MV Hurricane Review

Hurricane Update

I read with some alarm Sid's report last week, as I was about to go one trip
on MV Hurricane.

Having returned yesterday (15/7) I though I should put my view. Hurricane
is great and if you are about to travel on it please don't worry - you'll
have a great time.

I have been on Excel, Susanna 1, VIP One and Royal Emperor in the last
couple of year so consider that I have some experience in quality
live-boards.

So what is great.

Well the food is fantastic and the staff are great. The cabins are equipped
with fridges that work, DVD and TVs that work and the air con is great in
the cabins. Cabin size is plenty big enough, with adequate storage which
can cope with your empty dive bags. Extra draws have been built into the
bed bases now. The dinning area is spacious and well laid out, the upper
saloon is also well laid out with a huge plasma screen, DVD and music
centre, with a well equipped bar with plenty of ice. The upper sun deck has
plenty of room and even a Jacuzzi - honest! The lower shaded deck is very
spacious and comes with plenty of seating and tables. The kitting up area
is big enough for all the divers to kit up simultaneously and includes some
nice touches, like camera table. The large dive platform comes with covered
camera tank and two fresh water showers. This is a luxury live-aboard!

Be assured the boat is new and I saw no real sign of rusting, a point to
note is that all boats rust - from the moment the keel is laid down, as a
result repainting is a constant task to keep a steel boat is shape. Neither
was there any sign to me that the boat had been at sea for any length of
time.

The decking all looked new to me and although I did notice that is a couple
of small places the paintwork had been touched up or not expertly applied
when originally painted, although I had too look for this and would not have
noticed unless I had seen Sid's post.

So what is not perfect.

Well the air con is the dinning rooms and the main saloon works, but is
either inadequate or was not working to its full capacity, I think it was
the latter. It does cool these areas, but not as well as I might have
expected. The bathrooms, this was the cause of some discussion, I am told
that they are the same size as Suzanne 1 and Royal Emperor, but not as big
as Excel and I think that is about right. What is different is the shape,
they have tried to separate the WC, washbasin and shower into different
areas and the net result is you have a narrow bathroom. On a lot of boats
the shower tends to soak the whole bathroom, on Hurricane it doesn't.
However this narrow space is then exacerbated by a door that opens into the
bathroom and hits the WC before opening fully. I expect that the doors
will changed to open into the cabin and this will help. What you must know
is that the bathrooms do work and we quite adequate.




Some of Sid's other points

Nitrox mixes, I used it all week and it did vary, by up to 1% and on a
couple of occasions nearly 2%, but I was made very clear to me that if it
was out that they would adjust the mix before I dived, frankly I didn't
bother, but reset my computer accordingly. Overall I have no complaints
about the Nitrox. What I would say is that on previous live-aboards we have
had bad tasting fills on Hurricane the fills both air and Nitrox were dry
and odour free.

I think Sid's comments about jet drive and PC and email facilities are based
on last year's information, which we saw as we were originally going to use
it last year, but couldn't and as it wasn't finished. The latest
information does not make any mention of jet drives or PC availability. But
the Ribs are new and very well equipped - the best I have seen on any boat.
As for email the GSM signal only works when you are close to the port but
after that the comms is limited to SAT phone.


The Southern Red Sea -Elphinstone, Deadulus, Zabagad, Rocky Island, Fury
Shoal and St Johns. I have dived this area four times in the last two
years, it is getting busier and much as I would like to be the only boat on
the site this is not going to happen in the future. Frequently one or two
other boats accompanied us and on occasions we were alone. My advice is
go now as it'll only get busier, if you want deserted sites try Sudan.
However the sites are still great for seeing sharks, we saw white tipped,
greys and hammerheads. The reefs and coral gardens are stunning and not
over dived - yet. This is still the place to go as far as I am concerned
and I will do Sudan once I am confident that the country is safe.


What you must understand is that the boat is new and frankly in some areas
the boat is still being 'shaken down'. What is impressive is the way that
staff dealt with any minor problems that we had. The staff we insistence
that we reported anything that was not working perfectly, I can only assume
that as time goes on that any last remaining imperfections will be rapidly
resolved.

So would I go on Hurricane again? - YES!