Sandals St. Lucia - Feedback Requested

[scubazlot]

wow seems like a few of you had a bad experience in St Lucia. As far as bottom times, we are both new divers, and I am pretty much an air hog at this point. I would be extremely impressed if I could do more than a 40 min dive

Glad to hear that everything is pretty easy regarding Sandals. We are not looking to push our limits; we are going on a relaxing vacation and adding diving to the vacation. Out of our 7 day trip, were thinking 2 days with 2 dives per day. So no problems keeping it easy with the DM on the first day so he/she can learn our ability level.

Anyone have a favorite dive in the area that is not too out of a newbie's ability level?

 

[ConchyJoe]

40 minutes?

I am not sure when you were down there last, we were there 15OCT07, but we NEVER dove 40 minutes. I am happy to post pics of my Gekko. It was ALWAYS 500 PSI, they told us 500 PSI and that was generally ignored. We would start heading up at 500, unless we were at our limit, but we dove EAN31 the whole time.

The diving is VERY GOOD. If you want sharks and large fish, go somewhere else. There is lots of coral, tropicals, shells, and many interesting creatures on the night dives.

Chastanet has a new executive chef, so no more curry everthing. Food was excellent.

As far as steps are concerned, request beachside if you are not dying for a view, which we were not.

The Sandals is excellent as well, we just like more peace and quiet.

 

[KJHorton]

We stayed at Sandals Grande in September 2006. They do have a dive boat which leaves directly from the dock there. Some days we would go to another dock to pick up Sandals guests from other resorts to dive with us.

I didn't do them but they did a couple of deep dives during the week--I know one was up near the Pitons and my husband said it was great. They tell you ahead of time which days/times they will be so you can plan accordingly.

Just make sure to go to the watersports desk the first day or so to sign up for your preferred days/times. Also, you always have to reserve your dive a day ahead of time so plan for that as well.

 

[Strima77]

I stayed at the Sandals Grande on the north side in July of 06' and it was very nice. I did 3 days of 2 tank dives, and the boat picked us up right at the resort pier. We then stopped at the town pier to pick up the folks from the other Sandals. My favorite dive was Superman's Flight in the Souffriere area. Not only was the drift dive good, but the view of the Pitons looming right out of the water was magnificent. Another good dive was Devil's Playground (or something like that). Our DM was great and the boat was not crowded, although full on one day. Some of the shallow sites had lots of fish. While we didn't see a lot of big stuff, the corals were pretty and there were lots of little stuff.
The Sandals Grande has a nicer situation than the Halcyon, nicer beach, more secluded, nice hiking nearby, plus all the usual fun stuff when you're not diving, like catamarans, kayaks, waterskiing. I was there with my non-diving wife, so you have to do non-diving things as well. Plus the food was great. Enjoy your trip.

 

[kt1140]

Just back from Anse Chastanet. My favorite dives were Superman's Flight, The Pinnacles, and the wreck of the Laseen M. I would recommend all of these. Also the Anse Chastanet house reef is a very good spot for a night dive with lots of diversity of fish and critters. We saw The Thing, Red Banded lobsters, lots of crabs, and octopus or two and much more.
If you're looking for big fish I wouldn't recommend St. Lucia although we did see a 5 foot Nurse Shark and also a few really big turtles.
The coral wasn't as good as what I saw in Utila (my only other dive trip) but the fish life was more abundant.
I wouldn't worry to much about the difficulty of the diving in St. Lucia, it all was pretty easy with some currents but I didn't notice anything really strong.

Interesting about the 40 min time limit on some divers at AC. We never had a limit on any of our dives, our group of 14 dove anywhere from 40 mins to over an hour, everyone just went up when they were at 500 PSI. We had two dive masters on our boat and they were excellent.
Also the food was exceptional and quite a mix not just curry.