Hi All,
I was also on MV Ondina during the same trip as Paul. I wasn't intending on writing up a report but there have been a few requests for a second view from folks reading Paul's report so I'll give a brief account of the trip ... for anyone who is reading this it is not related to Raja Ampat Dive Resort (the original review at the top of the thread).
Firstly - to clear up any doubts over whether Paul is being genuine I can confirm that despite not having many posts on this board he is a genuine diver (not another boat throwing dirt around or anything to be suspicious about). He's a nice bloke that got along well with everyone on the boat including all of our group and I'd be more than happy to catch up for a beer with him if he's in Singapore.
My view is as follows:
The good:
- The tour leader and DM's (Abraham and Ella) were both fantastic, knew every dive site, the currents, gave every diver the right amount of space, got along well with all of the guests. I would rank them as among the best of all the dive trips I've done.
- The diving was brilliant. We saw manta's every day on many sites. Raja Ampat at its absolute best
ACD Dive Safari - Ambon to Raja Ampat - YouTube
- The food (I'm non-Veg) was great
- The other guests were all great and everyone got along very well together (I know it's the luck of the draw ... but maybe also sometimes different types of trips attract different types of guests)
- The boat was clean (I didn't see any rats or cockroaches). Don't take this lightly - a friend who took a different boat last year complained of rats that bit through the plastic on a divers mask!
The bad:
- We had some really rough weather for 2 days between Ambon and Raja Ampat. This is bad luck and obviously nothing to do with the boat
- The boat leaked and a few rooms were flooded. No big deal for me - it took some really bad weather to make this happen and in the worst case I guess you spend the night on a couch in the dining room, enjoy your diving the next day and then have a good nights sleep. I think this only happened in 1-2 cabins one night and I didn't really hear anyone complain too much.
- There were problems with the compressors (this is where it starts to get serious). One diver aborted a dive because his air tasted "burnt", we checked our first stages and all had black carbon showing in the filters of freshly serviced regs. The crew took this very seriously - emptied all of the tanks, changed the filters and seemed to fix things up
- Both of the compressors then broke. We missed 1 days diving while the crew were able to borrow a brand new compressor from a nearby resort very bad luck (or maintenance) that both compressors broke. very good relationships based on positive previous experienced that allowed them to borrow a brand new one from another operator. This is obviously serious but I can't imagine it would happen again.
- There was some miscommunication regarding the marine park tags. This has since been cleared up.
All in all I had a wonderful trip and despite some problems don't feel I need to warn people against travelling on MV Ondina.
)
