Trip Rpt: Bay Islands Aggressor IV

[mikeh]

Just returned from 6 and a half wonderful days in the Bay Islands aboard the Aggressor. Our first Aggressor trip, and we had a blast.:amazed:

In order:

Getting there:
This was a special from Aggressor, air inclusive from Houston so they booked the TACA flight from IAH to ROA. The flight was uneventful, the luggage issues nonexistent. We were made more nervous by the horror tales about TACA here and elsewhere than we had ever been before. A complete nonissue. Aggressor staff met us at the airport, got our bags and stowed us on a bus. All the horror tales made everyone far too nervous as the staff missed nothing. Continental (our US airline from PHX to IAH and back was much much worse).

We checked into our rooms and gathered in the lounge for an introduction to Capt Charlie, DM's Eddy and Slim (Luis), Chef Jurgen, and Stewards Mona and Randolf. We then selected and set up our dive stations for the rest of the trip and went to crash.

Day 1-5:
Eat, Dive, Eat, Dive, Eat, Dive, Nap, Eat, Dive, Eat, Dive, Sleep.
Day 6:
Eat, dive, eat, dive, tour, eat, sleep

:tongewag:

heh, ya want details huh?
It was windy all week, so we were mostly stuck on the West and North sides of Roatan except for Tuesday when we dove 3 sites at Utila. Capt Charlie was quite conservative but did a good job of giving us a smooth ride and getting us all 5 dives per day.
Water was a constant 80-81 degrees fahrenheit from surface to 125 fsw (deepest we went). Vis varied from 40-50ft to well over 100ft. Air temp was in the mid 80's in the day to high 70's at night and we had not a drop of rain all week.
Reefs were robust but still somewhat beaten up from Mitch, and while we saw quite a variety of aquatic life, there was like 1 of everything per dive. Turltles, dolphins, barracuda, snapper, lobster, crab, angelfish, grouper, etc..the usual just not many of each per dive, except maybe lobsters.
Friday we toured the island and had a fantastic dinner at Giovannis in Coxen Hole.
We dove two fun wrecks, Aguilar and Odyssey. Both wrecks sunk for diving and sitting in about 115fsw (we kinda pushed our NDL on the Aguilar).

All in all, a fun trip which should hold us over til next month.

Mike and Kristie (sxyscubagal)

 

[vlada]

it is very picture intensive

Bay Islands Aggressor

 

[leadweight]

I was at Fantasy Island March 8-15. Wne down to Roatan on the same aircraft that brought you back. The crew stays at FI. The Sol air crew stays at FI also, I rode with the Sol captain to the airport on the 15th. I am about to declare the Bay Islands my official home away form home.

 

[RPanick]

Looks like I was on the boat the week following. Sounds like you saw more stuff than we did. Still very nice trip. A couple of suggestions for anyone planning the trip.

- Don't go Miami to San Pedro, go through Houston. From San Pedro to Roatan was on two prop planes, one of which was a Russian made plane (or so I was told). Very hot, in the plane. I could have also gone to Hawaii from Detroit and spent less time traveling.

- The barb wire and people with guns outside the door of most gas stations and stores was very disconcerting.

- On the last day the generator blew, and it spewed out fuel all over a bunch of people's stuff which was drying on the top deck. Fortunately, we did the last dive and so were still on the dive deck with all our gear when this happened.

- Tell the captain to turn up the temperature in the cabins early. I think they were trying to use the cabins as ice chests. Once we got him to turn the temperature up it was much more pleasant. This coming from someone who doesn't get cold very easily.

Oh, one of the comments on the Bay Island's Agressor was that they ran out of fuel. I asked the Captain about it, turns out he was there to fill in until they find a new Captain. Seems the previous Captain ran the generators at too high a speed and burned through a lot more fuel. So they got rid of him, seems he pulled out several anchorages too. Apparently he didn't treat the crew well either which didn't help.

The Bay Island's Agressor is a very comfortable boat to dive from, the food was good (but not great), the cabins are very small and the upper bunk isn't very comfortable. The lower deck cabins also are very noisy with the generator running all night long. The simple answer to this is simply do more dives so that you are too tired to care

The crew was a lot of fun, especially with our group of crazy people.

Would I do it again, probably not. I enjoyed Hawaii much more and being shore based where I could do other things. And the trip was compareable in price when you get down to it.