Since I found info here on liveaboards useful when I was trying to plan my first one, I thought I'd post a quick trip report from my recent (Nov 16-20th) trip on the MV Pawara. I did (and I think this season, all of their trips are) the 4 day (14 dive) trips through the Similans, Kho Tachai, Koh Bon and Richelieu Rock sites. After seeing Stevenl show up with helpful advice in pretty much every thailand related diving thread, I asked him for help in booking a trip, and based on his advice, I ended up picking the Pawara. It is (apparently) cheaper than some of the more "luxury" boats, but definitely feels like it's an high boat. Everything worked, looked/felt pretty new and was comfortable. It sounds like the en-suite bedrooms are a bit smaller than on some of the other boats (at least vs the White Manta), but to be honest, the only time I spent in the bedroom was when I was sleeping, so it wasn't an issue at all. In fact, I didn't spend much time in the lounge either - I was pretty much either diving, sleeping, eating, chilling out post-meal or reading/sleeping on the upstairs (half-covered) sun-deck. The dive deck is a little tight, so we split in to two groups and suited up one-after-the-other, but the fact that one groups lingers after the dive briefing for 5 minutes longer than the other group also seemed to not matter one bit. You still end up diving just as long - and there's (presumably) less queuing for the defog, the ladders and the post-dive freshwater showers, etc.
There were about 20 of us on the boat, and a good ratio of DM/Instructors to divers. There were 4 DM/Instructors on the crew and I think 3 independent ones that came with some of the guests. There was a good mix of people from all over (North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia and Australia), and a good age, gender and married/single mix as well. The crew was all very friendly and seemed to have the right level of professionalism, skill and flexibility (at least for the kind of diving I like). If you're the kind of diver that likes to dive without a DM, I'm not sure how they'd treat that - though the DMs were helpful because they know the sites, and the groups are small enough that I never felt like I was having to dive someone else's dive. They even put together a 20 minute video of the diving (and some non-diving) and gave it to everyone on the last day (for free), which was nice for those of us who don't dive with cameras.
We had great weather, and the diving was also quite good. I saw fewer reef sharks (2) than I usually do in the FL Keys, but other than that, the variety of sea-life was significantly better. Lots of octopuses (-pi? -podes?), cuttlefish, barracuda, eels and sea snakes, turtles, nudibranchs, lobsters/shrimp/crabs and loads of other wildlife. We even had two whale shark encounters. The coral was in pretty good shape, though there were some areas that had been bleached. But I never felt like we were diving somewhere that was disappointing or lifeless. The currents were generally pretty calm, though there were a couple dives where there were periods of moderate current that had to be kicked through. But the advantage of good surface support (both the main boat and a dive dingy) was that we could do drift dives and get picked up at the end, if the current was more than we wanted to swim through.
The food, while not gourmet, was quite high quality for boat food - and there was lots of it. Based on our menu, it might be a little tricky if you're vegetarian, though I bet if you asked about it beforehand, they might be able to be more accomodating. Most everything you eat and drink was free, though they had reasonably priced soda, beer, wine and candy if you had particular cravings (they tally up your tab at the end and you pay on the last day). The boat had plentiful electrical plugs and didn't require adapters for American plugs, so no need to carry those with you. Nitrox (~30%) is free, though I'm not sure that it's that important, because I don't think NDLs were the limiting factor for anyone (even the couple of people diving 21%). But if you think Nitrox is good for other reasons, that's a plus. It's good to bring Thai currency for anything you buy on the boat, since paying with a cc is a little bit of a pain and costs an extra 3%, and I think they charge a bit of a fee for converting foreign currency.
They offer instruction, though I'm not sure I'd use a trip like this for anything that's learning/instruction heavy, since you'd miss out on the diving. I did the night-diving course, which was convenient given the schedule (and since I had never been diving at night) and it's not the kind of class that causes you do dive very differently than you would otherwise. So classes like nitrox, underwater photography/naturalist/etc. would be fine, but I don't think I'd do AOW, Rescue or anything intensive on a live-aboard.
If I were to do it again, I would:
1) Pack less (yes, Stevenl and others told me to pack light, but even after that, I ended up using about 1/3 of what I brought). Other than my diving gear, all I really needed was 2 swimsuits, 3 t-shirts, a hat, sunglasses, toiletries, an iPad and clothes for before/after.
2) Stay closer to the port - The boat leaves from the port across the bridge north of Phuket. For the day before and after, I stayed on the beach in Patong, which is both far away and a very touristy (and very seedy) area. They offer free mini-bus transfers to/from hotels but, it took like 3 hours to get back to my south Patong hotel after we got back to port. So I think I'd stay further up north (either on the northern end of the island near the airport, or maybe even across the bridge). I don't know what nice beaches are up there, but I'm sure there's somewhere nice for a couple of days which would also make the transport to/from the boat much shorter.
3) Bring a USB stick. The crew was sharing videos and photos at the end, but it was a little tricky to get everything on an iPad. I could pull videos across via iTunes, but since my Photos are synced with iCloud, I couldn't manually copy photos. And, for some reason, the one iPad to memory-card reader adapter one of the other guests had didn't work. So I'll end up getting those via drop-box. But had I brought a USB stick, it would have been simpler. Probably not an issue for people that bring cameras, since they'll have extra memory cards for sharing pics. But if you don't bring a camera, bring a USB stick.
All in all a great trip - so thanks to the West Coast Divers crew on the boat and Stevenl for the help in selecting it (and Andy Cross, one of the independent instructors, who was very generous with photos and videos).
There were about 20 of us on the boat, and a good ratio of DM/Instructors to divers. There were 4 DM/Instructors on the crew and I think 3 independent ones that came with some of the guests. There was a good mix of people from all over (North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia and Australia), and a good age, gender and married/single mix as well. The crew was all very friendly and seemed to have the right level of professionalism, skill and flexibility (at least for the kind of diving I like). If you're the kind of diver that likes to dive without a DM, I'm not sure how they'd treat that - though the DMs were helpful because they know the sites, and the groups are small enough that I never felt like I was having to dive someone else's dive. They even put together a 20 minute video of the diving (and some non-diving) and gave it to everyone on the last day (for free), which was nice for those of us who don't dive with cameras.
We had great weather, and the diving was also quite good. I saw fewer reef sharks (2) than I usually do in the FL Keys, but other than that, the variety of sea-life was significantly better. Lots of octopuses (-pi? -podes?), cuttlefish, barracuda, eels and sea snakes, turtles, nudibranchs, lobsters/shrimp/crabs and loads of other wildlife. We even had two whale shark encounters. The coral was in pretty good shape, though there were some areas that had been bleached. But I never felt like we were diving somewhere that was disappointing or lifeless. The currents were generally pretty calm, though there were a couple dives where there were periods of moderate current that had to be kicked through. But the advantage of good surface support (both the main boat and a dive dingy) was that we could do drift dives and get picked up at the end, if the current was more than we wanted to swim through.
The food, while not gourmet, was quite high quality for boat food - and there was lots of it. Based on our menu, it might be a little tricky if you're vegetarian, though I bet if you asked about it beforehand, they might be able to be more accomodating. Most everything you eat and drink was free, though they had reasonably priced soda, beer, wine and candy if you had particular cravings (they tally up your tab at the end and you pay on the last day). The boat had plentiful electrical plugs and didn't require adapters for American plugs, so no need to carry those with you. Nitrox (~30%) is free, though I'm not sure that it's that important, because I don't think NDLs were the limiting factor for anyone (even the couple of people diving 21%). But if you think Nitrox is good for other reasons, that's a plus. It's good to bring Thai currency for anything you buy on the boat, since paying with a cc is a little bit of a pain and costs an extra 3%, and I think they charge a bit of a fee for converting foreign currency.
They offer instruction, though I'm not sure I'd use a trip like this for anything that's learning/instruction heavy, since you'd miss out on the diving. I did the night-diving course, which was convenient given the schedule (and since I had never been diving at night) and it's not the kind of class that causes you do dive very differently than you would otherwise. So classes like nitrox, underwater photography/naturalist/etc. would be fine, but I don't think I'd do AOW, Rescue or anything intensive on a live-aboard.
If I were to do it again, I would:
1) Pack less (yes, Stevenl and others told me to pack light, but even after that, I ended up using about 1/3 of what I brought). Other than my diving gear, all I really needed was 2 swimsuits, 3 t-shirts, a hat, sunglasses, toiletries, an iPad and clothes for before/after.
2) Stay closer to the port - The boat leaves from the port across the bridge north of Phuket. For the day before and after, I stayed on the beach in Patong, which is both far away and a very touristy (and very seedy) area. They offer free mini-bus transfers to/from hotels but, it took like 3 hours to get back to my south Patong hotel after we got back to port. So I think I'd stay further up north (either on the northern end of the island near the airport, or maybe even across the bridge). I don't know what nice beaches are up there, but I'm sure there's somewhere nice for a couple of days which would also make the transport to/from the boat much shorter.
3) Bring a USB stick. The crew was sharing videos and photos at the end, but it was a little tricky to get everything on an iPad. I could pull videos across via iTunes, but since my Photos are synced with iCloud, I couldn't manually copy photos. And, for some reason, the one iPad to memory-card reader adapter one of the other guests had didn't work. So I'll end up getting those via drop-box. But had I brought a USB stick, it would have been simpler. Probably not an issue for people that bring cameras, since they'll have extra memory cards for sharing pics. But if you don't bring a camera, bring a USB stick.
All in all a great trip - so thanks to the West Coast Divers crew on the boat and Stevenl for the help in selecting it (and Andy Cross, one of the independent instructors, who was very generous with photos and videos).
