andrethediver
Contributor
We just got back from a week long LOB on M/Y Obsession managed by Sea Serpent. This was Brothers, Daedalus and Elphistone itinerary and is one of the best offered in the Southern Red Sea (St. Johns is another one). We also did a day in Cairo (Giza pyramids and not much else) and another day at Luxor exploring Valley of the Kings and the temples on the east bank on the way back.
Booking:
Unlike many reviewers on this board we booked directly with the Sea Serpent and their customer service was first rate, all our email and multiple questions were answered promptly and very professionally. All arrangements went very smoothly and direct communication is highly recommended.
Arrival:
The boat was departing from/returning to brand new marina in Port Ghalib which is more like a resort gated community rather than an actual town about 15 minutes away from Marsa Alam. Egypt Air flies from Cairo to Marsa Alam daily and we generally had very positive experience of dealing with this airline. No issues with weight even though we had two huge checked bags a little over 50lbs and a number of items in our hand luggage. Short transfer from Marsa Alam airport to the marina by a minivan was organized by the Sea Serpent.
The boat:
There were two of us and we got a upper deck cabin which, although fairly small, was clean, with independently controlled A/C and nice sea view out of the window. Private bathroom - combined sink, shower and toilet in the cabin (no paper goes in the toilet). The shower water temperature and pressure varied throughout the day and pressure was generally low and water lukewarm after the last dive of the day. The floor gets wet when you're taking shower since the drain is in the side of the bathroom floor and obviously you can't use the toilet and the shower at the same time. Upper deck is shaded with plenty of seating and there is also a sun deck upstairs. The salon is on the lower deck (no flip flops are allowed there) and this is where the meals are served. Breakfast/lunch and dinner were served in the salon. Food was OK - sometimes local specialty dishes were offered. Omelets or eggs any style, yogurts, cheese, some serials, at breakfast. Nescafe or tea from bags and water bottles were always on the table.
Diving gear was set up outside of the salon on the lower deck and we had a choice of 12L 'shortie' steel tanks or regular Al 80 tanks, all DIN tank valves. Although INT adapters were provided, generally fills were on the lower side (2800-3000 psi), adapter o-rings could not handle much more than 3000psi - a number of divers using the adapters were having intermittent issues with valves free flowing in and out of the water. Each spot had a weight belt to hold the tank/BCD in place during crossing and a basket for small items under the seat. Important note about weights - lead bricks are available in either 1 or 2 kg sizes. A kg is roughly 2 lbs and we had to spend considerable time changing weighting configuration to get it just right. There were hangers for the wet suits and two camera buckets which were intermittently filled with fresh water. Although there was a hand held shower with fresh water rinsing gear was generally not allowed due to limited amount of fresh water on board. You may want to brush up on you Bar to PSI conversion math if you are used to imperial units - no one really understands or uses PSIs for underwater communication. Same goes for feet/meters.
Diving:
There were 3 dives offered daily except for the first day (2 dives). Beyond the first day the first dive was usually done around 5 am (before breakfast), then breakfast around 8-8:30am, another dive, lunch, last dive, then dinner. About 3,5 hours surface interval between the dives. EAN was offered free of charge and generally was in between EANx28-EANx30 range which was fine as most dives were pretty deep - 130ft or so. The less remaining air was in the tank the higher O2 percentage EAN you could get. Analyzer was available on board. The crew did a great job helping people in and out of the water, loading and unloading the Zodiac (most dive sites were accessible by 2 zodiacs we had on board). A very detailed briefing was done before each new dive site, discussing of depths,currents, dive plan and etc. Our group of 16 dives was split between 2 guides/2 zodiacs. Each diver was responsible for entering tank pressure in/out of the water, max depth and time for each dive in the log, as well as EAN type and total O2PP for those diving nitrox for each of the dives. Each diver had to have a dive computer and a deployable SMB. Most pickups were also done by zodiacs following sending up an SMB for each buddy team and involved passing up weights and BCDs and jumping in/being pulled in over the side. We were told we were extremely lucky with the conditions as both Brothers and Daedalus were perfectly flat and not much of a current at either site. We were able to see a large schools of hammerheads circling us on more than one occasion on several 'blue water' dives at Daedalus as well as a Longimanus (Oceanic White-tip) constantly present just under the boat. Some opted to just dive under the boat taking close ups and they were also able to see a thresher shark (aka 'fox shark') also just under the boat. We missed out on that but got to see more of the hammerheads. Overall both Brothers (we did numerous dives at both islands) and Daedalus were very impressive sites indeed, with plenty of reef live and great condition of the corals, as good as wall diving gets. By the time we got to Elphistone the the wind picked up as did the current, sea got very rough so that we only done one dive at that reef and did the rest of the dives in the shelter of Abu Dabab #3 and #6 for the remaining dives.
Departing:
After the last dive on the last day everyone was able to use the outside showers to fully rinse all equipment right on the deck and hang everything to dry as we were spending the last night on the boat. We opted to stay an extra day at Port Ghalib to do some additional diving at Elphistone with land based Orca Diving club. Due to high winds that daily trip was cancelled so we just ended up doing a shore diving at Marsa Adu Dabab reef which was another quite nice reef. Sea Serpent was providing transfers to Marsa Alam or Hurghada for all other divers on the boat.
Overall impressions:
I did manage to flood my SP1 at one of the dives below 100ft half way through the week but I will post some of the videos/pics that I did manage to take as well some of the footage generously shared the diving team mates once I sort through what I have. This was our second LOB (first being top-rate "Caribbean Explorer II" Northern Caribbean route) and although we thought there was definitely some room for improvement, overall we had great time diving with Sea Serpent, our guides and other divers on the boat and will seriously consider another trip with them soon. Hope this helps.
Some pics by Matthias
Booking:
Unlike many reviewers on this board we booked directly with the Sea Serpent and their customer service was first rate, all our email and multiple questions were answered promptly and very professionally. All arrangements went very smoothly and direct communication is highly recommended.
Arrival:
The boat was departing from/returning to brand new marina in Port Ghalib which is more like a resort gated community rather than an actual town about 15 minutes away from Marsa Alam. Egypt Air flies from Cairo to Marsa Alam daily and we generally had very positive experience of dealing with this airline. No issues with weight even though we had two huge checked bags a little over 50lbs and a number of items in our hand luggage. Short transfer from Marsa Alam airport to the marina by a minivan was organized by the Sea Serpent.
The boat:
There were two of us and we got a upper deck cabin which, although fairly small, was clean, with independently controlled A/C and nice sea view out of the window. Private bathroom - combined sink, shower and toilet in the cabin (no paper goes in the toilet). The shower water temperature and pressure varied throughout the day and pressure was generally low and water lukewarm after the last dive of the day. The floor gets wet when you're taking shower since the drain is in the side of the bathroom floor and obviously you can't use the toilet and the shower at the same time. Upper deck is shaded with plenty of seating and there is also a sun deck upstairs. The salon is on the lower deck (no flip flops are allowed there) and this is where the meals are served. Breakfast/lunch and dinner were served in the salon. Food was OK - sometimes local specialty dishes were offered. Omelets or eggs any style, yogurts, cheese, some serials, at breakfast. Nescafe or tea from bags and water bottles were always on the table.
Diving gear was set up outside of the salon on the lower deck and we had a choice of 12L 'shortie' steel tanks or regular Al 80 tanks, all DIN tank valves. Although INT adapters were provided, generally fills were on the lower side (2800-3000 psi), adapter o-rings could not handle much more than 3000psi - a number of divers using the adapters were having intermittent issues with valves free flowing in and out of the water. Each spot had a weight belt to hold the tank/BCD in place during crossing and a basket for small items under the seat. Important note about weights - lead bricks are available in either 1 or 2 kg sizes. A kg is roughly 2 lbs and we had to spend considerable time changing weighting configuration to get it just right. There were hangers for the wet suits and two camera buckets which were intermittently filled with fresh water. Although there was a hand held shower with fresh water rinsing gear was generally not allowed due to limited amount of fresh water on board. You may want to brush up on you Bar to PSI conversion math if you are used to imperial units - no one really understands or uses PSIs for underwater communication. Same goes for feet/meters.
Diving:
There were 3 dives offered daily except for the first day (2 dives). Beyond the first day the first dive was usually done around 5 am (before breakfast), then breakfast around 8-8:30am, another dive, lunch, last dive, then dinner. About 3,5 hours surface interval between the dives. EAN was offered free of charge and generally was in between EANx28-EANx30 range which was fine as most dives were pretty deep - 130ft or so. The less remaining air was in the tank the higher O2 percentage EAN you could get. Analyzer was available on board. The crew did a great job helping people in and out of the water, loading and unloading the Zodiac (most dive sites were accessible by 2 zodiacs we had on board). A very detailed briefing was done before each new dive site, discussing of depths,currents, dive plan and etc. Our group of 16 dives was split between 2 guides/2 zodiacs. Each diver was responsible for entering tank pressure in/out of the water, max depth and time for each dive in the log, as well as EAN type and total O2PP for those diving nitrox for each of the dives. Each diver had to have a dive computer and a deployable SMB. Most pickups were also done by zodiacs following sending up an SMB for each buddy team and involved passing up weights and BCDs and jumping in/being pulled in over the side. We were told we were extremely lucky with the conditions as both Brothers and Daedalus were perfectly flat and not much of a current at either site. We were able to see a large schools of hammerheads circling us on more than one occasion on several 'blue water' dives at Daedalus as well as a Longimanus (Oceanic White-tip) constantly present just under the boat. Some opted to just dive under the boat taking close ups and they were also able to see a thresher shark (aka 'fox shark') also just under the boat. We missed out on that but got to see more of the hammerheads. Overall both Brothers (we did numerous dives at both islands) and Daedalus were very impressive sites indeed, with plenty of reef live and great condition of the corals, as good as wall diving gets. By the time we got to Elphistone the the wind picked up as did the current, sea got very rough so that we only done one dive at that reef and did the rest of the dives in the shelter of Abu Dabab #3 and #6 for the remaining dives.
Departing:
After the last dive on the last day everyone was able to use the outside showers to fully rinse all equipment right on the deck and hang everything to dry as we were spending the last night on the boat. We opted to stay an extra day at Port Ghalib to do some additional diving at Elphistone with land based Orca Diving club. Due to high winds that daily trip was cancelled so we just ended up doing a shore diving at Marsa Adu Dabab reef which was another quite nice reef. Sea Serpent was providing transfers to Marsa Alam or Hurghada for all other divers on the boat.
Overall impressions:
I did manage to flood my SP1 at one of the dives below 100ft half way through the week but I will post some of the videos/pics that I did manage to take as well some of the footage generously shared the diving team mates once I sort through what I have. This was our second LOB (first being top-rate "Caribbean Explorer II" Northern Caribbean route) and although we thought there was definitely some room for improvement, overall we had great time diving with Sea Serpent, our guides and other divers on the boat and will seriously consider another trip with them soon. Hope this helps.
Some pics by Matthias
Attachments
Last edited:
)))
