How difficult is it to get in/out of the catamarans after snorkeling?

[HEM1]

I have pretty severe arthritis in both knees and I'm wondering how difficult it is to get on and off the catamarans. Are there ladder rungs at least three deep under water? My knees won't bend much more than 90 degrees. THANKS! :confused:

[klepton]

I did Shasa tours and I want to say the ladder rungs went three deep in the water, but I don't remember for sure. All I remember is the connection from the ladder to the boat was a little flimsy and almost dunked me. :) I'm in pretty good shape and young, so I had no problem. There was a larger guy on our tour as well who didn't move as easily, and I believe he needed help getting in the boat, but he didn't seem to have too much trouble with help.

 

Shasa is a much smaller boat than some of the others. The larger boats have bigger ladders that go down into the water.

[notentirelynormal]

Our problem was at the end of our day. When he tried to bring in the catamarans the tides had changed and the waves were BIG. It was extremely difficult to unload us. We had 3 little ones who basically had to be "thrown and grabbed", including a stroller on board and it took us almost 45 minutes to get off the two cats. The second captain had to hold the first boat in place so we could get off. The waves were huge, threw the cat on the rocks and almost bumped into us a few times while getting off. It was pretty darned exciting. While this might not be normal I just wanted to put it out there that if you have a lot of problems, to take into consideration that no one can control what the water does.

[nofancyname]

i suppose it depends more on the roughness of the water youre in...unfortunately, i think it might be problematic because the large cat we were on still had only about 3 steps in the water so yes, we had to bend our knees more than 90 degrees. The second problem was that it was so rough we were getting knocked around a lot and that in iteself made it difficult (this was my experience at Buck Island in St. Croix, but I imagine this would apply anywhere if the conditions of the water are the same)