I'm going on Carnival's 5 day cruise in July. My small group will consist of one very experienced Navy diver, his newly certified teenage daughter, and myself who falls in between. We will probably opt to go with the cruiseline's shore excursions just for the ease of the arrangements and no fear of the ship leaving us behind. Does anyone know what the dives are like from the ship - are they shore or boat dives? A couple people in my local dive shop said much of Grand Cayman hasn't recovered from the hurricane. Is this where we'll be taken? Any advice or information would be greatly appreciated. Jane
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"jemaderi" <jimjaney@zoominternet.net> pounded away at his keyboard resulting in: : Any advice or information would :be greatly appreciated.
Don't worry, be happy.
That's my advice.
Dan Bracuk If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure.
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"jemaderi" <jimjaney@zoominternet.net> writes:> I'm going on Carnival's 5 day cruise in July. My small group will consist > of one very experienced Navy diver, his newly certified teenage daughter, > and myself who falls in between. We will probably opt to go with the > cruiseline's shore excursions just for the ease of the arrangements and no > fear of the ship leaving us behind. Does anyone know what the dives are > like from the ship - are they shore or boat dives? A couple people in my > local dive shop said much of Grand Cayman hasn't recovered from the > hurricane. Is this where we'll be taken? Any advice or information would > be greatly appreciated.> Jane
Every cruise dive I've been on has been a boat dive, but as soon as I say that, you're bound to find the exception. Check with your cruise line though if possible.
In Grand Cayman, if no one has been, stingray city is well worth it, but then again, you'd miss out on some other great dives too. Grand Cayman is one destination I need to get back to for several days!
t@toddh.net (Todd H.) pounded away at his keyboard resulting in:
:In Grand Cayman, if no one has been, stingray city is well worth it, :but then again, you'd miss out on some other great dives too.
Some freinds of mine just did that as a snork. Based on their comments and photos, plus having dove it, snorkelling might be a better option, especially if it is less expensive.
Dan Bracuk If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure.
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t@toddh.net (Todd H.) pounded away at his keyboard resulting in:>
:In Grand Cayman, if no one has been, stingray city is well worth it,> :but then again, you'd miss out on some other great dives too. >
Some freinds of mine just did that as a snork. Based on their> comments and photos, plus having dove it, snorkelling might be a> better option, especially if it is less expensive.
I wouldn't argue that much. They're both pretty cool. One thing though, it's harder to feed them from underneath though in the wading/snorkeling trip I'd have to imagine.
I had one of those monsters latch onto my forearm for like 5 seconds (that felt like an hour) while on teh dive. My buddy got a picture. Holy crap did that area bruise and bleed once I got out of the water. That's a lot of suction.
There must've been a little squid juice on my forearm from having dipped into the slitted neoprene cover of the squid bucket, and it took the big girl a few seconds to figure out I wasn't made of squid.
With the broadest generalization brush, Grand Cayman is probably at> > 80%-90% of what it was before Hurricane Ivan.> >
I just got back on Wednesday from a week's diving with Ocean Frontiers, > and my estimate is about 40% recovered.
Lou, we may have been thinking on different scales of recovery: I was thinking more along the lines that "80-90%" of the different types of services were back with reasonable capacity to support tourism, not that 80-90% of all recovery was done.
Morritt's and it's dive op Tortuga Divers are completely padlocked, as is > Cayman Dive Lodge. Compass Point is 2/3 inhabitable, and OF is the only > operator on that side of the island.
Which is all East End...not particularly the domain of someone coming in on a cruise ship.
I did shore dives with Sunset House, they are only running one boat a day > and limiting shore dives for the next two weeks to resident guests only, no > outsiders. They are running their dive shop from one of the residence units.
Because of a lack of customers, or because they only have one boat?
For example, the Divi Tiara (on the Brac) wants to shut down the entire resort for the month of September. Its not because the resort hasn't been repaired, but purely due to economic considerations.
I did several dives with Dive Tech from shore at Turtle Reef, and they > seemed to be the only ones at full capacity, and that reef was the only one > that seemed to have the full complement of marine life that I am used to > seeing as recently as one year ago. Soft coral is scarce on most of the > shallow dives.
I've caught a secondhand report that they've recently run a garbage barge out to one of the reefs because there was simply so much roofing debris to try to clear off the reef.
Georgetown is up and running, but not completely. Several restaurants that I > have eaten at in the past (Like Casanova's) are not there at all, or boarded > up, but the cruise line people are back strong - 6 ships in port each time I > drove through Georgetown.
This is the genesis of the 80-90% figure I was moving towards for the OP: they've pretty much gotten most of their act together for the cruise ship business. Already by the time I was down last December, there were two Atlantis Submarines already seaworthy again...they were just waiting for customers, etc.
It will be a quite a while, according to the locals I talked with like Tom > Shropshire, before things get totally sorted out.>
Short version: you can go and dive, but it ain't what it was pre-Ivan and > won't be for some time.
Thus spake H Huntzinger <{NOSPAM-rm_to_reply}rec-scuba2005@huntzinger.com> :
Jane "jemaderi" <jimjaney@zoominternet.net> wrote:
<snip>
Logistically, most cruise ships dock offshore of Georgetown, Grand >Cayman, and tender you in. Cruise ships have now been running at "some" >capacity for 5 months, so any docking issues will have been worked out. >There's also a cruise ship dock that they had been talking about >building north of Georgetown, but I don't think that construction had >even started prior to Ivan...I'd suspect that the project's on hold.
It's due to start in early 2006. GC is about to raise the anchoring fee to help fund it. Not much, like $.50 a pax, but considering the number of people, it adds up.
