Trip review Sipadan

[walterheck]

Hey all,

We just went diving in Sipadan for 4 days and 3 nights. In short, it was mindblowing! We dove with seaventures, a dive resort in a converted oil platform. Everything was great, I shot this video of the 3 days we dove Sipadan: YouTube - Diving Sipadan, Malaysia 2010

There was one thing I didn't like about seaventures: all but one divemaster we had leading our dive were very irresponsible. My friend is open water certified, not advanced. I myself have rescue diver certification.
- Most of the briefings were very bad/short.
- After getting into the water, they went down ASAP without properly waiting for all divers.
- My friend was taken down to 28 meters by herself without any problem. for an open water, that is way too deep.
- One time, within one dive we did one swim through of about 15 meters, where the divemasters didn't even wait for everyone to come out, and my friend was allowed to do it as well (well, basically noone paid enough attention). There were people on that dive with less then 15 dives, and 2 open waters. Then at the end of the dive (the 3rd of that day) there was another swim-through of about 10 meters. Most people had 50 bar or less at that point, and again my friend was also allowed to do it. I got quite frustrated and when I confronted one of the divemasters literally all she had to say was "you might have a point".

That doesn't mean however that we didn't have an amazing time! I paid extra close attention to my friend and that made it okay for us. Check out the video to see how amazing it was!

 

[tstormdiver]

I was there a little over a yer ago with Borneo Divers. You are correct,... it is mind blowing. There are a couple of questions though. In some instances when I was there last year, I could understand why the dive masters may not wait on the surface. Sometimes the currents are very strong at the surface & non existant when you get to depth. With that, they are best to get below the current to keep from getting blown off the dive site. Also, why is 28 meters (about 60ft) too deep for an OW diver? They are supposed to be trained & certified to dive to 60 ft. I agree about taking people into verhead environments when not trained. We had DM's taking people 200 ft into a cave.

 

[under water]

That was a great video Walter! We are heading there, SeaVentures, in October for a week and although we are "advanced" with a few hundred dives, we will take your warning to heed. We generally don't hang out with the DM's anyway, but it's good to know that they are not going to be babysitting us.
It sounded like you got to Sipadan every day you were there!
Tammy, 30 meters is a bit over 90 feet. Not a problem for most, but I know my wife, even at 200+ dives, doesn't like to be down that far if she doesn't have to be.

 

[tstormdiver]

Oops,... my bad wrong calculation. I hate conversions. Thanks for the correction.

 

[walterheck]

In some instances when I was there last year, I could understand why the dive masters may not wait on the surface. Sometimes the currents are very strong at the surface & non existant when you get to depth. With that, they are best to get below the current to keep from getting blown off the dive site.

They would even do it when there were no currents. I could agree if it was done for this reason, but with inexperienced divers on the ship, it would be nice to mention it in the briefing, which was not the case.

Also, why is 28 meters (about 60ft) too deep for an OW diver? They are supposed to be trained & certified to dive to 60 ft.

Answered by 'under water'

I agree about taking people into verhead environments when not trained. We had DM's taking people 200 ft into a cave.

Yeah, especially when they did it at the end of the 3rd dive in the day with inexperienced divers with around 50bar left I was angry. If something goes wrong, the margin is very small. I guess that's an effect of having just completed the rescue diver training, it really opened my eyes a bit more

 

[walterheck]

That was a great video Walter!

Thanks, I'm pretty happy with it myself. iMovie is a powerful but simple piece of software I must say

It sounded like you got to Sipadan every day you were there!

Yep, except for the first day, when we arrived in the afternoon. We had a great dive off Mabul that day though!

I must also say that the promise of unlimited house-reef diving is a bit misleading: usually the currents pick up so bad in the afternoon that the house reef is closed in the afternoon. I actually want to go back to that area to dive Kapalai, Mabul and the house reef since we only did one housereef dive with a _very_ strong current (last divers to come up before it was closed that day) and one Mabul dive. Guess that is what we could call a luxury problem, haha!