REVIEW - Dive Barbados, Barbados April 28, 2006 (RCCL Empress of the Seas)

Dive review – Dive Barbados, Barbados

April 1, 2006 (I put the wrong date in the title, sorry)

Rating of 1-5 stars:

Overall *****

People *****

Equipment *****

Diving ***** (Reef ***** 78ft/40min Wreck **** 56 ft/53min)

We threatened to return, and had a blast doing it. John and Mary at Dive Barbados are DEFINITELY our dive folks when on Barbados. http://www.divebarbados.net/

Personal dive biases: I am a Floridian with >350 dives, certification through rescue. My diving experience has been under all sorts of conditions, but I no longer dive rough, deep or cold water (why bother?), and avoid weekend warriors whenever possible. My diving preference is drifting on reefs, and I have been known to bring home a bug or two.

There was a report posted on this board that ran absolutely contrary to my previous experience. Thus, I felt it was necessary to post our recent wonderful dive. John also brought up the negative posting he received while we were on the boat, and we discussed it at length. He was very upset by the negative review, so I wanted to share that our repeat experience was even better than our first trip.

I e-mailed John and Mary when we found out that we would be returning to Barbados, and they remembered us from our last trip. They put us down for the day, and we touched base a couple of times before we left.

Last time, we hauled our giant wheelie dive bag, but this time, we had bought cheap (20$) mesh dive backpacks to make life easier on smaller boats, and to avoid the side trip to Customs that we took last time. Our meet was for 8:30 at the traffic circle outside the terminal main gate, so we hopped off the ship and caught the shuttle bus to the terminal as we were way out on the end of the pier. The terminal still forces you to go all the way down and back to get outside, so we hitched the packs up on our backs, and hiked down and back through the building. The guard at the exit tried to catch our attention, but we pretended to be deep in conversation and sauntered casually right out the doors.

Mary was already waiting for us at the traffic circle even though we were early (for once). After lots of hugs, it turned out that there was another diver coming off the Princess ship next to us, and three more from the Empress that called from the terminal to ask if there was room on the dive. Within 10 minutes everyone had arrived, and four of us packed in the cab with Mary, and the fifth rode dog-style in the back with the gear bags.

When we arrived at the dive shack, we had another session of hugs with John. Mary distributed the releases and did the business part, and John got out rental gear for those that needed it, and set up weights/weight belts for all of us.

John and Captain Trevor started hauling tanks out to the boat, which was anchored in a couple of feet of water just off the beach right in front of the dive shack. We grabbed our stuff and started a hauling gear and tanks out to the boat, so we were ready in a jiffy. Well, except I tripped on the rocks on the way to the boat with my second load, ended up on my rump in the surf, and started laughing so hard I couldn’t get up again until I got a helping hand from one of the other divers. Ah, diving affords me endless opportunities to be cheap entertainment.

Somehow, John and Mary had managed to get the boat back that had been stolen right before our last trip. The boat is small (25-28 feet maybe?), but comfortably fit the five of us divers, John as divemaster, and Captain Trevor.

We helped each other suit up and chatted as we motored to the first dive site (reef). John had surveyed everyone’s experience level and gave a short dive briefing as we were all experienced divers. John and Trevor put the BC’s on the gunwales, and we shrugged in and rolled off. Once everyone was off the boat, we grouped up and descended. Beautiful reef! Lots and lots of nooks and crannies in hard coral, great sponges and sea fans, and all the usual suspects were lurking. Viz was at least 90-100 feet with a bright sun and not a whisper of current. We proceeded as a loose group, taking our time and looking at all the great stuff. Fish galore, and I had never seen so many banded shrimp and cool feathery worms. Naturally, they were abundant because I bought a macro lens for my camera the night before we left, and then flooded the dratted thing on the first dive of the trip. I was totally absorbed looking at all the cool critters and teasing the territorial blennies, while listening to the bubbles of the group and all the snaps and crackles of the reef critters. I then noticed that my ears were squeaking, and finally looked at my computer for a depth and time check. Whoops! We had crossed over the top, and Keith and I had worked our way down to 78 feet, so we turned back up and worked our way up to a more reasonable 60’. We headed back to the boat still in the green, and did our safety stop while still looking at the reef. Back on the surface, Keith stripped out our weight pockets, and Captain Trevor took our BC’s. I swam around a bit while everyone was getting settled before an easy climb up the ladder.

We hung out for a bit, swapped dive stories, and motored gently to our next site. We anchored up on a wreck, and changed over the gear. John and I discussed the negative review mentioned at the top of this review. My opinion (for what it’s worth) is that the negative poster was looking for an entirely different type of operation (can you say moo?), and was not into the small, personalized and fun type of boat experience.

Dive #2 was a wreck sitting upright in about 60’, with reef towards the shore. John gave us the layout in a briefing, and we flopped in. There was just a teeny bit of current on one side of the wreck – just enough to move us down the length from bow to stern very gently. Perfect! I’m not normally a fan of wreck diving, but this was great. Lots of growth, and we found a tiny baby green moray poking out of a section of broken railing at the back. I could have fit my OK over his head with plenty of room to spare (*&%@ flooded camera). We went all the way around once, then over the top to see what was inside. As we passed over the top, I felt something hit my fin. Oops, what/who did I kick? Nothing there. As we cruised around the wheelhouse, I felt another couple taps on my fin. Still nothing there. As I was hovering over the top, one of the school of hand-sized blue and black fish came up and bit the end of my fin. That’s where the tapping was coming from! I called Keith up as he has blue fins as well, and the fish followed us, and kept tapping on the tips. Pretty cool! We sank down inside to swim through the wreck, and John showed us an air pocket inside way down at the bottom. I also found a great arrow crab, and a large white anemone with florescent blue tips on the tentacles. I showed the arrow crab to two of the other divers that happened by, but when we took them back to see the baby moray, he had retreated into his rail and would not come back out. We never made it out on the surrounding reef as there was a lot of great stuff to see, and we had fun cruising over the top with the fin-tapping fish. Everyone else was low on air, and I was getting a bit cold, so we headed up for our safety stop. A couple of our fin-tapping buddies followed us up to the safety stop. Back on-board, we broke down our gear and stuffed it into the bags while we cruised back to base.

We unloaded the gear and tanks and carried everything up to the shack, and this time I managed to get back up by myself after tripping on the rocks. Just call me ‘grace’. We stripped off our wetsuits and skins, and gave everything a quick dunk in the rinse tank, and had a quick shower with the hose. We repacked the gear, got soggy hugs from John, and we repiled into the truck for the trip back. All of us had our boarding cards out, so Mary was able to sweet-talk the gate guard into letting her take us all the way to the terminal. We unloaded and got more soggy hugs from Mary.

We shall return again! And again!

Wendy

As a side note, we had a fellow at our table that did the ship dive trip. Their viz was about 60’, and their dives were only OK. We tried to get him to come with us, but he preferred to stay with the ship excursions.

Sorry there are no new photos, but the ones from our last trip with John are posted

on webshots. You can check them out at http://community.webshots.com/user/wendyandkeith

Was this a guided dive? I saw the web site and they didn't list the price in US$. Do you recall the price per person?

Thanks

prices are listed at http://www.divebarbados.net/Cruise%20Divers.htm

W&K- great review. A couple questions. Do you know if they do rental gear? We are coming a long way and I would like to take as little as possible. Did you need a wet suit or skin? Any info you can give would be much appriciated.

Tonya

DiversDownAZ beat me to the prices, but it's currently $80 US for a 2-tank dive ($10 US extra for rental gear). Barbados $ are 2BDS for 1 US, so don't get freaked when you see the prices. Also, 10% discount for advance booking.

Rental gear is available - everything from masks to fins and everything in-between, and everything looked to be in great shape.

The dives are guided - John, the owner, led the dives for us on both our trips.

I wore only a skin for our first trip (Thanksgiving) and was a bit cool. This time, in March, was still cool in a 2-mil. However, I am a Florida diver, and tend to wear that 2-mil in the summer in South Florida (and I don't dive in the winter!)

Tell John and Mary that Wendy & Keith from Florida say hi...and we're probably going to be heading back their way in the spring to do it again.

Have a great time and a pair of awesome dives!

Wendy

Do they not do afternoon dives? I was looking at their website and didn't see anything...Already have an excursion planned for the morning and was hoping to get a dive in in the afternoon.

I would just drop them an E-mail to see if they can accomodate you. Mary & John are really wonderful, laid-back folks.

I don't know what your morning plan is, but you might be better off trying to dive in the morning, then do whatever else in the afternoon if it's possible.

Have a great trip!

Wendy