Turks & Caicos Research Notes

[drrich2]

I have not done a Live aboard and a view of your room reminds me of one of the reasons I haven not yet.

Interesting point. May be worth discussing how a typical day went.

Default Dive Schedule: 8 a.m., 11 a.m., 2 p.m., 5 p.m., 8 p.m. Basically figure 50-60 minute dives with 2 hour surface intervals, diving nitrox. After a dive, crew take your fins, walk to your station, take off gear, unhook reg. for tank fill, take off wetsuit, go to back of boat & shower off, a crew puts a warm towel on you. Analyze & log nitrox mix. whenever.

Meal Times: 6:30 a.m. continental breakfast (cereal, bagels, fruit). 7 a.m. Hot breakfast (made to order eggs, meat option, pancakes, maybe French toast). 12:30 p.m. Lunch. 6:30 p.m. Supper. There's a snack between the 2 morning & between the 2 afternoon dives.

My Day: iPhone alarm at 6:45 a.m. Brush teeth. Maybe get camera ready for diving. Go eat a beagle with topping and some fruit. 7 a.m. - order 3 fried eggs. 7:30 a.m. - Getting antsy. Tank analyzed & reg. hooked up and pressurized. 7:40 Don shorty, socks & boots. 7:50 Bell rings. 8 Dive briefing. Into BCD & water shortly afterward.

Out around 9 a.m. Shower, head up to the top deck to drink Diet Coke, wait for snack to be out, doze. Don't even go to room.

Dive again ~ 11 a.m., out around noon. Shower. This time change from swim trunks to 'land shorts' & a quick drying runner's shirt (disclaimer: I am not a runner!). Eat supper in salon. Chill on top deck. Might go doze in room bunk.

Dive @ 2 p.m. Then shower, stay in swim trunks, doze on top deck & wait on somebody to bring me a snack.

Dive @ 5 p.m. Then change into same shirt & shorts as for lunch, this time for supper. After supper, might doze in room, which works better than in lounge chair on top deck.

Night dive @ 8 p.m. Then shower, get mug of hot chocolate with marshmallows, get in shirt & shorts, get camera battery & Cobalt 2 on a charger & maybe back up SD card onto iPhone, go to bed around 10 - 10:30 p.m.

Live-aboards lend themselves to high frequency diving. Just the thing for someone like me looking to maximize the maybe 2 weeks/year he gets to spend diving. I spend little time in the room, so it doesn't bother me.

Richard.

P.S.: And I booked the cheapest accommodation on the boat. Pay more and you can get more.

 

[tkaelin]

Glad you had a nice time and works for you

 

[Trailboss123]

Thanks again for an outstanding trip report Richard. You always set the bar. I haven't gone over to read your other report yet, so you may have answered this there, but I'm curious if you were allowed to dive solo or if you found a buddy to dive with all week or if you went out with the DM or a combo of all three?

 

[drrich2]

I didn't ask about solo; didn't see anything about it on the Aggressor's T&C webpages. I believe Turks & Caicos Explorer specifically does allow solo, if certified & equipped for it, has the gear to rent & teaches one of the courses. The diving on this trip would've required enough navigation to get outside my comfort zone for solo.

I dove with the guide-led group, but enough divers went off on their own buddy teams, and we spread out enough, that it wasn't 'diving in a crowd.' Nobody tried to make me pair up with an 'official buddy,' or gave me any grief about chilling on the hang bar or heading up to exit alone.

Which is how I like it! I follow the guide; I've noticed at the end of a dive, they make it back to the boat.

Richard.

 

[drrich2]

Since AT&T didn’t include Turks & Caicos in our stateside iPhone plan, I paid the $60 fee for 1-month of ‘passport’ service (which cuts rates). My iPhone showed FLOW as the cell provider when I had service, I had to turn data roaming on to get e-mail, texting my wife (as texts, not using iMessage) worked, and I don’t know FLOW’s relationship to AT&T or what the added charges beyond the $60 will be.

Waited till I got our next 2 cell phone bills; got notice of the due amount via e-mail today. Be mindful I didn't use the Internet heavily; mostly e-mail, texting, some websurfing. I don't recall offhand whether I phoned home or not. Regardless, listing in order the prior 2 bills, the bill after I got back, and the 1 after that (AT&T family plan with 3 connecting iPhones):

$194.63.
$193.63.
$259.22.
$196.13.

So it appears I ended up paying somewhere around $65 on the next bill, and done. I'll copy & paste some details from our cell phone bill online, so you can get some idea what extra charges you might incur if you use more services. Still wish I knew how the provider on my phone there showing up as 'FLOW' (not AT&T) might impact all this.

That larger bill, on my phone line, noted:

One-time charges
$60.00
Passport $0.35/Min, Unlimited Messages Sent 04/20
$10.00
Expiration 05/19/18
Passport Data 1G, $50/GB Overage 04/20
$50.00
Expiration 05/19/18

On the bill the $60 was dark, the $10 and $50 sort of light gray, so I think the $60 was the sum of those 2, not a total charge of $120.

 

[Cycling]

This is super helpful as I plan a trip for early spring 2022 (fingers crossed!). I haven't done LOB as I travel solo but nice to hear pros and cons vs sleep on land. Thanks again!

 

[Regulatrix]

And that's the end of that! Hope it helps someone else get a handle on the destination and saves some of the leg work researching it.

Richard.

Richard, thank you so much for these detailed trip reports/research. I really appreciate them and I suspect others on the board do to.