken loon landing on an iced-over pond.

I dive four people this way and it works fine. It's helpful if there are two of you to handle getting the equipment from the dingy back into the sailboat.

By the way, if a female companion lacks the strength necessary to perform this method of exit, it is allowable for a gentleman to assist her by placing his open palm on her derrière and giving an upward shove, after first saying, " Allow me, dear Lady, to assist you in you efforts to escape Neptune's grasp in this manner which, while seeming indelicate, is rendered in the purest impulse of gentlemanly honor, with no overtones of familiarity intended."

If you are Australian, you can substitute: "Brace yourself, Sheila."

 

[MeiLing]

By the way, if a female companion lacks the strength necessary to perform this method of exit, it is allowable for a gentleman to assist her by placing his open palm on her derrière and giving an upward shove, after first saying, " Allow me, dear Lady, to assist you in you efforts to escape Neptune's grasp in this manner which, while seeming indelicate, is rendered in the purest impulse of gentlemanly honor, with no overtones of familiarity intended."

If you are Australian, you can substitute: "Brace yourself, Sheila."

 

[JackConnick]

I have an Islander 28.

I did add a sturdy T ladder (available from West Marine) to it's side with a large backing plate on the inside. I tie a fender between it and the hull and it works quite well for me to get out of the water and toss stuff in the boat.

But generally I use a 10' Zociac and do shore dives from it. I can actually get 3 divers and 2 tanks each out for a weekend with no problems. And that's with cold water gear - drysuits, etc. We just lash three of the tanks (and some lighter gear bags) into the dingy with the BCs inflated. If it does turn over they would just press up into the bottom of the boat. The rest comes inside and with some distributing of weights into the bottom of the the salon, it works out. Heck, I even took my scooter!

I have also used the dingy as described above, as sort of a boarding ladder and that works well.

The gear is a pain and for a week, I'd probably take my gear and do charters from the boat with their tanks and weights. Many charter operators will even just pick you up off your boat if it's nearby their base.

Jack

 

[CaptainHornblower]

Hi dp and Jack,

As they say in the Foster ad "Brilliant". Don't know why I didn't think of it, but that would work perfect. I now have a 10 ft Trinka that I store on the foredeck, which is great for rowing and sailing, but the stability is horrible. My wife's been bugging me to replace the Trinka with an inflatable.

Dp, when you say "dive 4 people" do you mean commercially? If so I'd be interested in your experience doing it for pay. I've been debating taking certified divers out on our boat, and with the inflatable it sounds very doable. I have my 100 Ton masters license inland and 6 pack for near coastal to 100 mi offshore, so I thought maybe the money pit could help pay for herself for a change (the boat, not the wife).