What percentage of dives get cancelled due to weather?

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FishWatcher747

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First year diver here. Padi Rescue diver 40 dives. All dives in quarries and lakes till I flew to Miami and planned to spend 7 days diving in Key Largo with Rainbow Reef beginning of October. Got 3 great days of diving including the Spiegel Grove.

Right after the 3 days weather turned bad and no boats went out for 5 days. After 2 days of hoping boats would go out, bailed on Key Largo and went to BHB and got 2 days there before I had to fly home.

I am now planning to drive to Florida in January and have two 8 day periods where I am going to stay in Florida City, 25 minutes from Key Largo. I'm also going to bring my bike so I have something to do on days boats don't go out.

My question is being new to diving what are reasonable expectations when one takes a dive vacation that you are going to actually be able to dive?

How about expectations for being in Bonaire for 3 weeks in January? This is what I planned to do but cancelled due to the virus. How many days in Bonaire might one lose to weather?

Thanks in advance for replies.
 
The weather (really the wind) is hit or miss in S. FL from about now through April. Some days (weeks) the wind blows, some days it doesn't. There's no way to say what a week in January will look like. May - September is typically much more consistent and predicable (outside of the tropical weather threat). To answer your question, your chances of getting blown out in January are higher than they would be in June/July but it's impossible to say just what the odds are.

I learned very quickly that if you're traveling from out of state to dive in S.FL in the winter and spring that you need to be flexible. I got tired of being flexible and just moved to S. FL :). Another option for you would be the Florida springs. You can dive the springs in most weather conditions and there are TONS of them to explore.

Bonaire you can expect good weather year round. Bonaire is a dry, arid climate that doesn't see much precipitation or tropical weather. They get a consistent easterly wind, but nearly all the diving is near shore on the west side of the island so it's all protected from the wind. You can plan a trip with confidence pretty much any time of year. I've been to Bonaire once and Curacao twice (just west of Bonaire) and had perfect weather every time. For the cost Bonaire/Curacao is hard to beat. There's no cheaper way to dive than to shore dive.
 
I've been to Bonaire 9 times. Never lost a day of diving due to weather. It does happen, I'm sure, but I've never had the problem.
 
What springs would you recommend? My understanding and I haven't researched it much is that the springs are way north and wouldn't be real convenient for a bail out option for South Florida.
 
What springs would you recommend? My understanding and I haven't researched it much is that the springs are way north and wouldn't be real convenient for a bail out option for South Florida.

Right - not a good bailout option for S.FL but an alternative option if you want to plan a dive trip and don't want to risk getting blown out. Full disclosure, I've never dove the springs but have heard/read a lot about them. Off the top of my head Blue Grotto, Devil's Den, and the Crystal River are popular. Someone else with experience in the springs should chime in here, though.
 
Hi @FishWatcher747

Bonaire is easy, I have not missed a day diving in 7 trips, 197 dives.

South Florida is more difficult, I do not specifically track missed dive days. It is not uncommon to miss dive days, particularly in late fall, winter, early spring. Big seas seemed to have come up earlier this year, and seems more persistent. I only dive in Boynton Beach, Jupiter, and West Palm. I make a good effort to get out whenever it's possible, sometimes switching locations.

For 2020 (an unusual year for me due to Covid):
February 3 of 4 days, 6 dives
March 3 of 7 days, 6 dives
June 12 of 12 days, 29 dives
July 7 of 7 days, 20 dives
September 8 of 11 days, 20 dives
OVERALL 33 of 41 days, 81 dives

I'll be giving it at least one more try this year. Looks like seas will be up, at least through the middle of next week
 
This is in large part a meteorology question. I know a lot about this since I'm an English major. ;-)

Southeastern US, summer is a time of big high-pressure systems that move slowly, many centered around Bermuda, hence the "Bermuda High". It's predictable fairly far ahead. Your main risk is scattered thundershowers, or an onshore seabreeze that's a bit too strong for the East Coast dives, and the inlets which can get scary when wind opposes current. Oh, and, uh, hurricanes now and then, mostly August and September

Spring and Fall, the fronts come in greater number and are faster-moving, and it blows a couple of days, then nice a few days as the wind veers gradually clockwise, it starts cold and ends up warmer. Then the next front, and same again. You pick that middle part, and it's good.

Winter, kind of like spring, except colder.

My dive area is mostly limited to Central Gulf and East Coast of Florida, around Jupiter and West Palm. I would guess that over the years, maybe one chance in five you won't go. And most of those no-gos are between say November and April, for the reasons above.


Okay, back to reading the Canterbury Tales.. ;-)
 
@scubadada nailed it for Southeast FL.

Essentially, during Fall-Winter it is common to get weathered out 2-3 days out of 7-10. E or NE winds (the WORST kind) set up and last for 2-4 days making it undivable. It then calms a bit for up a week before getting windy again. This is the standard winter pattern down here. Even 'calm' days that time of year are easily 2-3' if not 3-4'. It is not uncommon though to get blown out for a week or more at a time this time of year.

Late spring-Summer-early Fall can be just awesome. We can have weeks of calm seas. It's common to have days and days of 1-2' or less. That time of year you just have to dodge the afternoon thunderstorms but the captains are pretty good at that.

The only exception to the above is during hurricane season. That is pretty much Aug-Oct. It can be super nice UNLESS there is a tropical system. When that happens we can lose up to 2 weeks (or more) of diving.
 
How about expectations for being in Bonaire for 3 weeks in January?
Just so you know, Bonaire is still essentially closed to U.S. residents. Some NE state residents (including your NY) can get in through Curaçao, but only after a negative PCR COVID test within 72 hours before arriving in Curaçao.
So a January trip doesn't seem feasible without some travel gymnastics.

Unless I've missed a recent reopening...

(I'm still worried about my April scheduled trip to Divi Flamingo in Bonaire)
 
Last February I missed a lot of planned dive days due to weather--going from memory, it was at least half the month. On one dive day that I actually went out, I had a conversation with the dive operation owner and asked him if it was my imagination or had this all changed over very recent time.
  • I told him that when my wife and I were still working, about 13-20 years ago, we would come for a week and stay with relatives. I would dive most days that week, and it was unusual to miss more than a day of diving because of weather. I was shocked one year when I missed most of that week.
  • About 10 years ago, we were both retired and came for all of February. I called ahead to an instructor because I wanted to take classes, and he told me we could count on diving about 3 out of 4 days. As it turned out, there was not a single bad day that month.
  • About 6 years ago, we had settled on our now normal 2-month stay, and when we arrived in January, on the first dive I heard someone say it was the first time he had dived in over a month because of all the wind. The rest of our stay was pretty windy, and many boats did not go out.
  • A couple years later, I had two trimix students planning to come out for the first week in March to finish their class. I scheduled all the dives we would need with a local shop, with extra days in case of bad weather. We had to cancel--gale force winds were predicted for every day of the week, and that is indeed what happened.
  • This past year I was watching a weather forecast, and the weatherman predicting wind confirmed we had had a lot of windy years recently. He also said that the ocean temperature in winter was now about 5° warmer than it was just 6-7 years before, and he felt that was contributing to it.
In reply, the dive boat operator said it was absolutely true. He had started his business in 2007, and he said what I was describing was what he had experienced. He was now running half the number of charters in the winter as he used to do, all because of the wind. It was killing him financially. He sold the business a couple months later.
 
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