Question Technical Diving Liveaboard

[ColinT3]

Another option is land based and diving from a day boat. Camel Dive in Naama Bay (Sharm) do Technical diving and have Tec instructors. Might be a good place to brush up and do some led/mentored Tec dives. Camel is a great resort, by divers for divers. The Liveaboards that support Tec diving will likely be full of fully fledged techies, given its team diving you'll probably find a bunch of people who already know each other. I dont see many 'insta buddies' in the Tec world. We tend to charter the entire boat.
I'm off on a Northern Wrecks, Ras Mohamed, Tiran, The Brother trip a week Sat, I'm going solo rather than a trip with the usual crew, it will be all Rec diving.

 

[Germie]

Be aware of 'techtrips'. Some are not and you have paid for something you don't get. Friends of me booked a tec liveaboard last november in Egypt. But the boat was not full and the owner decided to put recreational divers also on it. The technical divers were asking and asking again at least the rosalie muller, and at the end they did. But they did not know there were also recreatiojnal divers on the boat when booking the 'tech liveaboard'. It was a pure recreational trip at the end and they were not happy.

I have the same now with Cyprus. I am looking to go there and want to dive the Zenobia of course too. My friend is a recreational diver, so I had a great idea: my friend does 2 dives with the recreational group and I take a twinset and decogas and will do 1 long dive in the time they do 2 recreational dives (of 30 minutes). It seems like they don't understand. 'Technical' diving there is maximum 60 minutes and 10 minutes of deco. I really don't call that technical diving. You can do around 45 minutes of 1 ali80 deco and still have the reserves. At a max depth of 35m, the twinset will also hold long. So just 60 minutes total divetime is too short.

I agree that everybody needs to get the chance to build up experience.
So for you, I would like to try to get some more experience in hour neighbourhood. then you don't get disappointed because 'tech' ends as recreational dive. I have seen weeks in the past in several countries where you had a 45 techweek, a 60 techweek and a 100 or more techweek. This will fit for you also if you book the right week.

I won't ever book a techweek again where no depths are specified, so this will be for you in the future maybe also a thing. Have too much bad experiences (come to Malta, told them I am interested in the wrecks over 60m, all was fine, but I ended with several days the Rozi, which is not a technical divesite because no other divers with full trimix certs were there).

 

[harveywalker500]

Be aware of 'techtrips'.

Decent advice. I know that a lot of boats do wreck weeks which I'm interested in but whether they support technical divers or not is a different story, I guess.

But I'm going to try and do some more technical stuff in the UK first before going aborad. I'm doing some practice in my drysuit this week (getting back into it, it's been a hot minute!) and I hope to get up to speed with drysuits. They're a massive asset as I always get cold or at least chilly at the end of a dive, even in 25 degree water!

 

[divezonescuba]

Be aware of 'techtrips'. Some are not and you have paid for something you don't get. Friends of me booked a tec liveaboard last november in Egypt. But the boat was not full and the owner decided to put recreational divers also on it. The technical divers were asking and asking again at least the rosalie muller, and at the end they did. But they did not know there were also recreatiojnal divers on the boat when booking the 'tech liveaboard'. It was a pure recreational trip at the end and they were not happy.

Something like that would be my concern. Once you get on the boat, you are pretty much at the mercy of the captain and the head guide. You're not going to get your time or money back when that happens.

Thats why we prefer Dahab. Its very easy to get up to speed there and then do other technical dives like the Canyon and the Blue Hole. We have always wanted to do a drift after the Blue Hole arch and then get out at the Canyon, but it has never materialized.