time for other activities?

[crusinhokie]

My family and I are planning our first cruise. I would like to do some diving while in port but does this leave any time available for further exploring of the islands later in the day? I plan to book my diving through a private company (not the cruise line). Any advice would be appreciated!



1/2/05 - Mariner of the Seas - 1st cruise
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[sea-jay]

In order to reasonably answer your questions, you need to provide some additional information. What ports will you be stopping at and what times will the ship be arriving and leaving. I have been diving in St. Thomas on RCI's Mariner Southern Caribbean cruise and Bahamas on RCI's Sovereign. I have also cruised RCI's Explorer to the Western Caribbean. A lot will depend on whether you tender or dock in a port. Tendering takes additional time. Additionally, sometimes a private company can be late picking you up unless you make arrangement to take a taci to their location. Additionally, the number of divers going will affect the time they leave from their location and the location of the dive will dictate the lenght of time it takes to get there and back from the dive operators pier.

Suggest you tell us what you plan in order for us to tell you if there is enough time for sightseeing.

John
sea-jay at cfl dot rr dot com

First Cruise:
Explorer of the Seas 8/31/02 Western Caribbean
Then:
Sovereign of the Seas 8/28/03 Nassau
Last Cruise:
Mariner of the Seas 11/23/03 Eastern Caribbean

[crusinhokie]

We will be sailing the Western Caribbean itinerary and I was hoping to dive in:

Grand Cayman (tendering with arrival at 8 am and departure at 4pm)

Cozumel (docked from 10am to 7pm).

I would like to do 2 "morning" dives but am flexiable.

Thanks



1/2/05 - Mariner of the Seas - 1st cruise
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[sddiver]

Hokie,

Can't comment on GC since I haven't been there yet. But in general ports you need to tender into take more time just in logistics getting to and from the ship. Given that if you did a two tank morning dive(s) you would be done diving in a 12-1pm time frame if you started at around 8. Given a 4pm departure your last tender would be 3-3:30. If you have your own gear you would most likely want to drop your gear off at the ship before exploring. Thus another ~ 45 minutes going to and from. Does not leave much time to look around. If you rent gear and don't have much to carry you could bring a change of clothes and you might have a couple to 3 hours to explore.
Cozumel- here because of your late departure you should have plenty of time. Even with your 10am arrival you should be done diving by 2-3pm and assuming you will be docked not tendering it will be more convienent to get on and off the ship and explore. Plus Coz is a relatively small place where most of what you may want to see is a max of 20 minutes to 1/2 hour away.
I will be cruising that same week on the Celebrity Galaxy. We miss you by one day in Grand Cayman.

Enjoy
Rich

[sportsterjohn]

I dove in Coz last spring and had plenty of time to hang out afterwards. Of course we were there from noon till 1am.

NCL Sea 3/03
RCCL Sovereign 10/03
NCL Dream 3/7/2004

[brucejr]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by crusinhokie:
We will be sailing the Western Caribbean itinerary and I was hoping to dive in:

Grand Cayman (tendering with arrival at 8 am and departure at 4pm)

Cozumel (docked from 10am to 7pm).

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
I agree with sddiver:
You will be hard pressed to do too much more than dive on GCM because of the tendering and departure time. On our stop at GCM, I found that after diving with [url="http://www.neptunesdivers.com/index.html"]neptunes divers[/url] there was enough time to go back to Georgetown, have a few beers with dive buddies, then buy a t-shirt or 2. It would have been possible to meet up with my family for a late lunch and maybe a short snorkle at Eden Rock, but I wasn't too sure when I'd be done diving so I didn't set up a meeting.

On Coz you should have time to do something after diving. I went with [url="http://www.bluextseadiving.com/"]Blue XT Sea diving[/url] who I highly recommend, and they would have dropped me off at the ship after the dives if I had wanted, but instead they gave me a ride to Chanakaab Park to meet up with my family who was there doing the dolphin swim. I found them at the restaurant and we had a couple of hours together at the park before taking a taxi back to the pier. Still had time for "shopping" before reboarding the ship for a shower before dinner.

<font color="FF6600">
if there's a way to construe my post as non-argumentative, please do so.</font>
Cruise photos on my [url="http://www.brobertson.org/"]Home page [/url]<font color="990066">
Spring Break was on the Grand Princess </font>21, March 2004
So when is the next cruise?

[sea-jay]

Agree with all of the responses you received. I would add one more thing. Check with the dive operation you will be using to make sure that the ship schedule and the dive operators schedule are compatible. If the dive operators are accomodating guests that are not from the cruise ship, will you be able to still get in and out of the water quickly or will you have to wait on the "hotel" guests. I ran into this problem in Nassau with a private operator that waited for all the hotel guests to get to their pier before they left even tho they had picked me up at the ship early enough to have completed one dive before everyone was there. Caused me to kill almost an hour.

John
sea-jay at cfl dot rr dot com

First Cruise:
Explorer of the Seas 8/31/02 Western Caribbean
Then:
Sovereign of the Seas 8/28/03 Nassau
Last Cruise:
Mariner of the Seas 11/23/03 Eastern Caribbean

[crusinhokie]

Thanks for the great advice everyone - I really apprciate it!



1/2/05 - Mariner of the Seas - 1st cruise
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[Orcrone]

I dove in Grand Cayman and Cozumel last year. The tendering times in Cayman make it difficult to do anything else. That makes four tenders since you will probabably want to head back to the ship to drop off your gear, or at least get freshened up. But on Cozumel I returned from my dives and still had about four or five hours before our 6:00 PM departure.