Grand Cayman & Cozumel

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!

Best Regards,
Todd H.
http://www.toddh.net/

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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"Dan Bracuk" <NOTbracuk@pathcom.com> wrote in message
news:fr8571lv2fg1cs5ao7i29ot189di6duu0h@4ax.com...
> 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.

Personally I'd recommend diving it.

I thought Stingray City was an exceptional experience. I did it with my
family from a private charter and we were engulfed in rays. So many that it
might have been better from a big boat with lots of divers feeding them
because we got all the rays trying to feed from our hands, without any
others to attract there attention. It was quite crazy really. I generally
avoid these types of dives but am quite glad we did it. If one hasn't done
it before, I think it is worth a missed dive on the North Wall.

Dan Bracuk <NOTbracuk@pathcom.com> writes:

> 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.

Best Regards,
--
Todd H.
http://www.toddh.net/

Todd H. wrote:

>> 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.

The snorkel trip to Sandbar should be cheaper, but for divers I think there's a lot
to be said for the 3-D experience. On a trip arranged by the cruise line it probably
won't be an option, but if there's space snorkelers can usually go along with the
divers, allowing a group to go together and let each get what they want. Since
Stingray City is about 14' deep the snorkelers may be somewhat separated from the
real action unless the divers bring the rays up to them. At least that's how it went
whenmy wife was just a snorkeler. While I think diving is a slightly better option,
there's no problem feeding them while standing in 3 or 4 feet of water. If you don't
want to get below the surface they'll be happy to climb up on you a bit and you can
always reach down a bit.

> 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.

I've had them grab my hand a couple of times but never enough to be painful. If they
just taste you a little bit it's actually kind of cool.


> 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.

That's the likely explanation. It may have left a bruise, but it could have been a
lot worse. It could have happened a few minutes later while visiting the big green
moray.

--
Steve

The above can be construed as personal opinion in the absence of a reasonable
belief that it was intended as a statement of fact.

If you want a reply to reach me, remove the SPAMTRAP from the address.

Jane "jemaderi" <jimjaney@zoominternet.net> wrote:

> 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?

The general rule is that it will be a boat-based dive.


> A couple people in mylocal dive shop said much of Grand Cayman
> hasn't recovered from the hurricane. Is this where we'll be taken?


With the broadest generalization brush, Grand Cayman is probably at
80%-90% of what it was before Hurricane Ivan.

I was through there briefly back in December (2.5 months after Ivan) and
they were already well on their way to recovery in the downtown shopping
area that the cruise ship visitors frequent. I would expect that by
now, most of the lasting damage is to various hotels that got hit harder
such that it wasn't a quick "patch up the roof" magnitude of repair
(reportedly, some places are going to be closed for the next year or
so). Since you're coming in on a cruise ship, this is mostly irrelevant
to you.


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.


For scuba diving: probably 99% those dive operations that were able to
find their diveboats afterwords in the mangroves/harbors have already
repaired and refloated them to get back in business. Again, since there
have been cruise ships before you, they will have had things pretty well
sorted out.


> Any advice or information would be greatly appreciated.

I'm not personally aware of anyone that does a "2 tank" trip where you
do a wall dive and then stingray city for your 2nd dive, so what I'd
suggest is to try to decide on what you want to do more: a dive at
Stingray City or a classical Cayman Wall Dive.

Maybe someone does do both on one trip (eg, a Wall dive and then
Stingray City for your 2nd tank), but geographically, Stingray City is
in the shallow & sandy North Sound, so most of the 'City trips simply
bus you over to a dock that's already inside North Sound, rather than
motoring a dozen or so miles out & back from 7 mile beach over into the
Sound.


-hh

"H Huntzinger" wrote:

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.


--
But then again, what do I know?

Lou Vallone

LouVallone@aol.com

http://members.aol.com/LouVallone

"Lou Vallone" <vallone@smomp.org> wrote:

> "H Huntzinger" wrote:
>
> > 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.

But of course.



-hh