Turks & Caicos Explorer II Trip Report

[arkstorm]

There is no recycling onboard to protect the environment. I think most divers would appreciate this.

Give me a break! Sure, as a diver I am all for protecting the environment. But to list not having recycling on-board among your long list of grievances, alongside such heinous affronts as a DM getting bent (and you having to miss a dive because of it) and bad visibility, is a bit much. Recycling facilities are very expensive to operate and not available in every corner of the world. Turks and Caicos opened their first recycling facility in October, 2010. Sorry that the recycling aboard the liveaboard didn't meet with your smug sense of environmental concern but please count me out of "most divers". I am sure you offered to carry out all the trash in your luggage and drive it to the nearest recycling station in your hybrid just as soon as you got home while sipping a $7.00 vegan soy milk latte in a leaky postconsumer paper cup. So what part of San Fransisco are you from anyway? But I digress. The diver doth complain too much.

 

[Pelagicsal]

How did the Divemaster get bent? It seems that if guests were tagging along with him they should have suffered like circumstances.

Physiology varies greatly from diver to diver and day to day. I don't think you can make the call that they all should have gotten bent...

 

[baitballer]

Recycling has only just started in the last few weeks in the TCI. Up until now there has not been any due to the huge costs involved with such a small island. Shipping it back to the US is simply too expensive but a new facility has just started here so the island is getting greener.

 

[jkotovsky]

Arkstorm, I am surprised by your agitation. I live in the Midwest and I am a conservative. We live in a world where environmental concerns are growing all the time. Diving is not exempt with the deterioration of our reefs. Clearly re-cycling helps the environment. Just becasue it may be inconvenient does not mean that it is not a good thing to do. My original comment was a suggestion that I thought it would be a good thing to do.

Baitballer, thank you for your update about recycling in TCI. My hope is that the Explorer company will see recycling as a good thing to do and they will imnplement a program.

 

[Carlos Danger]

Sorry to hear that your trip did not live up to your expectations. While I'm sure there are plenty of great live aboard excursions out there, I personally have never cared much for this type of vacation experience just because I don't want to be suck on a boat.

I was interested to read some of your descriptions of the dive conditions. If you ever choose to return to TCI for a land-based trip, you might consider going earlier in the year. I dove TCI (including 7 days in Grand Turk) during the summer season a few years back, and had an absolute blast.

 

[jkotovsky]

I've noticed that on this issue on the forum a number of times. My personal suspicion is that navigation is probably one of the most lacking skills in divers today (& I am no exception by any stretch!), compared to what some on the forum seem to expect ought to be the case.

Richard, you make a lot of good points. I admit that my navigation skills are not that good, even though I have logged over 200 dives. I guess I have been spoiled by my other dive experiences where I had the extra comfort factor of a DM in the water that provided a tour or helped to make sure that I found the boat at the end of the dive. I also appreciate the comments of those that do not need or want the help of a DM and they enjoy doing their own thing while in the water.

If I was prepared for what I encountered on the trip, I think I would have accepted it better, but based upon the printed materials, the website, and my prior expereinces I expected more than what was delivered. Plus the lack of visibility, currents, and floating back and forth of the boat made it uncomfortable for me.

 

[SeaHorse81]

Clearly re-cycling helps the environment. Just becasue it may be inconvenient does not mean that it is not a good thing to do. My original comment was a suggestion that I thought it would be a good thing to do.

Indeed, it would be a good thing to do, however...

Since this was your first liveaboard trip and there were a lot of distracting disappointments beyond ExVen's control, you may not have noticed how extremely hard your staff was working. More so because there were too few of them (that would be due in part to starting understaffed, which is the only thing in your story I can see blaming ExVen for). I've been on that boat several times, including six weeks ago, and have noticed that nobody on that boat has more than fleeting moments when they're not working.

They do everything from assuring you're fairly together when you get in the water, to cleaning the toilet in your room. They bus your table when you're eating, they clean the boat when you're diving, they are constantly available for whatever you need whenever you need it, always available to chat, take special requests of any kind if humanly possible, etc., etc.

My point is, yes, it would be nice to recycle and I cringe a bit over that as well, but geez, they're already doing SO much. I don't know where in the day they could make room for another task. They already work way harder than I would ever want to.

I've been on the boat with Captain Ken and am aware of his seemingly casual approach. Don't be fooled by the exterior during routine moments. I saw him spring into action when some divers got lost on a night dive (two separate, lost groups, no less). He was serious as a heart attack and all over it until everyone was back on the boat, safe. He was one of two crew out in dinghies dragging those fully-equipped divers' sorry butts over the edge without assistance. I also saw him manage a situation in which a guest got bent; you couldn't ask for better support during a dive emergency.

I am curious to know who got bent and under what circumstances on your trip. Those people were extremely good to me on my trip, and I'd like to wish a full and speedy recovery to whomever it was. I don't want it to have been anyone, obviously, but I'm hoping it especially wasn't Tim, who went way out of his way to make my trip one of the best I've ever had.

 

[johnspierce]

I've been diving on liveaboards since the mid-1980's and have done quite a few, so perhaps I can give you some insights. First of all, they are more similar than different in services and activities. I've been on both Explorer and Aggressor plus other companies.

I won't go over the tipping issue again, the previous poster covered it pretty well, but it's important to realize the crew works from about 6 am to 10 pm every single day and tips are a big part of their income.

On some of your points:

· There are no hair dryers in room. In this day and age of airline baggage weight restrictions, hair dryers in rooms would help.
* The only liveaboard I've seen in twenty years with a hair dryer was the Kona Aggressor. If you do another liveaboard, you should bring your own.

· There are no wireless internet connections on the boat once you leave the dock.
* There are no wireless internet connections on any of the liveaboards. It didn't say there was in Explorer's advertising, so I'm not sure why you would expect that?

· There is no recycling onboard to protect the environment. I think most divers would appreciate this.
* This has been covered. You aren't in the US. Most of the third world has no provision for recycling even if the liveaboard company wanted to.

· The dock location is inconvenient to restaurants, shopping, etc. They provide transportation on Friday for dinner, but it was a 15 minute drive. Also, their dock was only accessible at high tide.
* This is particularly true for the T&C Explorer because it's a large boat and has to use that particular marina. But I have to ask, did you go on a liveaboard trip to have good access to the Island's facilities? That's not really a priority for any of them.

· The swinging of the boat 180 degrees on the mooring line takes some time to get used and made the boat often difficult to find, especially at night and with the poor visibility.
* For future reference, if the visibility is poor or you are on a night dive the best thing to do after entering the water is to swim to the bow and then descend on the bow line. It doesn't move. You don't really need to go more than 50 or 60 meters away from the boat at the most and if you stay near the mooring you'll always know where the boat is.

The final thing I would say is none of the liveaboards are hand-holding operations. Yes, they will put a divemaster in the water most of the time, but the expectation is they have given you a good briefing with a map of the divesite (they all do maps) and you are responsible for your own diving. It's unfortunate you didn't have a DM when you wanted one, but did you get a good briefing with a map of the dive? Most of the liveaboards I have been on have sent us on more than one dive without a DM, usually towards the end of the week after everyone gets more comfortable with the routine. And yes, this includes Aggressor boats, not just Explorer. When the DM's don't dive, they stay on the dive deck and watch bubbles so if anyone gets lost they can send out a dingy to retrieve them. This is common to every liveaboard I've been on. Even in the Galapagos Islands I did two dives without a DM at one of the "easier" sites from Aggressor.

To me, a great liveaboard vacation is one where I don't have TV or Newspaper or Internet. I'm there to dive. And I make my own dive my own way with nobody telling me how to do it. The crew will always help you out and give tips on any particular dive if you ask, but being left to my own devices is priceless.

Liveaboards aren't luxury boats, if you want people to wait on you hand and foot and have more amenities you might be more comfortable in a land based resort. I'm not saying this to be critical or mean, I'm just telling it the way it is.

Cheers,
JP

 

[drrich2]

On the subject of internet, it's my understanding internet service at sea is expensive in the extreme. It's not that live-aboard operators don't care or bother; it's just not practical to offer. If you're used to 'internet everywhere' on the mainland U.S., going somewhere without access for a week can be jarring, I imagine.

Richard.

 

[Shasta_man]

Nice uneducated generalization on Cali, Arkstorm. There's a whole mix of individuals in the state just like when I lived in PA, NY, and IA too, covering the range of attitudes from the one you wanted to assign it, all the way to your own too. Recycling is an obvious no-brainer for anywhere in the world. Every time I take out my tiny amount of garbage and huge amount of recycling and think of the volume of people in the world, it's UNBELIEVEABLE that anyone thinks it possible to sustain disposing of all that. We even, GASP, throw the food scraps in with the yard waste now. That said, reality is it can only be an admireable goal for many places in the world.