Shipping gear to Carribean locations / St Vincent.

[Clyderyde]

Does anyone have experience with shipping gear to St Vincent? Or anywhere else for that matter.

The last time I was there, I really loved it, but missed having all my stuff. The rental gear from Dive St Vincent is in fine shape, but I still like to have my own gear. Especially all my little gismos for photography.

If I remember correctly all that is allowed is 20 kilos total per person and they are very strict. I can recall that I barely made it last time carrying clothes, my cameras, computer, suit, mask snorkel, and fins.

Clyderyde

 

[Damselfish]

Which airline? We've taken all our gear to Saint Vincent on 3 trips. We travel with a 50# checked bag each with most gear and clothes, a heavy rolling carry-on each holding camera gear/regs/computers/etc, and a "personal item" each. The last time was on Carribean Star/Sun from Barbados about 2 years ago. I think 20k may be their usual limit but someplace on one of their websites says if you're transferring from an international carrier they'll allow usual the 2-50#lb or whatever you are allowed on that flight. There is always the possibility on small planes of them holding it until a later or next day flight with more space if they're full. They gave us no problems at all about our luggage and in fact were pretty helpful about the best way to make sure our carryon bags made it since the planes are too small to carry those on. (Checking them with some kind of priority was a better bet than gate-checking them.) Now, they lost our bags in Barbados for a day but that was unrelated to weight limits.

Maybe someone with your hotel or dive op might have ideas or tips on the latest best way to get your stuff there. I personally wouldn't ship stuff down there, seems more likely to run into problems that way than with an airline.

They're supposed to be building a new international airport by 2011...maybe real planes will fly there then. :11:

 

[divingjd]

I've done a little research on shipping gear, not to St. Vincent in particular, but to the Caribbean in general. Little Cayman is the real issue for me - you only get 50 lbs. TOTAL (dive gear, carry-on, suitcase, everything together) on those DeHavilland Otters and pay for any excess, plus it might not make the same flight. I found an really expensive luggage forwarding company that caters to very high-end luxury travelers ("Muffy, why take bags at all when you can pay someone to do it for you?") and then the regular package-delivery companies like UPS. As far as I can tell, my regular dive bag full of gear (at 50 lbs.) would cost hundreds of dollars to ship to just about anywhere in the Caribbean by UPS, even if it goes by the slow boat. If anybody can find a reasonably-priced way to do this, I would be very interested.

 

[Damselfish]

Cayman Air (and previously Island Air) has a limit, but it's not that they won't take the luggage. They may just charge you for the excess and it may not get there until the next flight. or so. It's just not that big a deal and doesn't wind up being that expensive. Most of the time we haven't been charged, if we do get charged it's typically when leaving Little Cayman - I think they've got nothing else to do at the Little Cayman airport.

If a morning flight out of Little Cayman is going to be full Island Air used to ask people to send some stuff the night before and I don't think you would get charged in that case, I imagine Cayman Air does similar.

 

[divingjd]

I've been charged both ways on Island Air for Little Cayman and outbound on Cayman Airways from Cayman Brac. Yes, the luggage always shows up, but you never really know when it will. As far as I know, Cayman Airways isn't cutting any slack on charging for excess weight. Next time I go to Little Cayman, I think I'm taking two t-shirts and washing one every day! If I could find a reasonably priced way to ship luggage, it would just make everything a lot easier.